Incorrect printed tickets: Advice?

Dvsh · 20 Mar 2018

Hello all,

I have a quick question regarding incorrectly printed tickets and was hoping someone could advise.

I printed an off-peak return at Liverpool for a journey I regularly make on Transpennine. The tickets are always: 2xTicket, 2xSeat Reservations, 1xReceipt.

I realized just as I was about to make the return journey that I had 2 collection receipts, 2 seat reservations but only the outward main ticket. One collection receipt didn’t match my other tickets, but the printing time is shown as 12.01 and the others at 12.02.

When I entered the station to print tickets, I saw from across the station that there was nobody in front of me at the machine I used, and it would take at least a minute to walk from the entrance to the machine. I am also 99% sure this was not a ticket that somebody had accidentally forgot (see print times).

End result was having to buy a new return ticket, but I am confident i ensured no tickets were left behind myself at the original printing and the machine was empty before I printed. Any advice appreciated.

Many thanks.

RailUK Forums

Gareth Marston · 20 Mar 2018

Almost impossible to prove anything one way or another.

On the Cambrian we just accept it's plausible if someone says the TVM didn't print everything if you have everything else. I've had occasions when I've put the booking office stamp and some hand written notes on people's confirmation print outs authorising them to travel in the same circumstances you describe.

Did you approach staff straight away?

Dvsh · 20 Mar 2018

Unfortunately I only realised the return ticket was missing when I was already at the station about to return, the staff there just told me to contact Lime Street. This journey is usually 5 tickets, so I had naïvely assumed that 5 printed tickets = 5 correctly printed tickets without checking each one. I suppose that will teach me to check all the individual tickets next time...!

Bletchleyite · 20 Mar 2018

This really is unacceptably bad in terms of how often it happens, both reported on here and by people I know (in his case he had about 30 seconds to resolve it, fortunately the missing ticket was the outward and the guard believed him).

We'd be asking serious questions if cash machines were incorrectly issuing this often. And train tickets are worth more than a typical pocket cash withdrawal in many cases these days.

whhistle · 21 Mar 2018

The majority of things like this I see are simply user error.

The ticket starts printing and for some reason, people, instead of waiting for it to finish, will try and gather the tickets as they're printed. Thus increasing the risk of missing some tickets.

I believe some Virgin stations lock their ticket machines while printing.
But then people, being people again, bash the flap and break it. You can stick a sign up saying "LOCKED WHILE PRINTING" but people don't read. Then blame the machine when "it didn't print". Thus increasing the risk of missing some tickets.

The Virgin machines also print a receipt on a ticket. This comes last. This confirms how many tickets were printed. If the machine fails, it won't print the receipt and the staff know there's been a machine failure.

However, there are occasions when tickets get stuck in the machine itself.
This has two effects:
1) Tickets continue to get stuck and collect in the machine.
2) Tickets that were stuck are pushed down by others, which then get stuck themselves.
The latter causing a lot of confusion.

If tickets are left out in the cold, they're more likely to warp and get stuck. BUt it's not that common in the grand scheme of tickets that are printed from the machine.

najaB · 21 Mar 2018

Bletchleyite said:
This really is unacceptably bad in terms of how often it happens...

I'd be interested in actual statistics on mis-prints as opposed to user errors (e.g. not waiting until all the coupons have printed).

LowLevel · 21 Mar 2018

whhistle said:
The majority of things like this I see are simply user error.

The ticket starts printing and for some reason, people, instead of waiting for it to finish, will try and gather the tickets as they're printed. Thus increasing the risk of missing some tickets.

I believe some Virgin stations lock their ticket machines while printing.
But then people, being people again, bash the flap and break it. You can stick a sign up saying "LOCKED WHILE PRINTING" but people don't read. Then blame the machine when "it didn't print". Thus increasing the risk of missing some tickets.

The Virgin machines also print a receipt on a ticket. This comes last. This confirms how many tickets were printed. If the machine fails, it won't print the receipt and the staff know there's been a machine failure.

However, there are occasions when tickets get stuck in the machine itself.
This has two effects:
1) Tickets continue to get stuck and collect in the machine.
2) Tickets that were stuck are pushed down by others, which then get stuck themselves.
The latter causing a lot of confusion.

If tickets are left out in the cold, they're more likely to warp and get stuck. BUt it's not that common in the grand scheme of tickets that are printed from the machine.

We recently had a period where we were told to accept anything that may or may not have come from an entire batch of our S&B machines which were routinely jamming things inside themselves to fall out hours later!

Gareth Marston · 21 Mar 2018

I have to admit Ive come across more lost/dropped parts of tickets in the Booking Office/platforms/on trains than have had people complain that their TVM didn't print all their tickets.

I'm with whhistle most of these cases are probably user error ones. However if someone clutching about a dozen tickets including seat reservations with one of the tickets for a multi person journey missing complains "one ticket didn't print" - i don't think there out to defraud the railway and discretion is the sensible option.

Shrewbly · 21 Mar 2018

My wife has had a couple of TVM failures recently. Each time the machine froze for several minutes at the point the tickets should have printed, then returned to the initial screen. Assuming that the payment had failed, she re-entered the ticket details and the payment card and then the correct tickets were produced. Subsequently she found that the payment had been taken twice in each case.

Later when the ticket office was open she asked what to do when the machine went wrong, and was told they couldn't do anything except sell another ticket. They also said the machine had probably failed because she had added Plusbus to her tickets!

It isn't proving easy to get the money refunded - she's having to submit written claims backed up by bank statements to try and get the money back.

rs101 · 21 Mar 2018

Purchased a couple of returns from Marks Tey Station recently and received 5 bits of paper - 2 pairs of returns, plus a card receipt. Unfortunately, that was dated an hour earlier and was for someone else's transaction. Mine was definitely stuck somewhere inside.

randyrippley · 22 Mar 2018

Shrewbly said:
...............It isn't proving easy to get the money refunded - she's having to submit written claims backed up by bank statements to try and get the money back.

That sounds like its time to consider a small claims court action

robbeech · 22 Mar 2018

Given the amount of people trying to defraud the railway is exponentially higher than those in a situation where a ticket has failed to print its a difficult call for the toc to make. However, it appears the general rule of thumb is, if it doesn’t print, tough, buy it again. This is of course unacceptable and some ticket offices will help and some guards will give you the benefit of the doubt but for the most part, it’s another failing on behalf of the railway that they get away with.
The comment stating that a machine will log an error of something fails to print is (with respect) utter rubbish. I will do everything I can to avoid collecting a ticket (particularly a high value one) from a machine at an unmanned station.

Nick66 · 23 Mar 2018

Would there be grounds for a chargeback, or a s75 claim if more than £100? The merchant hasn’t delivered what was paid for.

najaB · 23 Mar 2018

robbeech said:
The comment stating that a machine will log an error of something fails to print is (with respect) utter rubbish.

If it fails to print, it *will* log an error. What doesn't create an error is a successfully printed ticket that gets stuck in the chute.

Shrewbly · 23 Mar 2018

randyrippley said:
That sounds like its time to consider a small claims court action

Maybe that's next but we'll wait and see what response we get first. I'll report back on what the outcome is - it's around £14 lost each time. As far as I am aware the TVM never starts trying to print, so it's not that the tickets are stuck in the chute, it seems that the card processing part of the machine isn't always talking to the rest of the machine.

njr001 · 23 Mar 2018

in the last year I estimate problems collecting tickets from a TVM occur about 25% of the time. A machine at Marylebone just printed a single ticket marked VOID Re-entering the transaction would not issue tickets, waited a while, retried transaction again, not valid walked away from machine returned minutes later with a member of staff to find that tickets had finally being printed.

Last Saturday at Watford Junction tried obtain tickets using the credit card I always use for booking tickets, card not recognised, however very helpful booking office took reference numbers from emails on my phone and printed tickets.

robbeech · 23 Mar 2018

najaB said:
If it fails to print, it *will* log an error. What doesn't create an error is a successfully printed ticket that gets stuck in the chute.

Or prints in such bad quality that it is completely unusable and could be anything, this also won't bring up an error. The new(er) machines at Worksop print very poorly as if the ink is almost out, but have done so since installation. One is considerably worse than the other, i had a ticket the other day that was barely legible and this was flagged by a guard but accepted as i had the other part with me and between the 2 it was legible enough to make out where the ticket was and the date. This is a permanent problem on these machines.

Whilst i've had minimal problems collecting from these machines or the older one on the other platform, the ones on the Robinhood line have been a 100%!!! failure rate of some sort for me since installation just over a year ago.

ForTheLoveOf · 23 Mar 2018

robbeech said:
the ink is almost out

Most tickets here are printed using thermal printing - i.e. the ticket will be 'burned' to show the appropriate text. As such, there is therefore no ink that can run out. A more likely issue could be a blockage of or damage to the thermal printing head.

robbeech · 23 Mar 2018

ForTheLoveOf said:
Most tickets here are printed using thermal printing - i.e. the ticket will be 'burned' to show the appropriate text. As such, there is therefore no ink that can run out. A more likely issue could be a blockage of or damage to the thermal printing head.

Well, whichever way they print they aren't up to the job / require attention which for a brand new machine is........ well actually it is expected isn't it.

najaB · 23 Mar 2018

robbeech said:
Well, whichever way they print they aren't up to the job / require attention which for a brand new machine is........ well actually it is expected isn't it.

The head just needs cleaning .

londonbridge · 23 Mar 2018

Slightly o/t, I nearly got caught out this morning when I went to collect an advance ticket, was expecting two coupons as usual but the machine only printed one coupon and the collection receipt. A good look, however, revealed that the collection receipt said 'one coupon', and the ticket had all the journey details including the time of the specific train booked and seat reserved. When did they do away with the seperate reservation coupon, or does it depend on which machine you collect from as to whether you get one coupon or two (I collected it at a Southern station).

causton · 24 Mar 2018

londonbridge said:
When did they do away with the seperate reservation coupon

Quite a while now! Must be at least a year or two...

londonbridge said:
or does it depend on which machine you collect from as to whether you get one coupon or two (I collected it at a Southern station).

Yes. It can also depend on the type of ticket (e.g. Virgin Seat Sale ones tend not to print as the new format) but it is being slowly rolled out everywhere.

robbeech · 24 Mar 2018

najaB said:
The head just needs cleaning .

Is this not an automated process?
It seems that these machines all need their heads cleaning, all the time. At least it’s good to know it’s easily fixable given they’re brand new.

Shrewbly · 6 May 2018

OK - it was a long time ago, but I did promise to give the outcome... West Midlands Railway have agreed to refund two failed ticket machine purchases (the money was taken, the TVMs hung for 5 minutes, then went through some sort of reset without making any attempt to issue any tickets - same thing happened on two different machines on two different dates). Good news, but it's taken some perseverance and considerable time to sort out - nearly 3 months start to finish - and presumably it wasn't just us who were affected. Surely TVMs must have some sort of in built audit trail that would make this sort of problem easy to sort out?

najaB · 6 May 2018

Shrewbly said:
Surely TVMs must have some sort of in built audit trail that would make this sort of problem easy to sort out?

They should do. I would've thought it would be pretty easy to reconcile the POS transaction log with the ticket log and realise theres a difference (more transactions than tickets).

Chew Chew · 7 May 2018

I'd only ever read of failure to print on this forum.

Had never experienced it myself or known anyone that had until it happened to me about 2 weeks ago

I bought tickets online for Aberdeen to Dunfermline Town splitting at Inverkeithing for late in May and went into the station to pick them up. On printing the outward Aberdeen to Inverkeithing didn't drop out of the machine.

Went into the ticket office to speak to staff the following day and what really peeved me off was the complete insistence on the part of the staff that it must have been an error at my end. I got the "It shows on the computer as being printed therefore you must have left it behind" response. Absolutely no admission on their part that there is the potential for things going wrong with the machine.

After about 5 minutes of a Mexican standoff, the queue getting longer, with the staff member telling me I made an error and me responding that I hadn't they eventually advised me to email customer service with pictures of the tickets and coupons that did fall.

End result was I received a letter on Saturday with RTVs so I can buy another ticket. I'm lucky that I'll stand my ground but how many people would just have accepted it and bought another ticket?

Bletchleyite · 7 May 2018

It amazes me the arrogance of the TOCs in this regard, particularly given that this is by no means a UK only issue - DB have an issue with tickets not dropping to the point that they have a well-rehearsed process of talking people through printing a timetable to push them through. (Very very rarely does one get stuck and not get pushed through by the next one).

UK TVMs can't do that, but maybe there should be a way, involving pressing enough buttons that the scallies won't just dump all the tickets on the floor, to print a void ticket to do that?

I suppose "always request a card receipt" is a good rule when buying on the day because that means one more ticket being issued to push things through (except on some TVMs where there's a till receipt printer).

robbeech · 7 May 2018

Bletchleyite said:
It amazes me the arrogance of the TOCs in this regard, particularly given that this is by no means a UK only issue

Surely you’re not genuinely surprised?
We are talking about the novel concept that the railway can make an error here.

Bletchleyite · 7 May 2018

robbeech said:
Surely you’re not genuinely surprised?
We are talking about the novel concept that the railway can make an error here.

It’s more than an error. It’s a serious design flaw.

Incorrect printed tickets: Advice?

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