In message , Paul Corfield
writes

The trouble is, it's all very well getting through travel between London
terminals but you can't get a through ticket from a NationalRail station
to somewhere on the LUL network or vice-versa, except for standard day
returns to zone 1/2.

I'm probably out of date but I thought any NR Station could issue to any
combination of "U" zones.

Thanks, I wasn't aware of this. To be fair on Alton's ticket staff, I
hadn't actually tried them but I was looking up the fares for this
particular journey on Qjump, which offers me the All Zones TC and Zone
1/Zone 1&2 but nothing else. I'd also never seen anything apart from
these on machines and was under the impression that they simply weren't
available.
Am I right in thinking, however, that these fares are only available as
Standard Day Returns/Singles and are therefore usually still more
expensive than the equivalent cheap day fare to the terminal + LUL fare.


What we need is for all LUL ticket offices to be brought up to the
standard of those on National Rail, able to sell any ticket that an NR
ticket office can sell with the same conditions and discounts.
Meanwhile, NR ticket offices should be able to sell through tickets to
any zone on LU.

Sorry I fundamentally disagree with this. There are quite bad enough
queues at many LU stations without adding on the huge transactional cost
(in time and money) of being able to buy a Saver return to Fort William
on a Scotrail mega granny discount complete with a reservation for a
sleeper for the return trip. It makes no sense whatsoever for LU to be
retailing such products.

The volume of tickets sold for those NR destinations which are deemed to
be popular enough to be included from LU ticket offices is woefully
small. The cost vs the benefit does not make sense.

I see your point regarding queues, but at least increase the options
available by allowing them to sell the standard range of Cheap Day,
Standard Day and Saver tickets on the condition that reservations,
Virgin Value type tickets and other such complications aren't allowed
(the phone/Internet is perfectly adequate for these anyway).
At least configure the self-service machines to sell them as, with well
designed software, it shouldn't take any longer to get a return to an NR
destination than to a LUL one.
Also, not allowing through tickets to be bought from LU stations merely
displaces the queues to the NR ticket offices, and can lead to the same
person having to queue twice, once for their tube ticket and again for
their national rail ticket.

I suspect the reason LUL ticket offices that can sell tickets to NR
destinations don't sell many, is because people simply don't know that
these tickets are available.
--
Spyke
Address is valid, but messages are treated as junk. The opinions I express do
not necessarily reflect those of the educational institution from which I post.