CrossCountry demonstrates "astonishing contempt for fare-paying passengers"

The Phoenix said:

E Tickets should be in a pdf version not a screenshot

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E-tickets can be shown in any format, so long as the barcode can be scanned and the ticket details identified. You yourself have said later in the same post that you don't have to present a PDF!

The Phoenix said:

screenshots are normally sent from person to person in order to avoid the railfares

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Perhaps among some circles, but, if I may engage in a stereotypes, I doubt many septuagenarians are engaging in e-ticket fare avoidance. But it is of no relevance whatsoever what a particular practice is commonly used as (e.g. one might suggest the same about refunds - that a lot of refund claim are fraudulent). The only thing that is relevant is whether, in this particular case, there has been wrongdoing.

The Phoenix said:

and this passenger has clearly not read the information on the presenting of the ticket.

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A baseless suggestion and one that, again, is irrelevant. There is nothing anywhere in the NRCoT or elsewhere that indicates that screenshots of e-tickets are unacceptable.

The Phoenix said:

etickets are emailed as a PDF attachment to you, meaning you’ll need a mobile device that can open PDFs and has internet access to receive the email. You can use them in one of the following ways –

• Open the PDF attachment and show the ticket on your mobile device.
• Print the eticket.
• Download the eticket on our app.
• Download and show the eticket in your Apple Wallet if you are using an Apple Wallet enabled Apple device – there’ll be a live link in the email we send you.

An eticket can only be used by one customer for one valid journey and it’s a criminal offence to amend and/or reproduce an eticket for fraudulent use. If two passengers show the same eticket for travel, they’ll could both be treated as invalid. You’re responsible for any fraudulent use of your eticket

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I don't know where you've copied that from but it is totally irrelevant and adds nothing. It says nothing about screenshots.

The Phoenix said:

If the passenger did not agree with the prosecution why pay to settle before court

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Because for many people they do not want to risk the stress and potential costs of going to Court, or they may not even have the means to engage a solicitor. The system is unbelievably biased towards train companies in this regard - it is almost always the easiest option to pay a "bribe" they offer, rather than to fight injustices properly.

The Phoenix said:

and why go to the press

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Because perhaps they were at the end of their tether and wanted some justice? Are you saying that it's somehow wrong that the person in question went to the press?

The Phoenix said:

surely this is something that they should have fought in court if they believed they were in the right.

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There are people out there, and I will certainly admit to being one of them, who are happy to have their day in Court to show a train company up as the fool they too often are. But most people are very afraid of Court - they haven't been involved in the Court process before (at most perhaps as a victim or a jurist, guided through the process). It is an unbelievably biased system and the TOCs are abusing it on a daily basis.

The Phoenix said:

I note that the TOC have said that they were correct in reporting the matter or are all TOCS going to accept that anyone who does not comply with the rules can do as they please without penalty.

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It is in question whether the passenger broke any rules at all (that depending on whether the barcode was actually readable or whether the passenger could instead give a clear screenshot). Given this, it is hardly appropriate to penalise the passenger, much less so in view of the fact that there is no suggestion anywhere that they were intending to avoid any fare, and the fact that they had already been inconvenienced by a failing by the rail industry (the train cancellation).

The Phoenix said:

The real issue is the lack of clarity within the terms and conditions I can find only one TOC who states that Screenshots are not permitted.

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Any such conditions would have to be clearly advertised as a term of the contract, e.g. in the NRCoT or the retailer conditions of sale. No retailer does that as far as I'm aware. The policies of particular TOCs bear no relevance on it (unless they are perhaps suggesting they are more lenient than they are obliged to be).

The Phoenix said:

So what is really needed is better clarity within the terms and conditions.

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Not really - what is needed is for the rail industry to start recognising who's actually the paying customer here, and for the regulators to start making examples of TOCs like CrossCountry that engage in tens or hundreds of unjust prosecutions. Next stop after that, decriminalisation and the abolition of the corrupt practice that is private prosecutions.

ForTheLoveOf said:

Perhaps among some circles, but, if I may engage in a stereotypes, I doubt many septuagenarians are engaging in e-ticket fare avoidance.

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Also worth considering, if someone has the simple technical knowledge to take a screenshot then forward it on so someone could miss use it, it's not a hop skip and a jump to say they would also be able to simply forward on the original pdf instead,

What the tocs need to be doing is scanning every single barcode/qr code/Aztec code that way the frauds would be caught out as it would show up as already being used, rather than just saying you cant use a screenshot as that can simply be circumvented

Heap loads of bad press for the TOC for what gain in bullying an elderly passenger?

farleigh said:

Just read the whole article.

This really is astonishing and frankly disgusting.

Only an idiot could defend this current state of affairs.

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And it took less than 10 hours for the first defender to appear

Is it the consensus that a screenshot of an e-ticket is OK?

I'm still unclear and might sometimes take a screenshot on a second phone if my first phone has low battery.

TIL isn't interested at all in their responsibilities towards rail customers (ie passengers).

I find this quote on their website (under the section re-fare recovery and protection) quite telling.....

"Using TIL can allow this activity to be separated from the client's brand."

CrossCountry do act with astonishing contempt towards their customers, by their use of TIL's ill thought out services. I am glad someone in the industry has the guts to call them out on it.

Bletchleyite said:

TOCs are clearly misusing them on a massive scale.

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I think that this is absolutely the case.

Western Sunset said:

TIL isn't interested at all in their responsibilities towards rail customers (ie passengers).

I find this quote on their website (under the section re-fare recovery and protection) quite telling.....

"Using TIL can allow this activity to be separated from the client's brand."

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Well, I hope that little doozey isn't in thier contact.
Pretty safe to say that they've faild there I think.

AnkleBoots said:

Is it the consensus that a screenshot of an e-ticket is OK?

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Yes, it is the consensus that a screenshot of an e-ticket is perfectly OK.

Yorkie, in particular, has said so again and again. I completely agree.

Further, the Rail Delivery Group is quoted at the end of the original article as saying so. They also included the caveat that anyone doing so might need to take care when doing so to ensure that the screenshot copy is a faithful reproduction.

As long as it's readable, the job of the technology deployed by the railway is to read and record it and to ensure that the ticket is being used properly. It doesn't matter how many "copies" of the code exist or in what format as long as they can be read by equipment deployed at stations or on trains.

I showed the bar code on my Apple Watch last Thursday on Virgin Trains and it was perfectly acceptable. I admit I didn't know if it would work and I had my paper backup anyway just in case, but it wasn't needed. But my only doubt about its use was because I wasn't sure whether or not the resolution of the Aztec code on the watch display was good enough for the reader technology deployed on the train, which in fact it was.

Bletchleyite said:

.......[a]nd ScotRail, who basically can't use them anyway due to the difficulty in bringing private prosecutions under Scottish law, seem to cope without.

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Fare evasion is rife on ScotRail services. Especially on the local Central Belt services. Previously we had a much more "robust" unofficial system in that you were put off the train, with "help" if required. This evasion was almost exclusively carried out by the "jaikie" element but our middling classes have now joined in on the act with Smartcard & flexi pass abuse - this alone causes a significant revenue loss. The ScotRail system is no panacea.

Howardh said:

My head's spinning now; didn't know there was a difference. And if there was wouldn't know which is which.

Have we made the situation far more complicated than it needs to be? If I buy something online I get a conformation e-mail which acts as a receipt. Why can't that be used by the railways, is it because it can't be read by a reader (although it could bey a human)?

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A receipt is a proof of purchase; not the actual ticket. It's no different from buying anything else online - if you bought an item from (say) Amazon, you would get a receipt too, but this is not the item that you purchased.

All that said, I do entirely agree with the sentiment on here. eTickets are actually very simple - all that the passenger needs is a scannable barcode. It doesn't matter what format it is carried in, so long as it can be scanned. The scanning of the barcode is the check for ticket validity (and via a central database, to see whether the ticket has been cancelled, or has been scanned elsewhere). The non-barcode elements are for customer reassurance really / in the event that the TOC does not have a scanner to hand.

alistairlees said:

A receipt is a proof of purchase; not the actual ticket. It's no different from buying anything else online - if you bought an item from (say) Amazon, you would get a receipt too, but this is not the item that you purchased.

All that said, I do entirely agree with the sentiment on here. eTickets are actually very simple - all that the passenger needs is a scannable barcode. It doesn't matter what format it is carried in, so long as it can be scanned. The scanning of the barcode is the check for ticket validity (and via a central database, to see whether the ticket has been cancelled, or has been scanned elsewhere). The non-barcode elements are for customer reassurance really / in the event that the TOC does not have a scanner to hand.

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The thing is, a ticket is also, in a way, a receipt. It is a receipt inasmuch as it is not the goods or services you have paid for, it is merely proof that you have paid for the services. So really a train ticket collection receipt is a receipt to say that you've received your receipt

ForTheLoveOf said:

The thing is, a ticket is also, in a way, a receipt. It is a receipt inasmuch as it is not the goods or services you have paid for, it is merely proof that you have paid for the services.

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No. A ticket shows that you are entitled to receive the service. Think about a staff pass - at least of the type I had 30 years ago as a graduate trainee. I didn't pay for it, so it wasn't a receipt for anything. But it was a ticket, in that I couldn't travel (without paying a further fare) without it.

Fawkes Cat said:

No. A ticket shows that you are entitled to receive the service. Think about a staff pass - at least of the type I had 30 years ago as a graduate trainee. I didn't pay for it, so it wasn't a receipt for anything. But it was a ticket, in that I couldn't travel (without paying a further fare) without it.

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For most passengers, who've paid for their ticket, the distinction between the document that proves that you've paid for permission to travel, and the document that formally proves that you have that permission to travel, is a bit arbitrary. When buying a physical ticket at a station, yes, the physical limitations of the cardstock mean that the receipt needs to be separate. For something sent by email, there's no obvious reason to a customer why the booking confirmation shouldn't be acceptable proof of permission to travel. After all, your booking confirmation proves to an airline that you have permission to travel, or to a hotel that you have a room booked.

Morally - if not legally - if the railway can't satisfy itself that a customer with proof of payment (and very likely an itinerary!) is entitled to travel, then that's the railway's problem. Unfortunately the accountants and lawyers who infest railway (and most other) management believe that any minor procedural error should be penalised to the full extent permissible.

And with the current lack of rail capacity, who can blame them? They very nearly got the passenger in this case to pay twice for her journey. As it was, she got treated like a criminal and still had to pay for the privilege. That might very well put her off of rail travel - but since there's no incentive to relieve overcrowding, another passenger will take her place, and they don't lose money.

RLBH said:

And with the current lack of rail capacity, who can blame them? They very nearly got the passenger in this case to pay twice for her journey. As it was, she got treated like a criminal and still had to pay for the privilege. That might very well put her off of rail travel - but since there's no incentive to relieve overcrowding, another passenger will take her place, and they don't lose money.

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That's the "Ryanair model" - if you hack one off, another one is waiting in the wings. As it were.

Western Sunset said:

I find this quote on their website (under the section re-fare recovery and protection) quite telling.....

"Using TIL can allow this activity to be separated from the client's brand."

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Here is the link to the source:
http://transportinvestigations.co.uk/our-services/revenue-protection/fare-recovery-prosecutions/ and a screenshot is attached.

Yes it's true that train companies use TIL in part because they think it will transfer at least some of the reputational damage to TIL and obviously TIL won't care about reputation, at least not from a rail passengers perspective!

A year or so ago an employee of XC told me they were appalled at the way their customers were being treated and said that he felt it would take a high profile case for the company to realise how poor TIL are. Obviously I can't say much more on that for confidentiality reasons (and it's up to each individual if they wish to take me on my word for that ).

I know of a customer who only got TIL off their back when they asked the retailer to back them up.

I know of another (who I believe @Adam Williams might have met) who paid a four figure sum to a solicitor to get TIL to drop their case.

And these were with perfectly valid tickets.

Unfortunately I cannot go into exact details with the cases I know of but suffice to say I have seen substantial evidence of extreme wrongdoing by TIL.

I see they offer "consultancy" but, given the evidence I've seen, I wouldn't trust them to get anything right.

Lousy website - amused to note that the telephone link links to "tel:0123456789"

I used to work for XC and always found it to be a good, conscientious employer with a generally good ethos for looking after the passenger.

Nonetheless, the Revenue Protection department was always tasked with a Judge Dredd style approach which often felt completely at odds with what many other people in the company were trying to do. I'm not surprised they use TIL, and even less surprised that TIL have acted with such contempt in this case. This is an egregious case of wrongfully pursuing a paying customer.

The point of e-tickets is they get scanned along the journey, meaning duplicates can be reconciled and misuse becomes instantly obvious. There is no suggestion that the original complainant did anything wrong at all.

alistairlees said:

and via a central database, to see whether the ticket has been cancelled, or has been scanned elsewhere

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As an aside, such a central database would need to store exactly where (at least to the accuracy of the previous and next stations on a train) and when a ticket was previously scanned, as with most tickets it's perfectly permissible to change trains at any point along the route and there are plenty of legitimate reasons to do so; to purchase refreshment, use a lavatory, to switch to a less crowded train, etc.

However, since on-train PIS systems regularly fail to accurately reflect where a train currently is (or even where it's going), I have significant doubts that a ticket scanner could do so with any greater degree of accuracy. This would, of course, lead to plenty of spurious allegations of wrongdoing.

mallard said:

However, since on-train PIS systems regularly fail to accurately reflect where a train currently is (or even where it's going), I have significant doubts that a ticket scanner could do so with any greater degree of accuracy. This would, of course, lead to plenty of spurious allegations of wrongdoing.

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And that information is not visible to the passenger. It should be (just as a physical stamp or clip is), by entering your ticket number online somewhere and with an HTML link on the e-ticket.

RLBH said:

For something sent by email, there's no obvious reason to a customer why the booking confirmation shouldn't be acceptable proof of permission to travel.

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Other than, of course, the fact that they usually prominently say "This is not your ticket" or similar.

najaB said:

Other than, of course, the fact that they usually prominently say "This is not your ticket" or similar.

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Which is only necessary because in reality, they confirm which trains you're travelling on and that you've paid for them.

A ticket confirms which trains you're travelling on and that you've paid for them.

If both are arriving by email, and at the same time, why shouldn't they be the same email? That's not obvious to a passenger, and will make people feel like the railway is out to get them.

RLBH said:

Which is only necessary because in reality, they confirm which trains you're travelling on and that you've paid for them.

A ticket confirms which trains you're travelling on and that you've paid for them.

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In some cases. In many others the booking confirmation email only confirms what you've paid and says to refer to the ticket.

Some thoughts:

• If Aztec is anything like QR, it will set aside significant space for the purpose of error detection and correction bits. It wouldn't surprise me if it was still scannable even with the top portion obscured by a phone status bar.

• Even if the screenshot was distorted to the point of being unscannable, the customer should've been given the benefit of the doubt and permitted to provide the email.
• I don't see any legitimate technical or practical difference between a screenshot and a PDF. It's a bunch of pixels. If the barcode is scannable, who cares how those pixels ended up on the display?! This is common sense. You can't tell me that a screenshot can easily be shared between people and that a PDF can't, that's just ridiculous.

As @yorkie has mentioned, TIL's past conduct has been shameful - and XC should absolutely bear the brunt of any reputational damage for continuing to work with them.

The website quote "Using TIL can allow this activity to be separated from the client's brand" really says it all.

mallard said:

As an aside, such a central database would need to store exactly where (at least to the accuracy of the previous and next stations on a train) and when a ticket was previously scanned, as with most tickets it's perfectly permissible to change trains at any point along the route and there are plenty of legitimate reasons to do so; to purchase refreshment, use a lavatory, to switch to a less crowded train, etc.

However, since on-train PIS systems regularly fail to accurately reflect where a train currently is (or even where it's going), I have significant doubts that a ticket scanner could do so with any greater degree of accuracy. This would, of course, lead to plenty of spurious allegations of wrongdoing.

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The database would need to store the train being used, and ideally the station pair you were between, though only for walk-up tickets. In practice it would probably be sufficient (and certainly as good as paper tickets are now) to record entries and exits at stations.

Given that you generally know who a ticket was sold to, there's a good argument that you don't really even need to check the database online - just check at the end of the day for multiple uses and _then_ get the heavies involved

It`s both cynical that TOC`s are happy to allow TIL as a willing punchbag for negative fare evasion press and TIL themselves openly talking about recovery as revenue generation under the Supporting Clients heading, even if they do try and smooth over this with an educating customers (passengers) piece in the next paragraph. The horse had bolted a bit by this point.

takno said:

he database would need to store the train being used, and ideally the station pair you were between, though only for walk-up tickets.

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Train, date and time is the important information - geographical location is handy but not essential as it can be deduced from the remaining data.

TIL appear to be similar to the companies who operate in the grubby world of private parking invoices.

They need to make money and will do everything they can to do so - threat of Court is usually enough to extract money from people.

It's OK saying 'if you think you are right go to Court'. Have you ever actually done it? You can't just turn up unprepared and have your 5 minutes of fame. Its potentially months of work and expense if you don't know how the system works and the result can still be a lottery.

thejuggler said:

TIL appear to be similar to the companies who operate in the grubby world of private parking invoices.

They need to make money and will do everything they can to do so - threat of Court is usually enough to extract money from people.

It's OK saying 'if you think you are right go to Court'. Have you ever actually done it? You can't just turn up unprepared and have your 5 minutes of fame. Its potentially months of work and expense if you don't know how the system works and the result can still be a lottery.

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Exactly this, only difference being the rail industry rather than the automotive and we all no what grubby little shysters some of these are.

thejuggler said:

TIL appear to be similar to the companies who operate in the grubby world of private parking invoices.

They need to make money and will do everything they can to do so - threat of Court is usually enough to extract money from people.

It's OK saying 'if you think you are right go to Court'. Have you ever actually done it? You can't just turn up unprepared and have your 5 minutes of fame. Its potentially months of work and expense if you don't know how the system works and the result can still be a lottery.

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Agreed. The system is biased far too much in favour of companies that take matters to Court. If the Government is unwilling to fund a half-usable legal aid system, then it must at least legislate to make the penalties for egregious behaviour such as what has happened here so severe that companies actually change their tune.