Josh Russell

You do not need to be spending £20 to get a return ticket to London from Brighton! A day trip to the capital can cost you just £13.50, this is how..

Disclaimer - there are no tricks, slight of hand, illegal activity or rail discount cards used in this hack.

As an ongoing promotion to get more people visiting London, “British Rail” offer a ticket called the Super Off-Peak Day Return (previously known as the Price Buster!!1!one!). This ticket can only be purchased in Brighton, as it’s designed to get people to travel to London to presumably spend money on touristy things. Traveling to Brighton as a tourist, well that’s of course, unheard of! (duh)

However, it’s possible to get this same ticket in London, for the purposes of traveling to Brighton. Let me explain.

Traveling from Brighton to London to Brighton (a day return)

1. Use a “quick ticket” machine, this is important, the staff on the counter will try to up-sell you other versions
2. Select “find station” or “station a-z” and explicitly type in “London V”, this is because you’re going to London Victoria, not “London Terminals” which is pretty much everywhere (and becomes important later in the story *)
3. Select the only station you’re presented with in the results, which will be London Victoria
4. Now, on the right hand side list, select the Super Off-Peak Day Return, it’ll be £13.50
5. Done. Now of course, this can only be used off-peak, so that’s after 10am on the way out, and not between 4pm and 6pm on the way back. (or something like that, you work it out)

What’s important to remember is that the train companies, and in fact their business models, are profiting through obscurity. By this I mean that they take advantage of us by providing an awful user experience that ends up in us spending the most money. The first options we see are the most expensive, not the most economical. This is bad for several reasons, but mainly (for me, personally), is that if the trains *were* cheaper, or more people knew how to get cheap fares, then we would use the trains more, and thus not our cars. Big picture, joined up thinking guys! Come on!

Traveling the other way, London to Brighton to London (also a day return)

Now this is the fun bit. (if you enjoy watching confused people trying to work out what you’re up to)

1. This time, queue up at the counter. Yes you’re going to have to try to have a conversation with one of these people. They (usually) don’t want to help you, be prepared for questions.
2. When it’s your turn, which it will be eventually, trust me, ask the nice person for a Super Off-Peak Day Return from *Brighton* to *London. Yes, from *Brighton* to *London*.
3. Answer their questions with “yes, I know it sounds weird, and yes I know I’m already in London, I know what I’m doing. Kthx.”
4. Hopefully you’ll then be able to pay them £13.50 for your ticket, which will be a return, from Brighton to London and back to Brighton. (bear with me)
5. If you’re not now paying for your ticket right now, that may be because they’ve claimed that it’s not possible to sell you a ticket from a station that you are not at. This is not true. They can sell you a ticket from *anywhere to anywhere*.
6. To prove this, use this logic: ask them to try, if the computer doesn’t let them, then it’s not possible, and they will be proven correct! However, if it works, you get your ticket.
7. And here’s the clever bit, you’re now going to use the return half of your ticket for your outgoing journey to Brighton. And then your outgoing half of your ticket for your journey back to London. This is the bit that confuses them, they don’t life hack. What you’re essentially buying is two one-way tickets, it doesn’t matter which order you use them in.

It’s important to stand your ground, you are in the right in this situation. They just have a failure to understand the logic. What you need to impress upon them is that that is not important! Their job is to sell you a ticket.

Of course there would be no need for this hack if they played nice. Old (business 1.0, ack) school businesses need to understand that, long term, being nice is better. Simple as that. Make it obvious that the cheap tickets exist, or better still, reward us for wanting to use the train at all!

* London Victoria isn’t the same as London Terminals. If you try to buy a ticket from the ticket machines in London Victoria, they don’t allow you choose where you’re traveling from, and default to London Terminals. Clearly you are standing in London Victoria. This is why you have to queue up and explicitly ask for the ticket you want.

Tags: Geek, hack, lifehack, londontobrighton, publictransport, tickets, trains, transport, travel

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Geek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.