Avios drops mytrainticket.co.uk for traingenius.com – is it a better deal?

I’m not sure exactly when this happened, but Avios (ie avios.com) has dropped mytrainticket.co.uk as their exclusive train ticket booking partner.  They are now working with traingenius.com

It was back in May that I last wrote about mytrainticket.  Whilst you earned 2 Avios per £1 spent, I was not impressed by the pretty tacky fees that mytrainticket.co.uk added on:

• Postage was £1.70 (free to collect at station)
• Credit card fee was 2.9%
• There was a £1 booking fee

Let’s compare that with East Coast Trains, which charges (for tickets on ANY train company) £1 for postage, 0% card fee and £0 booking fee.  East Coast also has its own very good loyalty scheme, East Coast Rewards.  redspottedhanky.com has no fees at all, even for postage.

Suddenly those mytrainticket.co.uk Avios don’t look as ‘free’ as they were ….

I am not, therefore, sad to see the back of mytrainticket.co.uk.  But is traingenius.com any better?

The answer seems to be ‘not really’:

Here are their fees:

• Postage is £1.70 (free to collect at station)
• Credit card fee is 2%
• There is a £1 booking fee

Put simply – unless you are spending someone elses money – there is no logical reason to use traingenius.  Even accounting for the value of the Avios points, you will get a better deal by booking on the East Coast Trains website and earning East Coast Rewards points on top.

The other option is redspottedhanky.com which charges NO postage fees (saving £1 over East Coast), NO card fees and NO booking fee.  Sounds better than 2 Avios per £1 and a fist full of fees ….

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