First Great Western

A question about : First Great Western

Help please MSE!

Has anyone else noticed that FGW have effectively massively increased their advance fares this week. I don't mean the Jan price rises. That aside they have clearly drastically altered/reduced the number and choice of cheaper advance fares.

I called FGW customer services to ask them to confirm but the guy didn't have a clue, not his fault he just hadn't been briefed but agreed there didn't seem to be the same spread of fares.

I travel from cardiff to london on one day of almost every week. Usually I can buy an advance single 3/4/5 days before I go for anything from Ј18 - early Ј30s for a train that will get me in around lunchtime. I tailor my trip slightly to get best fare. Yesterday I looked for next Tues and already ALL fares are Ј40, across the board. usually they vary a lot through the day but not now. And if I try for the week after they are ALL Ј37 odd I think it was and the week after that Ј32.

This is a complete change in the spread of fares and a huge hike up in price if like me you can't predict 12 weeks ahead when/whether you will need to travel.

Can MSE check this out? It's a hidden way of FGW massively increasing prices and it's very very underhand.

Has anyone else noticed? would love to hear I'm not the only one shouting into the wind.

Best answers:

• FGW offer different 'tiers' of Advance fares - in this case (Cardiff-London) the available tiers are Ј14/Ј18.50/Ј22.50/Ј27/Ј32 and so on.
  Once one tier sells out, the next available cheapest will be offered.
  So it is possible that they have reduced the number of tickets that can be sold at each tier. Or other passengers have been quicker in snapping up the cheaper tickets!
• Advanced fares are unregulated. As a general rule, the rail companies are not obliged to offer them and use them to stimulate demand. Accordingly, they are free to offer as many or as few of them as they wish. Unfortunately in your case either they have reduced the number of tickets available at the cheaper price, or more people are buying them so they are selling out faster (as cosmojohnson said).
  I'm sorry to say there is nothing to investigate. I indeed have been affected by Virgin doing a similar thing on a route I use (Redhill to Kidderminster), with the Ј10.50 tickets available last year now as rare as hen's teeth. Given I don't like their wobbly trains, ironically enough I've swtiched to using First Great Western to Worcester.
  You could get the Megabus or National Express if you wished, both of whom offer direct services to London from Cardiff. If enough people did that and demand dropped, First may be inclined to offer more cheap tickets.
• I sympathise with the OP and agree with tripled. I find it increasingly difficult to find the cheapest Advanced fares now. However, FGW's Advanced fares were a godsend for me when trying to make weekly trips across the UK to care for a dying relative in the late 00s.
• Wouldn't quicker selling-out of Advance tickets be expected following recent advertising campaigns ..?
• Simply a matter of supply and demand. Nothing to investigate.
• Thanks for the replies (well some of them!).
  Cosmo and Tripled. Thanks. Yes, it's definitely not that passengers have been quicker to snap up cheaper tickets; FGW have clearly reduced the number of cheaper tickets available full stop. I've been travelling this route regularly for years and I know, trust me, how full/empty different time trains usually are and what prices I can (correction, could) get for certain numbers of days bought in advance. I used to sit and play the old best fare combinations v optimum time I wanted to arrive game each week.
  No, I can well believe there is no regulation on how many tickets they must make available.
  What saddens me is that they have suddenly done this and effectively bumped up the price I (and no doubt many others) have to pay by a huge % and there is no public outcry because it's hidden. Some non regular travellers won't notice.
  When the January price rises are publicised each year there is a big outcry. This isn't being mentioned.
  So I disagree. There IS something to be investigated, in the sense of a website like this ought to take up the point and publicise it to embarrass FGW.
  It would be hard for me to express the level of contempt I have for FGW and the shoddy service they operate (I'll spare you the litany of bad experiences). This was the final straw for me.
  Richard53, your reply isn't helpful and isn't correct.
  Dzug1, there are many things they could have done but they will try and hide it under the carpet.
• Advance tickets were intended to fill spare capacity, over time that spare capacity has been filled.
  Even off-peak the Reading to London section has good load factors meaning there is no longer any need to sell Advance tickets which include that section.
  For Great Western a decision was also taken to move one carriage of the consist from First to Standard Class with consequential loss of revenue which will need to be recouped, regulated fares such as season tickets can only be increased at regulated rates thus the lost income needs to come from unregulated fares (Advance being one such).