Home Page | Purchase Privacy Policy
This page sets out the terms on which we sell rail tickets through this site. It should be read alongside the purchase privacy policy, which covers the personal data processed as part of a purchase. If you have any questions about these terms, you may contact us by e-mail on info@brfares.com. These terms were last updated on 29 June 2026.
BR Fares Ltd. is the seller of every ticket sold through this site; your contract of sale is with us. We sell as a sub-agent of Raileasy Ltd, which takes payment, issues your ticket, and operates refunds and after-sales support. Raileasy is licensed by the Rail Settlement Plan (RSP) under the Third Party Investor Licence to retail rail products. Once your ticket is issued, the contract of carriage covering your journey is between you and each of the train operating companies (TOCs) whose trains your ticket entitles you to use, on the terms of the National Rail Conditions of Travel (NRCoT).
We sell walkup rail fares — Anytime, Off-Peak, and Super Off-Peak singles and returns, as well as Day Travelcards. We do not sell Advance fares (which require a compulsory reservation at the time of purchase), nor season tickets, nor any fare that requires special validation we cannot perform (e.g. "PRIV" fares).
One fare may cover up to 25 passengers, and up to 8 fares may be combined in one basket, so a single purchase may include as many as 200 passengers.
Tickets may be bought up to a year before the date of travel. The fares for a new fares period normally become available for sale four weeks before that period begins; a ticket bought earlier than this is sold at the current price, even where the travel date falls within the later period.
Walkup fares are not tied to any specific train, but most have restrictions on which trains, days or routes they can be used; railcard discounts often add further time restrictions. We display the restriction code beside each fare in the query results, and the fare detail page (accessed by clicking on the ticket name) contains detailed conditions. The same code is also shown on the select fare page where you select passengers and date of travel, with an expandable section to show the detailed conditions. After purchase, information on restrictions is also accessible from the purchase confirmation page, and — if you have an account — in your Purchase History.
Because BR Fares does not have a journey-planner interface that picks specific trains for you, you are responsible for satisfying yourself that the fare you are buying suits your intended journey. That includes checking the fare's restrictions and any railcard-specific restrictions before you buy, and checking that the trains you intend to use will be running. This matters most for tickets bought on the day of travel. Outside the "made a mistake" window described in the Refunds section below, a same-day ticket is not normally refundable — even if you later discover that it is restricted to trains you cannot use, that your railcard is not valid at that time, or that your intended services are not running. The exception is where disruption to your intended services arose after you bought your ticket.
The information you provide when buying a ticket — your name, e-mail address, country and postcode — must be accurate, as we cannot deliver an e-ticket to an incorrect e-mail address, nor successfully complete card verification with incorrect billing details.
Trains can be retimed or cancelled between when you buy a ticket and when you travel — engineering works and short-notice timetable changes are among the most common causes. Checking train times before you set off helps you plan your actual departure. Where services have changed since you bought, the Refunds section below explains when a refund from us, or delay compensation from the TOC, may be due.
We accept all major credit and debit cards. There are no booking fees, card fees or any other charges; you pay only the price of the ticket. Rail fares in Great Britain are zero-rated for VAT under the Value Added Tax Act 1994, so no VAT is added to the prices we display.
Payment is taken by Raileasy using Braintree (part of PayPal). Card details are entered directly into a Braintree form and are never accessible to us. We require Braintree to confirm that the payment has been authenticated via 3D Secure (or equivalent) before the purchase completes; this authentication transfers liability for any subsequent fraud-related dispute from us to your card issuer.
The fares we display are based on industry data we receive from RSP under the terms of the RSP Data Licence; the sale itself is made on the basis of Raileasy's copy of this data which it has received from RSP independently. In the great majority of cases the two are identical, but occasionally — for example because the two datasets are refreshed at different moments — the fare you selected may no longer be available to sell, or its price may have changed. We check this when you reach the checkout page, before payment is taken; if there is a discrepancy, or if a price has been displayed in obvious error, the purchase will not proceed.
Tickets may be issued as an E-ticket, or for collection at the station (Ticket on Departure, or ToD). The available method depends on the fare and the stations involved, and is shown before you buy. Some fares — currently including cross-London fares and Travelcards — are available only as ToD.
E-ticket: immediately after purchase we send your e-tickets to the e-mail address you gave at checkout, in PDF, Apple Wallet and Google Wallet formats; any of these is valid. If you create a BR Fares account — which is as simple as setting a password at the end of your purchase — your e-tickets also remain available at any time from the Purchase History section of the site, so you do not need to keep the original e-mail to use them later. You are responsible for being able to display your e-ticket when asked to.
Ticket on Departure: your confirmation e-mail includes an 8-character booking reference. This is also viewable at any time in the Purchase History section of the site. At most stations you enter this booking reference at a self-service ticket machine to print your tickets; at smaller stations that have a booking office but no machine, you present the reference at the booking office instead. Not every station has ToD facilities — you can collect from any station that does.
For a large group, an E-ticket is the better choice wherever the fare offers one: self-service ticket machines are not designed to print tickets in large quantity, and can be very slow to do so. As a safeguard, we do not offer ToD for any booking that would require more than 99 physical ticket coupons to be printed — a single ticket is one coupon, a return two.
Walkup fares are refundable up to and including the day before travel, subject to a small admin fee. Once your ticket becomes valid for travel, a refund is available only if you abandoned your journey due to disruption that arose after the time of purchase. The table below sets out the situations in which a refund may be possible, the deadline for requesting it, and how.
| Situation | Refund | Time limit |
|---|---|---|
| You realise a mistake shortly after buying | Full refund, no admin fee | 1 hour from purchase (15 minutes for same-day travel) |
| How: "Void and Refund" button in your purchase summary | ||
| Before the day of travel | Refund less an admin fee of up to £5 per booking (scale below) | Until 23:59 on the day before the outward travel date |
| How: "Request Refund" button in your purchase summary, or refunds.brfares.com | ||
| A train you intended to use was cancelled, delayed or rescheduled after you bought your ticket | Single: 100%. Return: 100% if outward travel is abandoned; 50% if only the return is abandoned. No admin fee. | Within 28 days of the intended travel date |
| How: "Request Refund" button in your purchase summary, or refunds.brfares.com | ||
| You completed your journey, with or without delay | No refund from us. If you were delayed, you may be entitled to compensation from the TOC that ran the affected service. | For compensation: within 28 days of completing your journey |
| How: Contact the relevant TOC. See NRCoT Condition 33. | ||
Under Condition 30 of the NRCoT, an abandoned-journey refund is due when a train you intended to use is cancelled, delayed or rescheduled after you bought your ticket, and you decide as a result either not to travel, or, having started your journey, to abandon it and return to your point of origin.
For a return ticket, abandoning the outward journey means the whole ticket is no longer useful, so the refund is for the full fare. If you have already made the outward journey and abandon the return because of later disruption, the refund is for the unused return half.
If you travel but arrive late, your claim is for compensation, not a refund. This is a matter between you and the TOC that ran the affected service; the minimum amounts payable when you arrive 60 minutes or more late are set out in Condition 33 of the NRCoT. The two routes are mutually exclusive: if you take the abandoned-journey refund route from us, you cannot also claim delay compensation from the TOC for the same journey.
Where automated refund is not available — for example because the booking has been partly cancelled (with some passengers still travelling), or because a previous refund has already been processed or requested — please contact us at support@brfares.com.
Admin fee scale. Where the £5 admin fee applies (the "Before the day of travel" row above), it is calculated against the value of the booking, with a reduction for low-value bookings and a minimum of £1.25:
| Booking value | Admin fee |
|---|---|
| Over £10 | £5 |
| £2.50 to £10 | Half the booking value |
| £1.30 to £2.45 | £1.25 |
| £1.25 or under | Non-refundable |
We do not sell seat reservations. Compulsory reservations are not required for walkup tickets on most trains — a notable exception being sleeper trains. If you would like to reserve a seat for a particular train you will need to do so directly with the TOC you intend to travel with, or at a staffed station booking office.
Other on-train matters — including cycles, luggage, accompanying animals, and accessibility assistance — are governed by the NRCoT and by the policies of the individual TOCs you travel with.
A BR Fares account is optional; you can buy tickets without one. With an account, though, your e-tickets and booking references remain available indefinitely from a single Purchase History page, refunds can be requested and tracked from the same place, and your stored billing details (and, if you choose, a saved payment method) make repeat purchases take only seconds. To create an account, after completing a purchase you set a password for the e-mail address you used at checkout. You are signed in to the new account immediately, and can log in again on future visits.
Your account stores the billing details you provided (name, e-mail address, country and postcode). You may choose to have your payment method saved at Braintree for re-use; we never see your full card details, only a limited identifier such as the card type, last four digits and expiry date. You can add, view and remove saved payment methods at any time from the checkout page.
When you log in, a session cookie keeps you authenticated for 24 hours, or 60 days if you select "remember me". You are responsible for keeping your password secure and for protecting access to any device on which you remain logged in. You can delete your account, and all data we hold for it, at any time by contacting info@brfares.com.
We may suspend or close an account if we have reasonable grounds to believe it has been used fraudulently, accessed by someone other than the account holder, or used in breach of these terms. Where possible, we will notify you by e-mail.
We provide our service with reasonable care and skill. We take care to present fares, validity, restrictions and other displayed information accurately, but cannot guarantee that it is correct or current at every moment.
We are not liable for any failure or delay in providing our service that is due to causes beyond our reasonable control.
Where we are liable for any failure to provide our service properly, our liability to you is limited to the amount you paid us for the ticket(s) concerned. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits any liability that cannot be excluded or limited by law, and these terms do not affect your statutory rights as a consumer under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 or other consumer protection legislation.
These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. You and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
If any provision of these terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in force.
A person who is not a party to these terms has no right to enforce any provision of them under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
We may change these terms from time to time — for example to reflect the range of fares and products we offer. The version in force at the time you complete a purchase applies to that purchase. For changes that affect existing accounts, we will notify the account holder by e-mail.