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Northern Ticket Machine Update Issues

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Parham Wood

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So it seems that C2C have started rolling out machines with similar functionality to the Northern ones (i.e. not just walk up tickets for travel now). Would appear that they are experiencing similar "challenges" with this from the feedback on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/search?q=c2c_rail machine &src=typed_query&f=live

From what I understand, they're from a different supplier to the Northern ones, but it's interesting to see lots of the same problems. Although having to enter the origin station on a TVM with no default option of "here" is a new one on me...:

https://twitter.com/MattGosling85/status/1182193962309869568
Extract from C2C Passenger Charter. Did I laugh after reading the Twitter posts!
within 60 seconds of schedule.

We will offer you the best fare available for your journey
We’re committed to selling you the right ticket for your journey at the best available price. We will make buying a ticket from us as easy as possible by providing staff or ticket machines at your stations, a clear and user-friendly ticket-buying experience that guides you to the best ticket for your journey, and by providing a similar range of tickets however you buy them, whether that’s from our ticket offices, ticket machines or online (except for promotions, special offers etc).
 
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Puffing Devil

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According to the Ticketing and Settlement Agreement, Card acceptance should be defined in Schedule 17 of said Agreement.

It won't surprise anyone to know that it isn't.

However, Schedule 20 has a list of "nominated" cards that were accepted at the time of creation of the agreement and I would assume that these are the ones that TOCs MUST accept.

The list can be summarised as: Maestro, Mastercard and Visa, with no mention of Amex or Diners Club.

Wow - what an out of date list that it! Surprised that Amex isn't on there and that Schedule 17 is not completed as it should be. I'll be down to Piccadilly with my Abbey National Star Wars Visa post haste!
 

py_megapixel

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OK, so I hadn't travelled in Northern-land for a while. While the example of a machine I used has a perfectly acceptable touchscreen, I was still not happy to discover that it took this many presses to obtain a "Promise to Pay Notice"
  • Activate the machine
  • Select "promise to pay"
  • Accept the terms and conditions
  • Dismiss the first "common tickets" list, as it didn't contain the ticket I wanted
  • Select my destination from the second set of common tickets
  • Select the necessary number of passengers
  • Select the necessary ticket type
  • Press "continue"
  • Press "print coupons"
  • Accept the terms and conditions again!
Why can't the screen always show the options to buy, collect, etc.? And why must I enter my destination to get a piece of paper which doesn't have my destination on it? Then the procedure could be
  • Press "Promise to Pay"
  • Accept the terms and conditions
  • Press "Print"
thereby saving the user 8 button presses.
 

_toommm_

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OK, so I hadn't travelled in Northern-land for a while. While the example of a machine I used has a perfectly acceptable touchscreen, I was still not happy to discover that it took this many presses to obtain a "Promise to Pay Notice"
  • Activate the machine
  • Select "promise to pay"
  • Accept the terms and conditions
  • Dismiss the first "common tickets" list, as it didn't contain the ticket I wanted
  • Select my destination from the second set of common tickets
  • Select the necessary number of passengers
  • Select the necessary ticket type
  • Press "continue"
  • Press "print coupons"
  • Accept the terms and conditions again!
Why can't the screen always show the options to buy, collect, etc.? And why must I enter my destination to get a piece of paper which doesn't have my destination on it? Then the procedure could be
  • Press "Promise to Pay"
  • Accept the terms and conditions
  • Press "Print"
thereby saving the user 8 button presses.


To be fair, you could select any ticket as the P2P doesn't show what ticket you clicked on, thus saving you a few presses.

If the P2P was just a few presses (as it used to be) the TVM would be emptied in minutes by youths.
 

takno

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Wow - what an out of date list that it! Surprised that Amex isn't on there and that Schedule 17 is not completed as it should be. I'll be down to Piccadilly with my Abbey National Star Wars Visa post haste!
How's it out of date? There's a bit of a fashion right now for Apple and Google pay, but they might not be around for the long haul, Amex has always been less accepted and is declining due to the outrageous fees, and nobody anywhere has ever actually accepted Diners
 

CyrusWuff

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Why can't the screen always show the options to buy, collect, etc.? And why must I enter my destination to get a piece of paper which doesn't have my destination on it? Then the procedure could be
  • Press "Promise to Pay"
  • Accept the terms and conditions
  • Press "Print"
thereby saving the user 8 button presses.
The machines were initially configured in that manner. Unfortunately it resulted in entire rolls of tickets quickly being depleted and strewn about stations, hence the configuration change that now requires you to go through the entire purchase flow to get a Promise to Pay.
 

philthetube

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At Colne last week I attempted to get a promise to pay to travel to London, it would only give me a first class one, I am not promising to pay that fare.
 

js1000

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Where do I start with these? What a complete mess....

- Tried to purchase a Duo ticket on one of these a few weeks (it was a Saturday and ticket office was closed). Managed to get to the end with 2x adult tickets but the Duo discount was not applied so purchased a ticket on the train from the conductor.

- The TVM now asks for a postcode when attempting purchase a season ticket. This seems completely unnecessary to me - not to mention it doesn't work when I enter my postcode.

- Promise to Pay should require only a few buttons. I can understand why one button is not possible as sad vandals have just empty the machine of notices. But any more than 3 button presses for a Promise to Pay notice is not justifiable.

- Still no American Express acceptance despite the great lengths that appear to have gone to install these machines etc.

Tried to purchase a £4.50 single ticket yesterday. Impossible. Gave up and had no choice but to travel without a ticket. I would assume it's not a TOC's approach to beat passengers into submission? If you're going to make it so difficult for customer to purchase a product then you deserve all you get to be honest - nothing.

I hear Northern are reviewing the user interface as a matter of urgency? But this has been a problem for months now why it's taking so long to simplify I don't know. At what point to Passenger Focus or the Rail Ombudsman step in?
 

exesoundtech

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The card machines at manned Northern ticket offices accept AMEX but their TVMs do not. It's peculiar and merchant fees cannot be the answer.

I find with these things it's often worth trying. While none of them have the AMEX logo on, the ones I've tried did accept it...
 

takno

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The card machines at manned Northern ticket offices accept AMEX but their TVMs do not. It's peculiar and merchant fees cannot be the answer.
Vending in an environment where there is a staff member present can be subject to very different commercial agreements. This would be compounded by differences in the ability of different hardware to read contact(less) chips or the magstripe, and differences in whether the bank or the merchant lose out in the event of fraud. They may also have differing franchise agreements, legacy contracts or any number of different reasons for accepting at tickey offices even if they don't really want to. Most people will end up paying on using an alternative card anyway, likely saving on processing fees. Given that I can see why Amex acceptance would either deliberately not get done, or at least be put somewhere way down the list of features to work on
 

js1000

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Vending in an environment where there is a staff member present can be subject to very different commercial agreements. This would be compounded by differences in the ability of different hardware to read contact(less) chips or the magstripe, and differences in whether the bank or the merchant lose out in the event of fraud. They may also have differing franchise agreements, legacy contracts or any number of different reasons for accepting at tickey offices even if they don't really want to. Most people will end up paying on using an alternative card anyway, likely saving on processing fees. Given that I can see why Amex acceptance would either deliberately not get done, or at least be put somewhere way down the list of features to work on
This can't be the case either. Some of Northern's old ticket machines (the larger variants) did accept AMEX. The smaller ones (bottom image) did not.

images


northern_rail_tickets.jpg
 

thejuggler

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The machines were initially configured in that manner. Unfortunately it resulted in entire rolls of tickets quickly being depleted and strewn about stations, hence the configuration change that now requires you to go through the entire purchase flow to get a Promise to Pay.

At my local station where I have found Promise to Pay tickets scattered everywhere on more than one occasion recently I can the only assume one of two things. Someone has a lot of time to spend, or they have found a way of printing more than one. Last time there were dozens.
 

Bungle965

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At my local station where I have found Promise to Pay tickets scattered everywhere on more than one occasion recently I can the only assume one of two things. Someone has a lot of time to spend, or they have found a way of printing more than one. Last time there were dozens.
The way that the Promise to Pay was designed on the machines was so that it was difficult for someone to print loads of them and therefore deplete the machine of stock, it would seem that people have still found a way.
Sam
 

exesoundtech

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The way that the Promise to Pay was designed on the machines was so that it was difficult for someone to print loads of them and therefore deplete the machine of stock, it would seem that people have still found a way.
Sam

Unfortunately, difficult is not impossible given enough time :(
 

johnnychips

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I thought this was a theoretical problem till I noticed about forty scattered about Kiveton Park last month.
 

ic31420

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Do Amex cards still have a card number that is not 16 digits?

Many years ago I had a shop terminal that would take swiped Amex but not keyed. Turned out that the machine had a 16 digit input mask for the number and refused to accept the Amex card number.

Could be something similar.
 

Puffing Devil

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They do have 15 digits, though there is no excuse today not to process them. If Aldi can take them and our iZettle terminal can cope, even contactless, there is an acceptance issue.

NR won't even take them on the machine when presented via Android Pay.

I suspect, as others have suggested, that it's down to margins. However, Amex have come down a lot since the days of 5% plus. If they were so excessive, Aldi and Lidl would not be accepting them.
 

ic31420

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Jut spoken to a mate still in non food retail he reckons Amex are 2% more than visa debit. So about 3.5% +12p plus VAT

He doesn't see much Amex so it's not an issue.
 

Puffing Devil

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Jut spoken to a mate still in non food retail he reckons Amex are 2% more than visa debit. So about 3.5% +12p plus VAT

He doesn't see much Amex so it's not an issue.

That's shocking - off the shelf, you can get 1.75% across the board with no contract. (iZettle, Square). Anyone in retail should be going way lower than that.
 

ALEMASTER

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The way that the Promise to Pay was designed on the machines was so that it was difficult for someone to print loads of them and therefore deplete the machine of stock, it would seem that people have still found a way.
Sam

Part of the process is it asks how many people are travelling and prints that many coupons.
 

ALEMASTER

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The issues I've experienced or witnessed other people experience is generally the user interface being unclear, confusing, complicated and long winded. There are also problems with the touch screen being unresponsive and the help button not doing anything. I've also seen a machine refuse to issue prebooked tickets as the card inserted doesn't match the one on the booking - unhelpful when an employer has booked the ticket.

So the buying a ticket process. Keep in mind that a station TVM is generally used for immediate travel.

1 - there is a list of "popular products" to choose from. In the case of the machine at Dore & Totley, a single to Sheffield is listed but a return isn't. I've seen new rail users buy a single then pay the difference to a return on the train as they thought you couldn't get a return from the machine.
2 - you have to press "other tickets"
3 - you then get a list of popular destinations. You have to press "other destinations" to get to the a-z search function.
4 - It gives you a form to fill in on the left of the screen, however the actual buttons are on the right hand side of the screen. Its a big screen and you don't always spot that the first time you use it.
5 - having selected the destination, it asks you if you want to travel now, later or another day
6 - it then makes you do a journey planner enquiry, although it will not quote any train due to depart in less than 5 minutes time. Therefore if you try and buy a ticket at 0820 for an 0824 departure it will not allow you to.
7 - it then asks if you want to return the same day or within a month.
8 - if you select "within a month" and only day return tickets exist, the vending process simply fails
9 - it then makes you do a return journey plan, even if you are buying an open ticket and don't know what time you will return
10 - it then offers you the choice of tickets
11- you are then asks if you want to make a seat reservation, even if the facility doesn't exist.
12 - it finally allows you to put the ticket in a shopping basket
13 - you can then pay for the contents of the shopping basket.
 

takno

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That's shocking - off the shelf, you can get 1.75% across the board with no contract. (iZettle, Square). Anyone in retail should be going way lower than that.
Both iZettle and Square offer simple pricing packages like that for relatively low volume retailers, with staff members present as well as customers at the point of payment, with extremely low chargeback rates, who are in boring retail sector markets. Both charge significantly more for online, which is just a taster of the extra costs you can incur if your business doesn't fit within their exact model.

Further to that, 1.75% is quite high compared to the fees you could negotiate for debit cards if you had decent volume, so I suspect they are just taking a hit themselves on Amex and possibly Credit Cards, knowing that they will make it up on the normal debit card volume.

If you think of the cost model for Northern offering a ticket machine, they get about 7% of the ticket price as an agent (obviously they could allocate more of the ticket price for their own services, but not too much - they do still have to make enough money to run the train). 1.75% is a quarter of that 7%, and they still have to provide the machine, keep it stocked, swallow various costs for fraud and chargebacks, and run the back-office. Inevitably they are going to want a better deal, and as part of that they will get differential rates based on card type. If Amex is creeping up towards 50% of their margin then they are not going to want to touch it, and will certainly push you towards better payment options for them.
 

island

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Amex charges quite a bit more than Visa/MasterCard, but it’s more like 2.2% vs 0.7% these days to a large retailer – Visa/MasterCard charges have been capped by EU regulation.

Non-acceptance at TVMs is merely a matter of the person setting up the TVM not being bothered to enable it.

I shan’t go down a rabbit hole of whether someone who wanted to pay by Amex but had several other cards they could have used would legally be entitled to buy on board...
 

SteveM70

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9 - it then makes you do a return journey plan, even if you are buying an open ticket and don't know what time you will return

This one is especially misleading. I know of people who’ve bought additional tickets for the return journey because they weren’t travelling on the train they’d selected on the TVM, even though the ticket is an open return.
 

Puffing Devil

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Both iZettle and Square offer simple pricing packages like that for relatively low volume retailers, with staff members present as well as customers at the point of payment, with extremely low chargeback rates, who are in boring retail sector markets. Both charge significantly more for online, which is just a taster of the extra costs you can incur if your business doesn't fit within their exact model.

Further to that, 1.75% is quite high compared to the fees you could negotiate for debit cards if you had decent volume, so I suspect they are just taking a hit themselves on Amex and possibly Credit Cards, knowing that they will make it up on the normal debit card volume.

If you think of the cost model for Northern offering a ticket machine, they get about 7% of the ticket price as an agent (obviously they could allocate more of the ticket price for their own services, but not too much - they do still have to make enough money to run the train). 1.75% is a quarter of that 7%, and they still have to provide the machine, keep it stocked, swallow various costs for fraud and chargebacks, and run the back-office. Inevitably they are going to want a better deal, and as part of that they will get differential rates based on card type. If Amex is creeping up towards 50% of their margin then they are not going to want to touch it, and will certainly push you towards better payment options for them.


Agreed - my comment was aimed at the "mate in non-food retail" who was paying over the odds.
 

Bungle965

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Is it not feasible to have tow different ways of purchasing your ticket, one if you require an AP purchase ticket or which to do things such as reserve seats or buy a PlusBus & another menu that simply bypasses that and allows you to quickly purchase your ticket?
Sam
 

ic31420

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Agreed - my comment was aimed at the "mate in non-food retail" who was paying over the odds.

I was quite shocked too I wasn't paying that 10 years ago. I suspect he's quoted the "book prices". My outlet used to push about 10k a week through our terminal with an average Sale about £30. We had one chargeback in 10 years I was there and were a low-rate risk with no complications of cash back or CNP etc. We used to negotiate a bespoke deal with our business manager. As I recall the invoice showed the book prices then we got a credit payment every so often. Of course it helped the business owner knew someone at natwest / streamline and our business followed him to HBOS for an even more complicated shady deal that was revoked when that chap was fired off in the credit crunch (I think our company was given x many days to bank elsewhere)

You could chose the deal that suited your business best I.e. High volume low value through to low volume high value.
 
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