Like many Sevenoaks commuters I renew my annual season ticket just before the fares go up. So on my way home last week, whilst waiting for a connecting service to Bat & Ball at Sevenoaks, I noticed that the booking office was not very busy and I took the opportunity to do the renewal: £3,288; I think that my first annual ticket was only about £292!

Online purchase

While waiting for my ticket I came across a leaflet inviting customers to renew their season tickets online. The downside of this is that the leaflet says that there is a delivery charge payable: Recorded Delivery £2.00, and Special (Next-Day) Delivery £6.00 or £8.00 depending on the level of compensation applicable. In addition somebody will need to be at home to take delivery of the ticket. Considering that if you use this service you are doing most of the work for Southeastern and not occupying their ticket windows at stations I would have thought that Southeastern should bear the delivery costs.

On checking on the Southeastern website (archive on 29 December) it turns out that delivery of season tickets by Recorded Delivery is “currently” free, and if you use the online service then indeed the Recorded Delivery option is indeed offered free.

On the other hand the compensation offered by Special Delivery (£500 for the £6 fee, £2500 for the £8 fee) is of little use to Southeastern annual season purchasers outside the London area – the compensation would not cover the ticket cost! It is hard to see why Southeastern could not cover the risk of loss in transit themselves – the validity of the season is tied to the photocard number entered as part of the purchase, and they could simply send replacement tickets if the originals failed to arrive quickly.

We think that this is an area where Southeastern could easily make online purchase more efficient and attractive. What have been your experiences please? Let us know here.

Taking full advantage of the Gold Card privileges

Annual season ticket holders automatically get a “Gold Card” which entitles them to discounted fares (archive on 29 December) for themselves, and up to 3 adults and up to 4 children travelling with them. The discounts apply in the “Gold Card area“.

For pay-as-you-go rail fares in the Oyster area it is important to “link” your Gold Card to your Oyster card. (Apparently Contactless Debit Cards cannot be linked in this way.) Once this is done the Oyster system automatically applies the Gold Card discount to your own travel. This has to be done each year after a new annual season ticket is purchased – the linking of the previous ticket expires with the ticket itself.

Linking the ticket and the Oyster card used to be done at Underground ticket offices. But most of those have now been closed! Nevertheless Annual Gold Cards can still be linked with Pay As You Go Oyster Cards at all Underground stations by asking the barrier staff (apparently not all the staff have the ability to do this, but if the one you speak to cannot do it they will find someone who can), So when I exited Waterloo East via Southwark Underground Station last week there were very few people about so I took the opportunity to ask the Underground staff on the barrier to update the linking of my Gold Card and Oyster Card to 31 December 2016 so that I continue to receive discounted off-peak Oyster Card fares for another year. They were very helpful, and the linking was done quickly and easily.

We would be interested to hear any other experiences about getting Gold Cards and Oyster Card links – although we hope that it will not be too long until we can use Oyster card themselves from Sevenoaks too. Please let us know.