NXEC Buffet vouchers now valid in restaurant
 

A (mostly) positive comment about NXEC for a change, you can now use the buffet vouchers in the restaurant, so if you are travelling on one of the services that still has a restaurant you can use these vouchers to settle all or part of your bill.

So why would you do this?

There's a few reasons to do this:
- Save money (each £5 voucher costs £4)
- Pay with Amex, it's not accepted for on-board catering but the vouchers are sold as tickets where Amex is accepted
- Ease of expense claims, if you're allowed to buy a meal on the train as part of your travel policy you can buy the vouchers at the same time as the ticket so there's only one expense to claim

How to buy the vouchers?

The T&C's say there's no limit to the number of vouchers you may buy, but the NXEC booking engine limits you to two of each type of voucher per person. The vouchers are available in £5, £10 and £15 forms, meaning a maximum of £60 of vouchers can be booked per person online (cost £48) which would more than cover a decent 3-course meal and a few bottles of wine. Note, for the buffet vouchers to show up you must select an NXEC service in the booking engine even if you don't want to reserve a seat.

Using telesales or the ticket office there is no limit to what you can book and I would suggest using a multiple of only the £5 vouchers as you don't get any discount by buying the more expensive ones.

You can also buy these from NXEC fast ticket machines. You need to select "Other Stations" and type in NXEC. The vouchers should appear as an option. To buy more than one increase the number of passengers (as these are sold like tickets the number of passengers is the number of vouchers).

The vouchers are valid for 3 months.

What's the bad points?

The trains with the restaurant available on it are now severely limited but details are available on the NXEC website.

Until recently the £10 voucher was £7.50 to encourage people to buy the higher value voucher rather than buying multiples of the £5 voucher. Until recently though the voucher was only valid in the buffet, trolley and from the first class snacks menu. Some crew weren't sure whether this applied to the first class hot food offerings which replaced the restaurant on many trains. Now with the change in conditions to include all on-board catering this has been made clear.

So apart from a small price increase for the £10 voucher these changes have been positive.

I wonder if NXEC are trying to increase interest in their on-board product rather than keep the steady slide downhill. I really hope so as I've got a few trips to Leeds coming up and they're the best option for the trip. It'll also be the first time I've experienced an NXEC restaurant this year because I'm travelling on one of the rare trains with a restaurant.