The Ticket Collector

NXEC tickets are a rip-off.

On the May 18th many of the UK’s Train Companies tickets will increase in price. We have been looking at the new fares and have noticed that many of National Express East Coast’s (NXEC) advance purchase tickets will just disappear and become just “advance”.

NXEC have 8 advance tickets all charged at different prices. 4 First Class singles and 4 Standard Class singles. Each of these are charged at varying levels and of course there are only so many of each available to buy on each train. Now come the 18th May there will be a ticket name change and of course NXEC are using this as an excuse to reduce the availability of each of the above tickets, forcing you to buy a more expensive ticket.

We have many visitors from Peterborough on this site so we have also compared prices with NXEC’s tickets and First Capital Connect (FCC), and came to a shocking discovery.
In one case a Peak Return from Peterborough to London Kings Cross was £80 with NXEC. It is £40 with FCC. That is 50% cheaper and if you catch the FCC express service from Peterborough there is not a lot of difference in time.

Peterborough to Kings Cross Comparison
Peak Single
NXEC £40.00 FCC £23.20

Peak Return
NXEC £80.00 FCC £40.00

Weekly Season
NXEC £139.00 FCC £112.00

Cheap Day Return
NXEC £24.60 FCC £20.00

Peak Travelcard
NXEC £85.90 FCC £46.00

Off Peak Travelcard
NXEC £27.80 FCC £25.00

Weekly Travelcard
NXEC £151.40 FCC £135.00

NXEC have refused to reply to our various Emails, which based on their past incompetent customer service, seems to be the norm.