Collecting prepaid tickets at machine

[Alan White]

I bought the tickets described in this thread at SWT's website and was surprised that although it treated the purchase as one transaction it gave me three collection references, one for each ticket.

Then I went to Bracknell to collect the tickets at one of the machines. As requested, I put in the card I used, then entered one of the references. It printed the tickets for that reference then went back to the main menu. The process was repeated for the other two tickets: card in, enter ref, print, menu. It treated each ticket as though it were a completely different purchase :-x. It took ages .

I can't believe this is how it's intended to work; surely I must be doing something wrong? At the very least one reference should cover all the tickets purchased on the same transaction. Even better, when I put the card in the machine it should give me a list of all the uncollected tickets purchased with that card and alllow me to select all those I want to print now.

 

[hounddog]

That's fine if you're buying tickets for a single trip - you obviously want to pick them up at the same time. But what if you're planning a week's travel? I can imagine some people would prefer to pick up each day's tickets separately to guard against losing the lot.

 

[table38]

I can imagine some people would prefer to pick up each day's tickets separately to guard against losing the lot.

Although some people might prefer to pick them all up at the earliest opportunity to guard against random TVM failure, massive queues etc.

I'm sure that once I got all the tickets in one go; might have been with Northern, or maybe I just imagined it! Never been able to recreate whatever I did since.

 

[cool110]

I've had all my tickets under the same reference with Northern last year.

 

[Kite159]

Agreed, it isn't the best system having multiple collection reference numbers (hence I only use the SWT website when needing to book the special offer promo fares).

Compared to say FGW who gives you one reference number per order.

 

[Hadders]

I always get multiple tickets under one reference number.

 

[erk]

In my experience:

Mixing desk type sites give you one reference for all the tickets in the basket.
Trainline type sites give you one reference per journey (single or return), even if they are all in the same basket.

At one time, trainline type made a separate charge on the card for every journey, which set off all sorts of alarms in my bank's fraid detection software.

 

[Alan White]

Thanks, all.

It seems that I'm not doing something wrong, then. Except using SWT though that has other advantages, such as being able to collect the tickets from my local station, and being able to collect tickets for journeys not starting there (which I understand not all companies allow).

 

[najaB]

... and being able to collect tickets for journeys not starting there (which I understand not all companies allow).

I'm pretty sure that is possible with all booking engines. Happy to be corrected, of course.

 

[Hadders]

It doesn't matter which booking site you use or where you collect the tickets from - they're all linked.

When you purchase tickets on line it asks you where you want to collect them from (it usually defaults to your starting station) but it doesn't matter what station you select as all the machines are linked to the central database (there are some that aren't connected but I believe they're in remote areas of the north so not relevant if you're collecting tickets from a SWT station).