Nicholas43
Member
- Joined
- 16 Jun 2011
- Messages
- 512
I am elderly and a worrier, and I prefer e-tickets for those very reasons. I of course don't have a printer at home (because they always go wrong and the ink costs £50 a thimble-full). But I can easily print at my public library. An e-ticket printed on an ordinary sheet of A4 paper is easier to read, and much harder to lose, than a tiny orange ticket. If I did lose it on the train, there would be a good chance that I would still be able to display the file in portable (the clue is in the name!) document format that I have downloaded to my phone. In my experience ticket inspectors are quicker at zapping the bar code on a e-ticket than they are at perusing an orange paper ticket.You don't need to queue to obtain the ticket and they are much harder to lose.
If you do print the e-ticket off (which means you don't actually need a working phone to use one) and lose that then you can just print another one off...
Collecting an orange ticket from a machine is stressful, because
1. There may be queues
2. The machine I choose may turn out to be the one that doesn't like grey credit cards on Tuesdays (or whatever)
3. The person behind me tut-tuts while I check that I have all the tickets, both ways, and all the reservations, both ways, and my receipt, and (often) the previous customer's receipt.