Irish Rail Cannot Add
March 23rd 2008
Rail Users Ireland today releases a report titled 'An Investigation Into Fare Calculation Practices in Irish Rail'. While Irish Rail refuse to even discuss reductions in fares or requests to defer increases the least the passenger can expect is the fare they are being charged is in fact the correct fare. Rail Users Ireland conducted an in depth study into how fares where calculated and we discovered that the fare a passenger is charged for many journeys depends on who in Irish Rail you ask, the website, ticket vending machines and customer service department frequently quoting widely differing fares.
Our in-depth study revealed numerous issues:
- The calculation procedure used for journeys from suburban to intercity destinations is unfair.
- We reveal that passengers traveling via Dublin are frequently better off to purchase two tickets since the ticketing system cannot handle through journeys as you would expect
- We highlight that passengers are being penalised for using ticket vending machines, being overcharged by up to €19.00 for single journey.
- We show that the Irish Rail website does not consistently quote accurate fares particularly where discounts exist.
- We show that Irish Rail encouraged us to break the published terms and conditions when we sought fare quotes.
- For 9 specific journeys we have presented we would be overcharged by a colossal €120.85, that’s an average of €13.42 per ticket.
The full report is available online
An appendix is available to accompany this report, containing screenshots of the Irish Rail website quoting fares, photos of ticket vending machines displaying various fares, copies of emails from Irish Rail customer services quoting fares as well as an extract from the internal Irish Rail fares manual. Download the appendix from here