London Midland ticket sale appears on statement as "SHIRLEY SHIRLEY"

[WillPS]

Any ideas why a ticket sold to me by a London Midland guard on Monday at Rugeley TV appears on my Amex statement as just "SHIRLEY SHIRLEY"?

Confused the hell out of me when I saw it.

 

[Rover]

I've no idea why but I wouldn't want to have to try and explain it to my wife!

 

[LexyBoy]

They can't be serious?

 

[Tetchytyke]

I'll let everyone else get the Airplane jokes out of the way.

It must be a LM thing, tickets I buy at Hemel state HEMEL HEMPSTEAD HEMEL HEMPSTEA. I assume the guards machines are based at Shirley.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

Don't call me Shirley.

 

[LexyBoy]

I've seen similar things; I presume when setting up card payment systems they get two fields to fill - organisation and location perhaps? - which in LM's case are both entered as the guard's depot.

 

[gray1404]

My recent Virgin Trains (West Coast) online transaction showed on my statement as VIRGINTRAINS.CO.UK LUXEMBOURG

I was surprised to see them as being based in Luxembourg!

 

[adrock1976]

My recent Virgin Trains (West Coast) online transaction showed on my statement as VIRGINTRAINS.CO.UK LUXEMBOURG

I was surprised to see them as being based in Luxembourg!

It's a common ploy by large organisations that they use so as to intentionally avoid paying tax in the UK.

For example, Amazon UK has it's offices based in Luxembourg for that same reason too.

 

[maniacmartin]

It's because Virgin West Coast's booking engine is run by Trainline, who moved credit card processing abroad to secure lower card processing fees.

 

[edwin_m]

One hopes DB doesn't take up this practice, otherwise we might end up with BADEN BADEN BADEN BADEN.

 

[WestCoast]

I lived in Shirley for a few months, it still makes me laugh now.

 

[Scotty]

I lived in Shirley for a few months, it still makes me laugh now.

She must've been very accommodating!