I frequently travel between Harrogate and either York or Leeds using the Northern services (and the occasional LNER) and for the short simple trip I normally buy an M ticket on the day on the Trainline app. There’s no fees on the day and I find the app easier to use than some others.
Yesterday I went to purchase a Harrogate to Leeds CDR and was only offered an E ticket. This was perfectly ok for me and I went ahead. I thought little more of it until I saw a social media conversation today.
Someone else has done a similar thing with a different journey and has asked Trainline why they aren’t doing M tickets any more (I assume they were limiting the request to their flow). Trainline immediately passed on all responsibility to the TOC (coincidentally perhaps) Northern in this case saying that it is them that defines what tickets can and cannot be used on services and was nothing to do with them.
Northern replied afterwards to say that it was Trainline that decided what tickets to offer and was nothing to do with them.
I don’t want to turn it into another passing the buck discussion of which we have lots of (and I’m guilty of contributing to) but I’d be interested to know :
A) why has this changed? It matters not to me but it did to them for some reason.
B) why is there confusion in this scenario as to who is responsible and who therefore is right and wrong.
Northern don’t appear to scan the barcodes (maybe they have no facilities to do this) so would have no way of telling if multiple copies of tickets exist and as it’s not an M ticket there’s no activation necessary. They’d be reliant on gatelines rejecting tickets and prompt database updating if that is even a thing yet.
Yesterday I went to purchase a Harrogate to Leeds CDR and was only offered an E ticket. This was perfectly ok for me and I went ahead. I thought little more of it until I saw a social media conversation today.
Someone else has done a similar thing with a different journey and has asked Trainline why they aren’t doing M tickets any more (I assume they were limiting the request to their flow). Trainline immediately passed on all responsibility to the TOC (coincidentally perhaps) Northern in this case saying that it is them that defines what tickets can and cannot be used on services and was nothing to do with them.
Northern replied afterwards to say that it was Trainline that decided what tickets to offer and was nothing to do with them.
I don’t want to turn it into another passing the buck discussion of which we have lots of (and I’m guilty of contributing to) but I’d be interested to know :
A) why has this changed? It matters not to me but it did to them for some reason.
B) why is there confusion in this scenario as to who is responsible and who therefore is right and wrong.
Northern don’t appear to scan the barcodes (maybe they have no facilities to do this) so would have no way of telling if multiple copies of tickets exist and as it’s not an M ticket there’s no activation necessary. They’d be reliant on gatelines rejecting tickets and prompt database updating if that is even a thing yet.