News: Fever-Tree bar opens at Edinburgh Airport, good Accor promo for its German hotels

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• Mjshort says:

  2 Jul2 July 06:44

  Virgin app wanted £1 booking fee for a collection from the station.
  I don’t think the points are worth it for a cheap journey

  • Mike Ward says:

    2 Jul2 July 07:13

    But easy to avoid the charge by using an e-ticket or printing at home?

    • John says:

      2 Jul2 July 08:32

      TVMs just need to be able to print e-tickets and then that will stop all the whiners, they can then “collect” their tickets like normal.

      Note that unlike a traditional ticket where the card or paper is the ticket, and if you lose or damage it you need a new one, an eTicket is a database record and can be printed infinite times as well as displayed on as many devices as you want.

      (An m-ticket is an inferior implementation of a ticket that must be displayed in the app where it was bought, and activated to travel, and if your phone dies so does your ticket.)

      • Nick says:

        2 Jul2 July 09:28

        E-tickets are also not available on any itinerary that involves London Underground – either a cross-London transfer or a Travelcard. I don’t agree with charging a booking fee when e-tickets are not even available to avoid it.

      • Save East Coast Rewards says:

        2 Jul2 July 20:57

        That’s how it works in Italy. If I buy a ticket from the machine the paper ticket is actually an eticket and if I scan my loyalty card that ticket will automatically appear in my app so I can use my phone, the paper ticket or even just give the PNR to the guard. If I go to the desk to change the ticket then these changes also automatically appear in the app. GB ticketing is antiquated in comparison

    • ChrisC says:

      2 Jul2 July 09:27

      Not all tickets can be issued as e-tickets though and have to be printed such as those that include one day travel cards for London.

      And when I looked booking with them last week via their app for two trips it wasn’t possible to combine them into one purchase so that would have been multiple booking fees.

      I used used avanti instead.

  • Rob says:

    2 Jul2 July 10:33

    It does but etickets are free.

• BuildBackBetter says:

  2 Jul2 July 07:24

  Why don’t these apps (Virgin, LNER) allow booking flexi tickets with e-ticket option?
  Cross country trains app is the one that works flawlessly so far, with all features.

• Charles Martel says:

  2 Jul2 July 07:35

  You can get an 8% rebate on LNER using a card linked to Airtime rewards.

• dst87 says:

  2 Jul2 July 08:10

  Seems you can’t buy tickets on Scotrail and use the e-ticket option. Makes this unappealing for journeys in Scotland due to the £1.50 fee.

  • dst87 says:

    2 Jul2 July 08:12

    For comparison, the LNER app still doesn’t let you get an e-ticket, but at least doesn’t charge you a fee to collect.

  • John says:

    2 Jul2 July 08:25

    This is because Scotrail doesn’t want to accept e-tickets on Scotrail journeys yet.

    LNER pays 70p to the operator of the TVM where you collect the tickets, but they get 70p when people booking elsewhere collect from LNER TVMs so it should square off in theory. However Virgin does not have any machines so they lose money if they let you collect for free.

    • dst87 says:

      2 Jul2 July 08:49

      But you can buy e-tickets in the Scotrail app. Albeit not ones you can save to Apple Wallet (for some reason) but you can display them in the app.

      It’s frustrating that my ticket from Larbert to London is in Apple Wallet and accepted, but I can’t buy just the Scotrail part. 🤷

  • Andrew. says:

    2 Jul2 July 08:48

    It’s difficult to tell from the picture, but I suspect you’d be better off being a member of the 50+ Club, buy direct from ScotRail and get a 20% discount.

    • dst87 says:

      2 Jul2 July 08:55

      I need a better picture, clearly. I’ll be celebrating my 35th birthday in a couple of weeks! 😂

• John says:

  2 Jul2 July 08:21

  Lner still has 10% on my amex offer

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:

    2 Jul2 July 12:38

    The LNER offer is the best one but I’m not seeing it currently. However when LNER does appear on n my Amex offers I often buy a gift evoucher so I can get the 10% off and use it in the future

    • Chrisasaurus says:

      2 Jul2 July 17:12

      Interesting. Can you park use them? Eg buy a few thousand and use in multiple txns?

      • John says:

        2 Jul2 July 20:55

        You probably trigger some fraud alerts

      • Save East Coast Rewards says:

        2 Jul2 July 21:02

        I think so. It definitely used to be possible to do that. To be sure buy two first and try it. If it’s ok then buy more

• Andrew. says:

  2 Jul2 July 09:00

  That’s a very poor rebate at 3pts/£1.

  Currently have 8% on Airtime, 8% with Virgin Money, 10pts/£ with Nectar Connect, 10% with Barclaycard, 10% with Amex, 10% with MBNA options – all with LNER.

  The biggest pest is making sure I don’t “waste” a rebate by buying the wrong ticket with the wrong card.

  • Rob says:

    2 Jul2 July 10:26

    Only a Government-run train company would deliberately lose money by giving 10% back when its gets 3-4% commission on the sale from another TOC ….

    • Save East Coast Rewards says:

      2 Jul2 July 12:41

      Avanti do it sometimes too

• Andrew. says:

  2 Jul2 July 10:39

  MBNA with Airtime and Nectar Connect is closer to 23% rebate.

  Plus 0.5% with Horizon on top.

  • janolabs says:

    7 Jul7 July 21:23

    Download the app, register and off you go! My ref is XGYPAT9H so you won’t start from zero

• Mike says:

  2 Jul2 July 11:30

  I am not that familiar with airtime rewards but hear it mentioned frequently – perhaps an article on it Rob

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