NATIONAL Express coach passengers in Powys who complained they were paying double the fares of people in Aberystwyth to get to London have been promised prices will change.

Travellers getting on at both Newtown and Welshpool in Powys had to pay £80 for a return trip to London. However, passengers boarding the coach 60 miles earlier at Aberystwyth paid just £35 for the journey.

National Express said prices were based on demand but agreed to lower some fares.

The company’s 409 service leaves Aberystwyth every day at 7.55am on its way to London. It stops off at places like Newtown and Welshpool before arriving in the city at 3pm.

Aberystwyth is 250 miles away from London Victoria Bus Station. Newtown is 200 miles away and Welshpool 190 miles.

So passenger Carole Thomas, from Trehafren, was surprised to discover she was paying more for a shorter journey if she got on at Newtown.

She tells BBC Wales’ X-Ray programme tonight at 7.30pm: “I have to go down [to London] to see my mum because she’s had a stroke, she’s in a home, and to see my dad’s grave.

“When they said it was going to be £80 I nearly fell on the floor.”

She was even more annoyed when her husband Graham discovered that people getting on the same bus at Aberystwyth paid a lot less.

Margaret Thomas, who gets on the coach in Welshpool, was also confused by the price difference and asked National Express to explain.

“They said it’s the volume of people getting on in Welshpool and Newtown... Maybe just one person,” she told X-Ray. “But the bus is already coming from Aberystwyth. I just don’t understand.”

National Express’s Conditions of Carriage also forbids passengers from buying the cheaper Aberystwyth to London ticket and getting on at a later stop.

Prof Stuart Cole, a transport expert at the University of South Wales, said while passengers might think the pricing policy was unfair, the company needed to make a profit.

He told the programme: “Aberystwyth is quite a different market to Newtown. Aberystwyth is a student market in the main, so they are time rich, cash poor, they’re very price sensitive, it’s a very big market, a very important market and the company wouldn’t want to lose it to the competition which is there from other coach companies and also from the railways.”

National Express said it sets ticket prices according to demand - not mileage or the time of day. It said this helps it make best use of the capacity on its coaches and keep its prices competitive.

But after looking again at the routes highlighted by passengers, National Express has now reduced their ‘lowest available fare’ from Newtown to London to match the price from Aberystwyth.

However, it is not cutting fares from Welshpool.