Tuesday January 3rd bank holiday and the 16-25 railcard minimum fare

[Butts]

Usual rule applies then, buy a single from the TVM to Haymarket/Brunstane/Musselburgh (as appropriate to the direction you're travelling) and part-exchange on board with the guard, citing the rule that the full range of tickets was not available at the station where you boarded.

We are talking about Edinburgh Waverley here , one of the biggest mainline stations in the UK - if they can't get it right who can ?

 

[MidnightFlyer]

We are talking about Edinburgh Waverley here , one of the biggest mainline stations in the UK - if they can't get it right who can ?

The size of the station counts for nothing, some of the best booking office staf I have met have been at smaller, single shift booking offices.

 

[Butts]

The size of the station counts for nothing, some of the best booking office clerks I have met have been at smaller suingle shift booking offices.

But surely you put your best staff in your "premier outlets"

 

[MidnightFlyer]

But surely you put your best staff in your "premier outlets"

No... You can't pick and chose where staff go on a large scale, if the member of staff at Keith is good, he won't get transferred to Glasgow Queen St, but they can move around within certain areas...

 

[ainsworth74]

But surely you put your best staff in your "premier outlets"

Or you need so many staff you can't afford to be choosy over who works there.

 

[route:oxford]

Go to one of the newspapers... They might give you £50 or so for the story.

Out of interest, does Scotrail pay their staff extra for working on the bank holiday? Would make an even better "double standards" article for the "Scottish Daily Mail"...

"Fat Cat Railworkers rake in Bank Holiday Bonuses whilst passengers refused Bank Holiday Fares"...

 

[Butts]

Go to one of the newspapers... They might give you £50 or so for the story.

Out of interest, does Scotrail pay their staff extra for working on the bank holiday? Would make an even better "double standards" article for the "Scottish Daily Mail"...

"Fat Cat Railworkers rake in Bank Holiday Bonuses whilst passengers refused Bank Holiday Fares"...

I'd want at least £5000 for exclusive media rights

As for The Scottish Daily Mail it is the other face of "Janus" in it's editorials compared to it's Southern counterpart.

You often see articles bemoaning the fact Engalnd subsidises Scotland in various ways that are strangely absent from the Scottish Edition

 

[michael769]

We are talking about Edinburgh Waverley here , one of the biggest mainline stations in the UK - if they can't get it right who can ?

Well given they are unable to sell annual seasons that work properly in the gates in the same station......

 

[Butts]

Quick Update....

Have today received a letter from East Coast admitting that the ticket office was wrong and should have given me the railcard discount as 3rd January was a Bank Holiday in Scotland and the 10am watershed should not have applied.

They are (under seperate cover) going to send me a cheque for £1.92......

Tight wads or what .....no compo
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Just thinking about it I wonder how many other people were denied the appropriate discount and didn't even realise it ?

 

[First class]

Quick Update....

Have today received a letter from East Coast admitting that the ticket office was wrong and should have given me the railcard discount as 3rd January was a Bank Holiday in Scotland and the 10am watershed should not have applied.

They are (under seperate cover) going to send me a cheque for £1.92......

Tight wads or what .....no compo
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Just thinking about it I wonder how many other people were denied the appropriate discount and didn't even realise it ?

I'm sorry, but this culture of wanting "compensation" for everything is highly unethical and in some cases downright fraudulent.

You were out of pocket by £1.92, wrongly by all accounts.

East Coast have no doubt apologised for this, and have correctly refunded the difference in fares paid.

What further "compensation" would you like? Unfortunately, I, as a UK taxpayer, would definitely protest at a public company such as East Coast providing compensation for a small and probably genuine mistake that caused a £2 loss to an individual for a couple of weeks.

How are they "tight wads"?

How can anyone complain further when a company investigates an complaint, identifies a training issue, apologies and writes you a letter back with the fare difference to follow?? Sounds pretty thorough and reasonable to me.

It is also company policy for several TOCs to explicitly refuse to provide any compensation for complaints about staff. The reason for this is to prevent people from falsely accusing staff in order to gain a couple of vouchers. This practice unfortunately blights the Customer Service depts.

 

[Paul Kelly]

There's a lot more than a staff training issue here. ATOC-accredited computer systems were offering the wrong fares. Having something genuinely done about these sorts of problems to make sure they wouldn't happen again would be much more satisfying to see than getting some compensation IMHO.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

....

They are (under seperate cover) going to send me a cheque for £1.92......

....

£1.92?????

I think you've been had.

Assuming you bought the £5.80 single, the discounted fare is £3.85, a difference of £1.95.

 

[swt_passenger]

+1.

The only loss incurred was the original overpayment.

The loss has been made good 100%, where's the problem?

Perhaps there was a bit of 'whiplash' when 'shocked' by the unexpectedly high fare? :roll:

 

[tony_mac]

I'm sorry, but this culture of wanting "compensation" for everything is highly unethical and in some cases downright fraudulent.

You obviously don't recognise his unique posting style - it wasn't a serious claim for compensation.

However, these things are quite one sided.
If it's the passenger's mistake, they probably have to pay a £10 'Administration' fee, or possibly a penalty-fare or even risk being reported for prosecution.

If the train company makes a mistake, they only have to refund people who complain and apologise? Banks can get large fines for this sort of thing, what happens to train companies?
It doesn't give them much incentive to get it right, does it?.....

Just thinking about it I wonder how many other people were denied the appropriate discount and didn't even realise it ?

 

[First class]

There's a lot more than a staff training issue here. ATOC-accredited computer systems were offering the wrong fares. Having something genuinely done about these sorts of problems to make sure they wouldn't happen again would be much more satisfying to see than getting some compensation IMHO.

I can assure you that it is an operator error, rather than TIS error. (STAR, I believe in EDB).

The problem is down to one member of staff who made a mistake by believing he was right to issue that specific ticket. The machine was perfectly capable of issuing the ticket.

I also suspect that this is an extremely isolated incident. East Coast probably never considered the difference in England/Scottish bank holidays. ATOC probably didn't either.

East Coast are now aware of the problem, courtesy of your complaint. If it happens again, then there is a problem, until then, it was a unique problem which was resolved fairly quickly.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Glad they have admitted they were wrong.
But as already mentioned, there are two important issues here.
How many other people were caught out with this and do not realise it?
And why should the ToC's be allowed to get away with just paying the difference, when quite often the ToC's impose stupid admin charges, threaten penalty fares and legal proceedings etc etc when someone makes a genuine mistake? Another case of the railways having it their own way all the time IMO.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

....However, these things are quite one sided.
If it's the passenger's mistake, they probably have to pay a £10 'Administration' fee, or possibly a penalty-fare or even risk being reported for prosecution.

If the train company makes a mistake, they only have to refund people who complain and apologise?.....

So you are comparing one party going to the other party to ask to change the contract, to a party not holding up part of it's contract and the other party having to notice and make an effort to confront them about it? Not really the same thing is it?

 

[Paul Kelly]

The only reason the OP had cause to go to the East Coast booking office was that both the Scotrail and Virgin websites were also refusing to sell him the ticket at the correct price. So it's not just an issue with East Coast, and it's unfair simply to blame operator error. Also unlikely to be an isolated incident; Scottish and English bank holidays fail to coincide at least twice year.

 

[First class]

The only reason the OP had cause to go to the East Coast booking office was that both the Scotrail and Virgin websites were also refusing to sell him the ticket at the correct price. So it's not just an issue with East Coast, and it's unfair simply to blame operator error. Also unlikely to be an isolated incident; Scottish and English bank holidays fail to coincide at least twice year.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but under ATOC Impartial Retail Guides, TOCs are allowed to promote and specifically restrict certain products as they deem appropriate. They do not have any obligation to offer the full range of fares and can discriminate on this basis. The sites don't offer incorrect or invalid fares, but do occasionally remove fares that are also valid. Somethings this is commercial, sometimes it is an oversight, sometimes a software problem.

I also believe the actual query the software would use would be more complex than you would imagine.

A query would have to filter all Scottish stations separately, then apply the fares policy to Scotland-only flows.

However, the difficulty is calculating the correct fare when the journey starts in Scotland and goes over the border before 10am. What results should it return?

The reality of it is that at least the ATOS engine can be set to identify what date constitutes a bank holiday. Unfortunately, as I understand, it cannot be set to restrict that geographically. Everything has limitations.

I do not believe the problem is significant enough to justify additional expenditure for something that happens twice a year. Some tickets can't be purchased online and this is sadly one of them.

I am not anti-customer, but the online sites are well within regulations.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

I can assure you that it is an operator error, rather than TIS error. (STAR, I believe in EDB).

The problem is down to one member of staff who made a mistake by believing he was right to issue that specific ticket. The machine was perfectly capable of issuing the ticket....

I'm glad you think it is so clear cut.

Yes, a ticket office machine can issue any ticket at any time of the day. It could easily be told to issue an Off-Peak ticket at 5am on a Monday, but that doesn't automatically make the ticket valid at 5am on the very same Monday, does it?

If a ticket machine gives a ticket price the clerk has to decide if that fare is correct or not, the machine should not be wrong though, infact in many cases it is correct, so why should the clerk instinctively think it is wrong? If the clerk has been issuing tickets into England all morning, it may not even occur to them to check it.

....I also suspect that this is an extremely isolated incident. East Coast probably never considered the difference in England/Scottish bank holidays. ATOC probably didn't either. East Coast are now aware of the problem, courtesy of your complaint. If it happens again, then there is a problem, until then, it was a unique problem which was resolved fairly quickly.

Wait, so the clerk is definately in the wrong for not noticing, but the TOC and ATOC are fine because they 'probably never considered it'? Even though EC run services between Scottish stations and Scotrail and EC are part of ATOC?

So far I see no evidence that only this one machine, operated by this one clerk, had given the wrong fare. If one machine had not been programmed to notice the bank holiday, it is a fair bet that many others across the country had the same issue. If the clerk personally decided the fare given by the Tis was wrong and overrode it to give a higher fare, then maybe you'd have a point.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Correct me if I'm wrong, but under ATOC Impartial Retail Guides, TOCs are allowed to promote and specifically restrict certain products as they deem appropriate. They do not have any obligation to offer the full range of fares and can discriminate on this basis. The sites don't offer incorrect or invalid fares, but do occasionally remove fares that are also valid. Somethings this is commercial, sometimes it is an oversight, sometimes a software problem....

The websites don't have to be impartial, but if another website, ticket office or even telesales offer a cheaper fare, the website loses out. The fact that two websites (and a ticket office clerk) didn't offer it suggests there is more to it than just the websites deciding not to offer them.

 

[island]

I'm sorry, but this culture of wanting "compensation" for everything is highly unethical and in some cases downright fraudulent.

You were out of pocket by £1.92, wrongly by all accounts.

East Coast have no doubt apologised for this, and have correctly refunded the difference in fares paid.

What further "compensation" would you like? Unfortunately, I, as a UK taxpayer, would definitely protest at a public company such as East Coast providing compensation for a small and probably genuine mistake that caused a £2 loss to an individual for a couple of weeks.

How are they "tight wads"?

How can anyone complain further when a company investigates an complaint, identifies a training issue, apologies and writes you a letter back with the fare difference to follow?? Sounds pretty thorough and reasonable to me.

In fairness, I think given the size of the refund I think Butts ought to have been given an additional 45p in respect of postage costs, which would wipe out nearly a quarter of his rebate.

The reality of it is that at least the ATOS engine can be set to identify what date constitutes a bank holiday. Unfortunately, as I understand, it cannot be set to restrict that geographically. Everything has limitations.

That, I think, is the root of the problem. I don't think it was contemplated that the bank holidays might be different in different parts of the UK.

I hope people make sure they are not given a discount if buying a ticket from Edinburgh to Kirkcaldy with Y-P early on Easter Monday, which is not a bank holiday in Scotland!

 

[tony_mac]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but under ATOC Impartial Retail Guides, TOCs are allowed to promote and specifically restrict certain products as they deem appropriate

Is there a reference for this?

the online sites are well within regulations.

Can you tell use what regulations?

Certainly, Passenger Focus are of the opinion that websites should be impartial unless they clearly state otherwise.

The reality of it is that at least the ATOS engine can be set to identify what date constitutes a bank holiday. Unfortunately, as I understand, it cannot be set to restrict that geographically. Everything has limitations.

The issue of Bank Holidays is hardly new - why wasn't it in the original specification? They have also had several years to fix it.

 

[jon0844]

I've never asked for compensation, but when I won my appeal for an incorrectly issued PF, I didn't get any extra to cover the postage. So, technically speaking, I still ended up out of pocket.

The only time I've had anything is when FCC gave me £50 in vouchers following my detention for a three hour interview under caution - that was totally wrong. They chose to do that, which given they didn't refund me for a ticket the RPI made me buy (costing nearly £25) it meant that I only 'made' £25 after losing half a day at work that - thankfully - didn't see me docked any pay.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

....A query would have to filter all Scottish stations separately, then apply the fares policy to Scotland-only flows.

However, the difficulty is calculating the correct fare when the journey starts in Scotland and goes over the border before 10am. What results should it return?

The reality of it is that at least the ATOS engine can be set to identify what date constitutes a bank holiday. Unfortunately, as I understand, it cannot be set to restrict that geographically. Everything has limitations.

I do not believe the problem is significant enough to justify additional expenditure for something that happens twice a year. Some tickets can't be purchased online and this is sadly one of them....

I've been having a think and I'm sure they can descriminate geographically, they'd have to for Senior Railcard and Network Railcard discounts (not forgetting that there are more local Railcards).

As for it being worth the financial outlay for two days? well, maybe, maybe not.

 

[John @ home]

I hope people make sure they are not given a discount if buying a ticket from Edinburgh to Kirkcaldy with Y-P early on Easter Monday, which is not a bank holiday in Scotland!

It's more complicated than that.

Since Easter 1996 the Scottish clearing banks have harmonised the days on which they are closed with those in England and Wales, and are therefore closed on Easter Monday. Fare time restrictions use Bank Holidays, so a Edinburgh - Kirkcaldy (or Kirkcaldy - Edinburgh) £9 CDR is valid all day on Easter Monday rather than not before 0900.

But Railcard time restrictions use Public Holidays and in Scotland Public Holidays are set by the 32 local authorities. See Public and Bank holidays in Scotland.

The City of Edinburgh Council have decided that Easter Monday is a Public Holiday, so no minimum Y-P Railcard fare applies on that day, and a Edinburgh - Kirkcaldy CDR with a 16-25 Railcard costs £5.95 all day.

On the other hand, Fife Council have decided that Easter Monday is not a Public Holiday, so Kirkcaldy - Edinburgh CDR should cost £9 until 0959 and £5.95 with a 16-25 Railcard from 1000.

I very much doubt if the railway industry have the systems to enable this to happen. It would be much easier to replace "Public" with "Bank" in the 16-25 Railcard Terms & Conditions.

 

[island]

It would be easier again to make reference to them as "English bank holidays", I'd wager.

 

[clagmonster]

The City of Edinburgh Council have decided that Easter Monday is a Public Holiday, so no minimum Y-P Railcard fare applies on that day, and a Edinburgh - Kirkcaldy CDR with a 16-25 Railcard costs £5.95 all day.

On the other hand, Fife Council have decided that Easter Monday is not a Public Holiday, so Kirkcaldy - Edinburgh CDR should cost £9 until 0959 and £5.95 with a 16-25 Railcard from 1000.

Bus surely, if you boardes a train at Edinburgh before 10:00 that entered Fife before 10:00, whilst the train is in Fife the £5.95 ticket would be invalid, so the CDR would cost £9.00.

 

[Butts]

Thanks to all of you for your input.

At the time of purchasing the ticket I stated that it was a Bank Holiday and the seller unsure turned to his colleague who had to confirm that fact to him.

He then stated that "Only during July and August" can you use the YP before 10am on weekdays for fares under the threshold - eh what about Bank Holidays.

As someone correctly identified I spent money on a First Class Stamp to send my letter to East Coast in Plymouth. The reason I had to do this was due to an error on their part.

When I eventually receive my recompence (up to 14 days) I will still be down the cost of the stamp.

I would have knocked out a letter of apology with permission on it to use the First Class Lounge at Edinburgh on it's production on one occasion. Bang problem sorted. I would have been quite happy with this - I don't expect a free First Class ticket to anywhere in the UK.

 

[WillPS]

Thanks to all of you for your input.

At the time of purchasing the ticket I stated that it was a Bank Holiday and the seller unsure turned to his colleague who had to confirm that fact to him.

He then stated that "Only during July and August" can you use the YP before 10am on weekdays for fares under the threshold - eh what about Bank Holidays.

As someone correctly identified I spent money on a First Class Stamp to send my letter to East Coast in Plymouth. The reason I had to do this was due to an error on their part.

When I eventually receive my recompence (up to 14 days) I will still be down the cost of the stamp.

I would have knocked out a letter of apology with permission on it to use the First Class Lounge at Edinburgh on it's production on one occasion. Bang problem sorted. I would have been quite happy with this - I don't expect a free First Class ticket to anywhere in the UK.

http://www.eastcoast.co.uk/about-us/contact/

East Coast Customer Relations

Freepost RSRJ-LJCX-GHST
Plymouth
PL4 6AB

 

[Butts]

http://www.eastcoast.co.uk/about-us/contact/

East Coast Customer Relations

Freepost RSRJ-LJCX-GHST
Plymouth
PL4 6AB

Whoops - that's slightly different to the one I had

Even so when I was a manager if we had made a mistake I would have enclosed a small something in addition to the recompence just by way of apology to engender goodwill. A satisfied customer tells far fewer people than a disgruntled one.