Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Trainline becomes even more rubbish.

Not content with charging for credit cards and postage (both of which used to be included), now they're charging for debit cards (50p) and for fastticket collection (50p) - this is seriously beginning to take the mickey. You don't have to pay card fees or printing costs if you buy at a station (where they have the overhead of a member of staff) - so charging more for using an automated system is a complete skank. A debit card transaction costs them 5p - so where they get 50p from I have no idea.

You can get 2% quidco back (which will recoup the above if you're spending 50 quid - but it's still rubbish!) In future I may start figuring out my journey online and then going to the station to advance buy the tickets.

/ADDED 28/05 - I've been told that using the individual train company sites (generally same interface as trainline) may allow you to avoid getting skanked for these extra charges. But I haven't actually verified this.

Also I'm not the first person to rant about this - see this blog post on trainline's fee structure and how to avoid it.


1 comment:

Wreckferret said...

Yeah, came across this myself a few weeks back (sorta).
It was the way that Trainline wouldn't send you the tickets anymore for no charge (I think), or was it that it didn't give you the option of picking up from the station?
I don't remember now.

But the giste was that Trainline has got RUBBISH.

Yeah, constructive comment I know.
But whatever! =)