Rail passengers seeking information and buying rail tickets are generally well served according to new research by Passenger Focus.

As part of its research into rail ticket retailing, Passenger Focus’ team of mystery shoppers carried out 421 visits to stations; 56 on-board train checks; 250 calls to train operators’ telesales operations; and 150 website checks.

Anthony Smith, Passenger Focus chief executive, said; “Generally passengers are getting accurate advice, given out by helpful and courteous staff – this is good news. This generally positive picture is marred by the fact that many passengers are having to queue to buy tickets at stations, particularly the bigger stations, for much longer than they should do. When trying to beat queues by telephoning to buy tickets, passengers are often left hanging on the telephone – sometimes for absurdly long times.”

During the off-peak, almost half (48%) of passengers at the largest stations have to queue for longer than the industry’s guidance of three minutes. At the weekend 34% of passengers queue for more than three minutes. During peak hours, more than one in ten passengers, (11%), has to queue for longer that the rail industry’s guidance of five minutes or less during peak times.

When telephoning for information, of those tested GNER was the only telesales centre to provide information to every caller. However, 40% of callers to GNER, 32% of callers to South West Trains, 28% of callers to Virgin Trains; 22% of callers to First Great Western and 10% of callers to TransPennine Express waited for over ten minutes to speak to an operator

Smith continued; “What a strange way to treat potential customers. People keen to pay up and use the railways are either being left standing in queues or are locked into listening to endless ‘muzak’ while waiting for the phone to be answered.”

Using the internet to get information or to book tickets is a generally positive experience. However, our research suggests that, in most cases, passengers can be sure of getting the best deal and can avoid add-on charges, such as the £2 fee the thetrainline.co.uk charges for using a credit card, by ordering tickets directly from the train companies' websites.

Smith continued; “Passenger Focus advice is that if you’re trying to book tickets for long-distance travel, start looking at the train operators’ own websites. For example, GNER offers a 10% discount on its lowest advance fares when passengers book on www.gner.co.uk.

“Passenger Focus’ advice to passengers is to book in advance for long-distance travel, although we found that cheap tickets were sometimes still available the day before departure. Rover tickets can save significant amounts of money for passengers making a number of long-distance journeys, our research found information provided on this to be lacking.”

With no ticket buying facilities available at some stations, some passengers have to pay their fares onboard trains. Passenger Focus research in Wales showed a mixed picture - sometimes the trains were so crowded that inspectors couldn’t get through the train to collect fares. At other times ticket inspectors didn’t appear at all. On these routes 23% of our researchers were unable to buy a ticket at all and during the weekend this rose to 58%. This may well also be the case in other areas of the country where buying tickets on trains is standard practice.

Anthony Smith commented; “Paying on the train seems to equate to free travel in some parts of the country. It is unacceptable to penalise those passengers honest enough to pay and also limits the potential for investment in services. Before hiking prices, train operating companies must collect what is due to them.”

Although queuing times at ticket machines were short, the industry must ensure that passengers using them can be confident that they are getting the best deal. In conclusion, passengers seem to be reasonably well served by the advice they are getting about rail ticket retailing. However, train operators need to respond to their potential customers and serve them quickly, especially as more train operators start to use penalty fares schemes. More resources need to be put into ticket office staff at major stations and into telesales departments.