It is interesting that National Express’s tiered pricing system seems vulnerable to manipulation.
Consider the following coach journey from Cambridge to London Victoria Coach Station. From National Express’s website, we can see what times the coach stops at different stops and their respective costs. (I have just randomly fixed the date and time for this experiment.)
| Departure/Arrival Time | Stops | Cost from Cambridge |
| 06:00 | Cambridge | – |
| 06:08 | Cambridge (Trumpington) | N/A |
| 06:12 | Cambridge (Trumpington P&R) | £0.80 |
| 07:15 | London Stratford | £7.70 |
| 07:20 | London Bow | £7.70 |
| 07:25 | London Mile End | £7.70 |
| 07:35 | London Aldgate | £7.70 |
| 07:45 | London Bank | £7.70 |
| 07:55 | London Blackfriars | £7.70 |
| 08:05 | London Embankment | £7.70 |
| 08:15 | London Westminster | £7.70 |
| 08:35 | LONDON (Victoria Coach Station) | £5.00 |
From the pricing system, what stops someone from purchasing a £5 ticket to London Victoria Coach Station and alighting at London Embankment (which is nearer the city centre)? A direct ticket from Cambridge to London Embankment would have cost £7.70.
I normally see many people alighting at Embankment and there does not appear to be a good way to ensure (or enforce) that a holder of the £5 ticket does not sneak off before his designated stop.
The only issue I foresee is that the coach may not necessarily stop at all the stops if the driver’s passenger list does not have someone alighting at that stop. So anyone trying the above trick (buying a London Victoria Coach Station ticket and alighting earlier) is taking some risk.
But if you have at least 2 passengers seeking to stop at, say, London Aldgate, it seems feasible to buy one £7.70 Cambridge-Aldgate ticket and one £5 Cambridge-Victoria ticket (total cost of £12.70 instead of £15.40) and both getting off at that stop.
A more extreme variation of the above trick is to purchase a £0.80 ticket from Cambridge to Cambridge (Trumpington) and attempt to remain in the coach bound for London instead of alighting. Whoever tries this has to be brave and risk-loving! Supposing you are the only one who is expected to alight at Trumpington, the driver would expect someone to get off the coach at that stop. After all, it would be barely 10 minutes since he checked the tickets. Is it worth the risk to save £4.20? 😉
If anyone tries this above trick, please post a comment below to say whether it works! 🙂
askSGguy 