By any rational measure, the situation at Gatwick is idiotic, and in my experience it's probably the nadir of the ticketing/fare lunacy that's evident in places right across the network. It makes Stockport to Manchester or some of the North East short distance ECML ticket options look like paragons of clarity by comparison.
Screens and screens of options on the Gatwick vending machines, with effectively hidden conditions, is farcical. When a significant proportion of the customer base is non English as a first language speaking, tired, stressed or just unfamiliar, it smacks of borderline exploitation. The fact that some of the floor-walkers can also be quite pushy in trying to hurry users is just another opportunity for errors to be bade.
In a connected world, it's also (from a user point of view) frankly indefensible that these machines will also sell tickets for travel on services don't exist - as was often the case during Thameslink and London Bridge works, when there were no services running on particular routes or by particular operator brands, and yet the machines were merrily offering and selling operator brand-only on-the-day tickets that were totally unusable.
I have been nowhere in the world with anything like the level of confusion presented to arriving visitors like Gatwick Station.
And, as noted, the fact that there's now only one franchise on the main flow, yet the situation persists.... well, it's plain shoddy.
