LNER increases weekend first by £10
May 5, 2019 | 2:11 pm
#1
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LNER increases weekend first by £10
LNER, the rail operator between London and Scotland along the East Coast route, has increased their weekend first fares by £10. It is now either £25 or £35 rather than £15 or £25.
There's still a cut down first class service on a weekend with no hot food or alcohol offered.
Personally I'd prefer they scrapped weekend first and offer a consistent 7 days a week service. Unless other operators has also increased their prices at the same time this now makes LNER the most expensive operator to upgrade on a weekend.
On a weekday you can bid for upgrades starting from £5 and the weekday service includes hot food all day and alcohol after 11am.
There's still a cut down first class service on a weekend with no hot food or alcohol offered.
Personally I'd prefer they scrapped weekend first and offer a consistent 7 days a week service. Unless other operators has also increased their prices at the same time this now makes LNER the most expensive operator to upgrade on a weekend.
On a weekday you can bid for upgrades starting from £5 and the weekday service includes hot food all day and alcohol after 11am.
May 5, 2019 | 5:05 pm
#3
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I wonder if this is in preparation for their new trains that have more standard class seats but fewer first class (as has been the trend lately).
May 6, 2019 | 1:14 am
#5
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are they still using seatfrog? it's been over a year since i had any email promoting use of it, last time was when virgin were still doing it. the last few promotional upgrade emails i have had have been directly from lner and inviting me to sit in first and pay the supplement (~£25 I think) directly to the on board staff.
May 6, 2019 | 5:42 am
#6
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It's a good argument to ditch weekend first and have a consistent product 7 days a week.
May 6, 2019 | 8:55 pm
#8
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interesting. I have had a few weekday journeys and no email about seatfrog for a long time. As I say its been the fixed price promotional upgrade offers direct from lner for me.
May 15, 2019 | 7:32 am
#10
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That happened well over a year ago. £10 Rugby down to London, from there up, I'm not sure when the £15 cost of upgrade stops, I suspect from Preston onwards its £25. Been that way for a while.
When they first charged me this (£15 vs £10 from Wolverhampton), they had started doing sandwich on the weekend, from just tea/coffee/snackbox. The conductor said they were going to do alcohol included in the upgrade at the weekends, but that was a long time ago and never appeared. Most of the time on a weekend you end up just going to the buffet and getting stuff from there, anyway, and nobody does the at seat service.
When they first charged me this (£15 vs £10 from Wolverhampton), they had started doing sandwich on the weekend, from just tea/coffee/snackbox. The conductor said they were going to do alcohol included in the upgrade at the weekends, but that was a long time ago and never appeared. Most of the time on a weekend you end up just going to the buffet and getting stuff from there, anyway, and nobody does the at seat service.
May 16, 2019 | 2:46 am
#12
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It does seem like the last days of Virgin West Coast. They did decent sales near Easter, mid July and just before Christmas for quite a few years. Last sale seen was July 18. All lot of the typical pre peak advances disappeared too about a year ago, getting something like a 13:23 from London became rare if impossible. I think they knew the franchise was done and they're just milking whatever out of it.