Booked my super advance train ticket to dad and jean’s last night, only to realise that 31st Jan is the IT Department Christmas Party (cheapskates + management disinterest => January festivities) so the plan to spend the first weekend in Feb at Dinedor was a no go. Oscillated between saying sod it to the party, and rescheduling weekend with pops, finally settling on the latter. Checked that the following weekend was OK with dad and Jean – no earlier options being available due to their jetset lifestyle (off to see Kate and Warwick in the Cayman Islands) and bought another £30 ticket on thetrainline.
And then I went to look up what the procedure is these days for refunds, only to discover that they charge £7.50 cancellation administration fee, whereas if I’d changed my ticket details the charge is only £5 (which is what I was expecting). That pisses me off. OK, I’ll concede that half the annoyance is that I didn’t check first, but evenso….. I’d say it’s a disguised penalty for cancelling rather than an admin cost, seeing as when the issue a revised ticket you have to send the previous one in to be cancelled before they send you your new one.