A savvy traveller has revealed how she cut the cost of a pricey airport train journey using a simple ticket office trick.
Almara Abgarian, 36, discovered the hack while travelling home on the Stansted Express after flying into Stansted Airport and heading into London via Tottenham Hale.
The journalist had originally planned to tap through the barriers with Apple Pay or buy a standard ticket from a machine, like she always had.
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Through a stroke of luck, every machine on the platform was taken – so she stepped into the ticket office, as reported by Whats The Jam.
She asked the clerk behind the desk if it was currently off-peak hours, when he told her to skip the machine and approach the desk, as there was a way to book the journey that instantly reduced the price.
The hack relies on “split ticketing” – where separate tickets are purchased for different sections of the same route, which can sometimes reduce the overall fare due to how rail pricing is structured.
The hack reduced the fare by around £6, without Almara having to swap trains.
“I was baffled and frankly a bit annoyed that this isn’t made more obvious to customers,” she told Whats The Jam.
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“I know about split ticketing for longer journeys but I didn’t think it would apply to an airport transfer because it feels like a ‘set’ rate.
“Stanstead Airport has some of the cheapest air fares because of Ryanair but this is often eaten up by the £40 you pay for the return train fare into the city.
“It irks me every single time and yet every single time I have no choice but to fork up the cash – unless I want to take slow bus through London traffic instead.
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“I couldn’t believe it when the clerk split the journey into two tickets and it worked out cheaper, even though I stayed on the same train the entire time.
“I love a good money hack!”
The first ticket took Almara from Stansted Airport to Stansted Mountfitchet, while the other ticket took her all the way to Tottenham Hale.
She added: “I applaud the employee for telling me this because it’s one of those life hacks everyone should know about.
“There was another passenger in the queue who also benefited from the hack and she was thrilled too.
“The UK’s economy feels pretty dire right now, so every pound saved is helpful.”
Almara, who had been visiting family in Sweden, where she is originally from, travelled home to London last week in mid-May.
She says the experience has convinced her to speak to station staff more often instead of automatically using self-service machines.
She added: “’This is why you should talk to a person, not a machine’, the clerk told me as I thanked him for the help.
“He is absolutely right.”
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