‘Cheap’ SNCF fares higher than normal

THE SNCF has been accused of using the holidays to bamboozle travellers – and offer “cheap” fares that are higher than the normal fare.

News website Rue89 uncovered the “deal” in amongst the Découverte Discovery fares with ticket prices for certain journeys that were higher than the everyday fare.

It looked at fares from Toulon to Bourgoin-Jallieu in Rhône-Alpes and found that the fares for ages 12-25 and over-60s were higher – the normal fare would be €82.40 while the special Discovery fare was €84.90

Discovery fares are supposed to be 25% lower than typical full fares and the website said that random checks on fares in other parts of the country found that they, too, were affected - Colmar-Dax, Limoges-Avallon and Hyères-Bourgoin.

However, it pointed to a possible source of the problem, in the last line of the conditions “The reduction does not apply on certain days.”

SNCF has said there seemed to be a bug in the software – which would be corrected.