Rail ticket price claims in Trainline adverts found to be ‘misleading’
Adverts for online train ticket retailer Trainline featuring claims about its prices were "misleading", a watchdog has said.
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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled a TV ad with a robot on a fictional planet stating: "You won't find cheaper same-day tickets anywhere else" breached broadcasting rules.
It made the same assessment in relation to a radio ad featuring a man engaged in an archaeological dig, claiming: "We won't find cheaper tickets anywhere else".
Trainline told the watchdog the ads related to its Best Price Guarantee (BPG), through which it pledges to refund the difference if a customer uses its app to buy a ticket on the day of travel and finds a lower price elsewhere.
The company believed the ads were clear this was a "price promise", rather than a lowest price guaranteed offer. But the ASA upheld a complaint that they were misleading.
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It assessed that consumers would understand the ads' claims to mean Trainline "offered train tickets for the lowest possible price compared to other providers, and therefore it was unnecessary to look for cheaper tickets elsewhere".
It added that the "fantastical scenarios depicted in the ads" suggested the characters were unable to find tickets cheaper than Trainline's "even though they had gone to extraordinary lengths".
Trainline told the watchdog that on routes where it offers SplitSave technology - which splits journeys into multiple legs to reduce the overall fare - it is confident it is cheaper than train operators.
But the company was unable to provide supporting data or visual evidence of price monitoring as it is "built into their platform", the ASA said.
The ads, which were broadcast in late 2024 and early 2025, have stopped running.
Trainline told the ASA it had no plans to re-air either of the ads, and future ads would not feature the claim "you won't find cheaper".
Train fares campaigner George Eckton, who made the complaint, said: "The ASA has made clear: when companies like Trainline say things like 'won't find cheaper', people should be able to trust those words absolutely.
"When words don't match the promise - as has been the case here - passengers are going to be left confused and disappointed."
A Trainline spokesperson said: "Our Best Price Guarantee remains a price promise for our app customers that if the same ticket is found cheaper elsewhere for same-day travel, we will simply refund the difference.
"We have removed these two ads and, going forward, we are updating the wording of our adverts to avoid any doubt that this is our price promise.
"We are proud to be the UK's most popular and trusted travel app for buying rail tickets for our 18 million active customers."
Trainline makes most of its money by taking a commission on ticket sales for rail and coach journeys.
The company has grown quickly in recent years as a way to help customers find tickets in a rail system with scores of operators, sometimes running services on the same route.
It reported an £86 million operating profit for the year to February 28, up 56% compared with the previous year, as it benefited from the growing popularity of digital tickets and fewer rail strikes.
It made £5.9 billion from selling tickets, 12% up from the year before, mainly driven by fast sales growth in the UK and expansion in European countries.
Shares in the company have fallen by more than a third since the start of the year, amid worries that the Government's proposed simplification of the train ticketing system to make it more consumer-friendly could hurt Trainline's dominant position in the market.
