A partner of a railway operator has released research which reveals it has cost people £93m to re-book new seats after missing pre-booked journeys.
Northern joined forces with Seatfrog in April to enable their customers with advance purchase tickets to benefit from greater "on the day" flexibility if their travel plans changed.
Using Seatfrog, customers are able to change their ticket up until 10 minutes before departure of their original train for another service departing the same day from just £2.50.
And Seatfrog is now aiming to make that £93m cost a thing of the past by expanding its services to other train operators following their successful partnership with Northern.
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CEO and co-founder of Seatfrog Iain Griffin said: “It’s easy to buy a cheap, advance ticket, but it’s complicated, costly and stressful to change tickets if our plans change.
“We want rail to enable life, rather than getting in the way of it.
“So, from today, we’re letting passengers swap trains and change tickets in just a couple of taps on the Seatfrog app.”
Mark Powles, commercial and customer director at Northern, said: “Our customers have been able to use the Seatfrog app for just over a month – and for those whose plans have changed, it’s proving popular.
“Advance purchase tickets offer the best prices for those who can book before the day of travel, but circumstances can and do change and it’s great that we’re now able to offer customers the chance to switch trains via Seatfrog rather than have to purchase a new ticket.”
Since launching in 2018, Seatfrog has already saved consumers more than £43m across more than 3,400 destinations. Seatfrog is available to download from the App Store and Google Play.
Northern is the second largest train operator in the UK, with more than 2,500 services a day to more than 500 stations across the North of England.
Customers who need to change their ticket should visit: https://trainswap.seatfrog.com.
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