A cheat with free Renfe season tickets accidentally saturates trains from several provinces

Regular users of Renfe Media Distancia from different provinces are having problems these days while formalizing their travels (ie booking seats). In this process through the applicationtrains with usually empty seats seem full up to ten days before your departure. The avalanche of travelers has an explanation: Free government-initiated subscriptions are not only attracting more demand, they are also They let you book a place and not come without any penalty. For this reason, there are those who book seats on a few trains to get on the one that suits them best and to block any vacant seats. Total, It won’t cost you a euro.

“There are only five seats left for the train from Madrid to Salamanca next Friday,” said Alejandro Rosende, spokesman for the Salamanca Train Association. “What’s the problem? free subscriptions don’t have much control. You can reserve a seat and not use it. The tip is very nice, but it should be seen in the medium term. It is preferable to have more frequencies and reasonable prices than to have four months free.”

Several Galician travelers described similar situations on social networks. As someone traveling on the road from Ourense to Santiago this Monday explains in a conversation with EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA: Renfe staff had already detected the cheat and so commented with other travelers. “They said: There are people who book up to four different times because they don’t know when they’ll be back in the afternoon. That’s great.” This route is covered by Avant trains (medium distance at high speed) but is included in free passes. The Avant Cuenca-Madrid route has similar problems, but it’s not free and only 50% off. While the Cuenca AVE Users Association blamed Renfe’s malicious intent to “sell Avant places at a discount, almost ten times more with single tickets”, Renfe assured that this was an incident. In the system. Travelers from other places in Spain, for example Malaga anyone pamplonaAddress Renfe on Twitter by mentioning similar incidents.

Under normal circumstances, Renfe frequent medium-distance travelers buy tickets for ten or thirty to fifty trips and formalize them as needed. If your plans change and you can’t catch a booked trip, you have two options: either cancel and change reservation (up to fifteen to thirty minutes in advance) or lose money. “A ticket for ten trips between Madrid and Salamanca costs 160 euros. The trip costs 16 euros,” Rosende continues. “Whatever it costs, you won’t throw it away”. Now that this ride is free, the booking traveler doesn’t care if his attitude loses even if it hurts others.

“A frequent traveler would never think to leave the train in an empty seat,” says Iria Méndez, spokesperson for the Media Distancia Galicia platform. These recurring users also use the so-called ‘polymorphization’ – for example, booking several return trips to catch a train or another depending on when they leave work – but they always know that. an uncanceled reservation will cost them money.

Renfe sources consulted by this newspaper, He is aware of the picares and claims to have “analyzed the measures to be taken”. “The measure aims to reward repeat travelers and encourage the use of public transport,” the same sources say. “Abuse of free titles harms the rest of the citizenslimits their mobility”. Renfe does not detail what these measures might consist of.

Same trick to get your bail back

The government, through the Ministry of Transport (Mitma), approved incentives to “promote the use of public transport” last August. On the one hand, there are discounts of 30% on city and intercity transport tickets – up to 50% if the Autonomous Community does its part. On the other hand, Free commuter and medium distance subscriptions (including the Madrid-Salamanca and Ourense-A Coruña corridors), inspired by the nine-euro ticket for the entire network launched by Germany this summer and 50% discount at mid range high speed.

To benefit frequent travelers, Mitma has limited the free ride to journeys between two specific stations. At least 16 trips during the four-month period for which the season ticket is valid and with one bail deposit (Ten Euros for Cercanías and twenty Euros for Media Distancia). The deposit is automatically refunded from December 31, when the promotion ends, provided the user makes these 16 trips.

But since it doesn’t penalize reserving and not using a seat, users and transportation experts consulted for fear that someone would. Use the same trick to get your bail back. So: buy the free pass, make the deposit, take the chosen trip once, and then formalize fifteen more trips for Renfe to think it’s done and return the deposit. The solution can go through the reviewers to check for fraud, guessing these experts.

“There was a time when they even wanted your DNI to take the train, but that slowed down the entry,” Rosende recalls. “They’d better detail the checks, because at the end measures taken very quickly, little time and this is not 100 percent documented”.

application, hanging

The Media Distancia Galicia platform has documented other issues that add to the problems of ‘ghost’ users. Most are tech. “Web and app get stuck while making formalizations. Tickets made in multiformalization don’t download. Random tickets don’t come in triplicate when asking for a copy in the mail. It doesn’t appear to be available in the app. in some cases the usual schedules. The turnstiles in A Coruña don’t read the bills”, sums up Méndez, Galicia’ In a letter to the Renfe administration in “Ultimately, we are experiencing cancellation and replacement issues regarding unused ticket reservations. Web and app not registering cancellations correctly“.

Méndez adds that demand has increased “hugely” due to the free travel hook, and the trains are full. “The ten or twenty reserved places that are not occupied are not solving the excessive demand. Last Friday, Monbús launched a large number of booster buses,” he says.

The bus company of Santiago had to put in more than twenty extra buses in the face of an “unexpected avalanche of passengers from the railroad” to destinations such as Ferrol, Vigo, Ourense or Lalín. Company sources put the number of people transported that day at 2,700, double their estimate, taking into account that intercity bus services are also discounted. “Users came to the train, they were not allowed to board, and they came to us in waves”name these resources.

Despite the problems caused by the measure, Mitma celebrated this Tuesday More than one million free subscriptions since August 24, 77% of these were for Cercanías and the rest for Media Distancia.

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