thetrainline.com, is an online and telephone service selling tickets for travel on British train services. It was created in 1997 and online ticket sales started in 1999. thetrainline.com Ltd was formerly part of the Virgin Group and is now owned by private equity investors and management. The business has expanded significantly in the last eight years, acquiring its main online competitor Qjump from National Express Group in February 2004.[1]
Thetrainline.com website is the leading independent retailer of train tickets online, and is licensed by the Association of Train Operating Companies. Its systems are accredited by the rail industry, but it is both independent of any train operating company and impartial in that its systems search the full range of possible journeys and rail travel fares based on customer preferences (such as price or time).[2]
In addition to the online service provided direct to customers operated under its own brands thetrainline.com and Qjump, it provides the website services for 14 of the 18 UK train operating companies operating under their own brands, as well as providing a rail business travel service direct to a number of large blue chip corporations, travel management companies and travel agents. Trainline also provides a call centre service to a number of the customers referred to above.[3]
Thetrainline's main offices are in London and Edinburgh.[4]
In July 2006, Exponent Private Equity acquired TheTrainLine, for £168 million. TheTrainLine was bought from a consortium of shareholders that included the Virgin, Stagecoach and National Express transport groups.
In July 2007, thetrainline acquired Advanced Smartcard Technologies and ECEBS Ltd, signalling a new strategy to enter the smartcard market.
In 2008, thetrainline started supplying Newbury Data ND4020 rail ticket printers and self service kiosk to its corporate and travel management clients.
Thetrainline.com's main competitor (in train booking software) is Atos's WebTIS product which is used by East Coast, Chiltern, Southern and Atos's own site redspottedhanky.com.
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In August 2008 thetrainline.com launched its ticket alert service. Ticket Alert enables customers to sign up for email alerts, via thetrainline.com website, which notify them as soon as advance tickets (typically the cheaper tickets) become available for specific journeys, which the customer pre-selects.
In September 2008 thetrainline.com relaunched its website, adding a feature known as the Best Fare Finder, which allows customers to search for the cheapest fare between selected stations on a given day.[5]
In October 2009 thetrainline.com introduced their iPhone application which allows for journey planning, timetable download and basic station information. The updated version of the application which allows tickets to be purchased via an iPhone is available free from the iTunes store and was released in October 2010. Free versions of the app also exist for Blackberry, Android and other mobile devices.
thetrainline.com charges customers a £3.50 fee for using a credit card to purchase tickets. A £1 booking fee also applies to all transactions. This makes paying some level of booking fee unavoidable.[6] It is possible to buy the same tickets from the websites of the train operating companies, who in many cases do not charge a booking fee.[7]
In order to get refunds customers have to download a template from the website and send it back with the train tickets to an address in Edinburgh, customers will then get the price of the tickets refunded minus £10 for an admin fee. Many complaints have been made about tickets sent back for refund getting lost, TheTrainline refusing to acknowledge their existence, as well as the poor customer service that the company offers. One website states "We have always had problems with TheTrainLine.com and their incompetent customer service, and judging on searches on google so does the rest of the population." [8] TheTrainline.com also uses Indian call centres to handle calls about refunds.