Train tickets at station machines twice as expensive as online bookings

Studies show that travellers who buy their tickets from a train station ticket machine may have to pay up to twice the price of an online booking process.

A single ticket for the same day from Holmes Chapel in Cheshire to London cost £66 from the station ticket machine, but the same journey cost £26 online – a difference of 156% (source: Which?).

If you buy a single ticket from Northampton to Cardiff on the same day, you will pay £107 at the ticket machine, 148% more than if you buy it online, where the price is only £43.

Overall, tickets purchased online were cheaper in around three quarters of cases, and same-day journeys cost an average of 52 percent more at the machine. In 2022, around 12 percent of tickets were purchased at the machine – that’s about 150 million journeys.

The range of services offered by different ticket machines can vary considerably, so that passengers often have a limited choice and are consequently faced with higher prices.

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One of the main reasons why ticket machines are often more expensive is that most don’t offer “advance fares” – cheaper fares that you can buy before you travel. Depending on the route, these may even be available up to 10 minutes before departure.

Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel, said: “The price differences we found between booking online and using ticket machines at train stations were simply astonishing. Millions of tickets are bought from ticket machines every year, meaning many of us may be paying significantly more than necessary when commuting to work or visiting friends and family across the country.

“Where possible, we recommend booking train tickets online to find the cheapest options, but this is not possible for everyone. Many older people have no internet access at all – and they have little choice but to use ticket machines, which either do not offer the best prices or make it difficult to find the right fares.”

Currently, only one in six of the 1,766 railway stations under the control of the Department of Transport has a ticket office open all day; 40 percent are staffed only part-time and 43 percent have no ticket office at all.

Which? also warned that rail passengers could easily be misled by the validity of their ticket, as many machines often do not make it clear at what times and for which journeys certain tickets are valid.

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If there is no one at the station to ask for assistance, passengers risk a £50 fine plus the cost of a new ticket for their journey.

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Using machines can also be problematic for those trying to book their tickets weeks in advance. For example, Great Western’s machines at major stations such as Oxford and Paddington only sold tickets for same-day or next-day journeys.

Which? sent mystery shoppers to 15 train stations – each operated by a different train operator – and compared the prices of 75 journeys at a ticket machine with those on the UK’s largest ticket website, Trainline.

Mark Plowright, director of Virgin Trains Ticketing, said the difference could actually be even higher.

“It’s important to note that the Which? report only compared with Trainline and did not look at the value offered by other online retailers through points, rewards and other perks. So the value gap is actually much wider,” he said.

“Rail retail is a growing market and competition between apps such as Virgin Trains Ticketing is delivering great value for money for customers with smartphones. But all rail passengers have the right to get the best value for their journey, no matter where they buy their tickets,” he added.

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