Trainline is one of the biggest third party booking companies in the UK for train tickets which isn't actually an operator, obviously, with Expedia growing their hotel and flights empire and now offering train tickets too, competition is growing.
Trainline is one of the few train companies to charge a booking fee which I don't like, sometimes it can be as low as £0.30 or even as high as £2.50, it's worth noting the booking fees are not charged on the day of travel and they're always lower on the app for some reason. In the 21st century, with every train operator not charging a booking fee I really can't understand the need to charge one, with Trainline stating it's for maintenance of their website.
Trainline's website and app still are above average and much easier to use than many train operators websites, and most of their ticket services comes with e-tickets, which is good for the environment and also frankly for people, who can just use their phones as a ticket (or print them off at home), which helps to save time.
On a recent trip to Manchester City's away trip at Goodison Park (train booking from Manchester to Liverpool return), I had an issue with booking my tickets. The issue was with the insurance, there was an option to add insurance for £1.25 per person, with the tickets I was purchasing being "Advance" tickets, I thought that this would cover cancellations, which you'd normally have to buy an off-peak return ticket for, and there was nothing in the guidelines to say it would not, that was of course until I bought the policy and was told it wasn't a Trainline policy, it was a third party policy and all claims or cancellations must be done with a long form through them (to save £10 I spent on tickets that seems like so much work!), after learning this I was told that I could cancel with Trainline and receive my insurance money back, however I later found out I could not and I'd have to contact the third party company, which once again brought a problem as this would have to be done by telephone before I travelled, and with the opening hours of the third party company, there would be no way to contact them before I travelled as they had no email address, the Trainline advisor was very rude, uncaring and unwilling to help.
Trainline's tickets as with all train tickets in the UK are the same price, excluding the booking fee of course so this isn't a website one would use to save money, but perhaps to save time with one of the better and easier apps to use, however, the booking fee is far too high online making booking tickets much more expensive than nearly any other alternative, and the confusing insurance and awful customer service also lets Trainline down to the point I sadly feel Trainline deserves just a two-star rating. Trainline was an app I was rather fond of excluding the booking fees but mainly down to the following two reasons it seems to have lost its' way
- If you use the app to check train times they will constantly send emails and notifications "forgetting something", spamming you if you didn't buy tickets on one occasion
- The confusing insurance policy which was misleading in who the policy is from, and what it would cover
- The awful, mean and uncaring customer service.
Considering these factors, I still feel the two-star rating is slightly generous here, but as the app and website works better, and lags less than the likes of National Rail and Transpennine Express, the latter being the train company my journey was with, they have just scraped that. read more
