Will my mobile rail ticket deactivate?

Q For a trip from Coventry to York and back I have bought an off-peak return. It has been delivered to me as an “m-ticket” [mobile ticket] on my smartphone. I am planning to stop in Leeds for a couple of nights on the way back, but I’ve read that the return ticket will “de-activate” 24 hours after I activate it at the beginning of the journey from York. The ticket seller told me that “the ticket has to be used the day it is activated” but the National Rail website says that m-tickets have the same validity as paper tickets. Which is correct?

Peter B

A An off-peak inter-city ticket is valid right up to its expiry date, a month after the outbound trip, whether on paper or as an m-ticket. But until electronic ticketing adapts, it is an example of why a 19th-century paper ticket is better than a smartphone.

You, like me, evidently appreciate the flexibility of off-peak return tickets for inter-city journeys.

These tickets are hangovers from the old days of British Rail. For those of us with the time and flexibility to exploit them to the full, they provide outstanding value. They cost just £1 more than the corresponding off-peak single, and there are just two basic restrictions: you must avoid peak times (mostly the morning rush hour, but also the evening rush on many lines from London), and the outbound journey does not allow stopovers.

On the return leg, though, you have a month in which to stop off wherever you like between York and Coventry. You have chosen Leeds, and could add to that Wakefield, Sheffield, Chesterfield, Derby and Birmingham. Or choose one of the many other permitted routes and, for example, embrace Doncaster. In the airline world, that would be the equivalent of buying a return ticket to Athens and stopping off in Rome, Milan, Geneva and Paris at no extra charge.

Of course most passengers won’t avail of the possibilities and will simply return as swiftly as they can to their starting point. Therefore the apparent inflexibility of m-tickets is irrelevant.

Longer-term, it makes more sense to abolish these arcane tickets and simply sell tickets for each segment at the appropriate price for the distance and level of demand. It remains to be seen if the rail industry and government have the stomach to tackle fares reform. Until then, all my off-peak tickets will be paper.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder