Railcard discount after midnight

Gathursty · 5 Jan 2020

Friday at 12.50am I was stood at Reading station in front of one of the ticket machines and after selecting a return to Hayes & Harlington, my mind went blank. My journey was the 0115 and return on the 0150.

Could I have added my 26-30 railcard discount or not?

My mind opted for not putting the discount on as I didn't fancy any inspector interaction at such a late hour. In fact, no staff were on either service so I felt a bit cheated out of spending £24!

RailUK Forums

Haywain · 5 Jan 2020

Yes, you could have used the railcard. There is a minimum fare restriction between 0430 and 1000, but that’s all. You cheated yourself!

Gathursty · 5 Jan 2020

Blast! At least it was just £8 loss.

jawr256 · 5 Jan 2020

Sounds like you bought the £24.80 Anytime Day Return. The £14.20 Off-Peak Day Return is only restricted from 04:30-09:30 (+PM restrictions) so you should have been able to buy that for £9.40 with your railcard. One for next time!

JonathanH · 5 Jan 2020

Ticket machines sell tickets for the new day after midnight so you are not able to buy an off peak ticket. Tickets from the previous day remain valid until 0430.

Gathursty · 5 Jan 2020

jawr256 said:
Sounds like you bought the £24.80 Anytime Day Return. The £14.20 Off-Peak Day Return is only restricted from 04:30-09:30 (+PM restrictions) so you should have been able to buy that for £9.40 with your railcard. One for next time!

Cripes! Down £15!

Haywain · 5 Jan 2020

JonathanH said:
Ticket machines sell tickets for the new day after midnight so you are not able to buy an off peak ticket. Tickets from the previous day remain valid until 0430.

If it’s valid for travel at that time it should be available for purchase.

JonathanH · 5 Jan 2020

Haywain said:
If it’s valid for travel at that time it should be available for purchase.

No, tickets for the previous day have to be bought by midnight - that is the extension of validity to 0430 (or '2830' if you think of a clock keeping going past 2359).

Once you get to midnight, it is a new day so more accurately the validity window is 0930 to '2830' with no validity between 0001 and 0930.

Sometimes (e.g. Saturday mornings) this works in your favour. On weekday mornings it doesn't.

AnkleBoots · 5 Jan 2020

What is there to do in 6 minutes at Hayes and Harlington in the early hours?! And is it safe round there? I guess the station is unstaffed?

Haywain · 5 Jan 2020

JonathanH said:
No, tickets for the previous day have to be bought by midnight - that is the extension of validity to 0430 (or '2830' if you think of a clock keeping going past 2359).

Once you get to midnight, it is a new day so more accurately the validity window is 0930 to '2830' with no validity between 0001 and 0930.

Sometimes (e.g. Saturday mornings) this works in your favour. On weekday mornings it doesn't.

I disagree. If you buy at 0100 the ticket is not dated for the previous day, and the Off Peak Day Return ticket IS valid at that time and should be available to purchase. The validity explicitly excludes 0430 to 0930, making it clear that the ticket is valid prior to 0430.

Gathursty · 5 Jan 2020

AnkleBoots said:
What is there to do in 6 minutes at Hayes and Harlington in the early hours?! And is it safe round there? I guess the station is unstaffed?

I tend to travel on trains for station bashing/route coverage at more unusual time the further away from the North West it is. Also, Reading-London has many services throughout the night.

H&H was empty apart from one other traveller and a TFL worker who closed the platform gate to the fast lines after I came through.

I was going to walk out of the station and come back in but 6 minutes wasn't long enough.

323235 · 6 Jan 2020

Haywain said:
I disagree. If you buy at 0100 the ticket is not dated for the previous day, and the Off Peak Day Return ticket IS valid at that time and should be available to purchase. The validity explicitly excludes 0430 to 0930, making it clear that the ticket is valid prior to 0430.

I agree with you - this ticket IS valid from 0000 to 0429 so SHOULD be available to purchase from a machine between 0000 and 0429.

One to raise with the TVM operator!

furlong · 6 Jan 2020

If the machine didn't show the off-peak fare, then it needs fixing, but don't hold your breath. This company's machines have been riddled with problems like that for as long as I can remember, and the company is either incapable or uninterested in fixing them. (The company seems to display a serious lack of professional diligence in this matter, if you ask me, and an ORR prosecution seems long overdue.)

Bletchleyite · 6 Jan 2020

Haywain said:
I disagree. If you buy at 0100 the ticket is not dated for the previous day, and the Off Peak Day Return ticket IS valid at that time and should be available to purchase. The validity explicitly excludes 0430 to 0930, making it clear that the ticket is valid prior to 0430.

I have done this precisely once, effectively being able to use a day return as a period return (went out, went to bed, got up and used the return half).

Fawkes Cat · 6 Jan 2020

furlong said:
If the machine didn't show the off-peak fare, then it needs fixing, but don't hold your breath. This company's machines have been riddled with problems like that for as long as I can remember, and the company is either incapable or uninterested in fixing them. (The company seems to display a serious lack of professional diligence in this matter, if you ask me, and an ORR prosecution seems long overdue.)

Could I respectfully suggest that fixing machines so that they correctly issue tickets for use between 0000 and 0430 will be, and should be, a long way down any railway company's priority list? It's good to know that Gathursty is enjoying their small hours track bashing, but it would be a better use of TOC resources to sort things out for the 99+% of passengers who travel during the day rather than the tiny fraction who want to go to Hayes and Harlington for six minutes in the middle of the night.

Bletchleyite · 6 Jan 2020

Fawkes Cat said:
Could I respectfully suggest that fixing machines so that they correctly issue tickets for use between 0000 and 0430 will be, and should be, a long way down any railway company's priority list?

TVMs should not overcharge people under any circumstances, even edge-cases, at least where their use is mandatory.

Presumably if it's not selling the Off Peak Return it probably also isn't selling the Off Peak Single which might have more of a use-case?

Fawkes Cat · 6 Jan 2020

Bletchleyite said:
TVMs should not overcharge people under any circumstances, even edge-cases, at least where their use is mandatory.

Undoubtedly. But in this world where demand for fixes exceeds supply, what should be left unfixed so that forumites can wander around the Thames Valley at silly o'clock in the morning on the most advantageous terms?

Bletchleyite · 6 Jan 2020

Fawkes Cat said:
Undoubtedly. But in this world where demand for fixes exceeds supply, what should be left unfixed so that forumites can wander around the Thames Valley at silly o'clock in the morning on the most advantageous terms?

I could see the railway "fixing" it if it were mandatory by adding a line to the restriction "Off Peak tickets for day one are not valid between 0001 and 0430"...

But it's not about "advantageous terms", it's about charging correctly. It might be a minor edge-case, but the TOC is still, presumably knowingly, obtaining pecuniary advantage. Don't we have a word for that?

yorkie · 6 Jan 2020

Fawkes Cat said:
Could I respectfully suggest that fixing machines so that they correctly issue tickets for use between 0000 and 0430 will be, and should be, a long way down any railway company's priority list? It's good to know that Gathursty is enjoying their small hours track bashing, but it would be a better use of TOC resources to sort things out for the 99+% of passengers who travel during the day rather than the tiny fraction who want to go to Hayes and Harlington for six minutes in the middle of the night.

Is this some sort of parody / sarcastic response? It can't be serious, surely...

Fawkes Cat · 6 Jan 2020

yorkie said:
Is this some sort of parody / sarcastic response? It can't be serious, surely...

It's serious in that the grumbling here seems to not recognise the commercial reality that not everything will work perfectly all the time - and it's important to prioritise the things that affect most people.

Without wanting to take away the OP's freedom to travel where and when he wants, it's hard to think of any reason why non-negligible numbers of people would want to travel Reading - Hayes and Harlington and return between midnight and 0430, while only spending six minutes at the destination. More generally, I struggle to think of any return journeys that would be (ETA) routinely (/ETA) made between those hours in that my impression is that night workers generally do 8 hours or so (longer than the four and a half hour window) and if there ever was any demand for late (early?) courier services, that will now be emailed or go by road. So given that there is close to no demand for this travel, while I can accept that everything should work properly, then if anything should be allowed not to work properly then this is it. If the OP (having read this thread) feels hard done by, then their remedy is a complaint and compensation from the railway, which will cost the railway some hundreds of pounds to process and pay, rather than an IT fix costing some thousands.

Bletchleyite · 6 Jan 2020

Fawkes Cat said:
It's serious in that the grumbling here seems to not recognise the commercial reality that not everything will work perfectly all the time - and it's important to prioritise the things that affect most people.

Without wanting to take away the OP's freedom to travel where and when he wants, it's hard to think of any reason why non-negligible numbers of people would want to travel Reading - Hayes and Harlington and return between midnight and 0430, while only spending six minutes at the destination. More generally, I struggle to think of any return journeys that would be (ETA) routinely (/ETA) made between those hours in that my impression is that night workers generally do 8 hours or so (longer than the four and a half hour window) and if there ever was any demand for late (early?) courier services, that will now be emailed or go by road. So given that there is close to no demand for this travel, while I can accept that everything should work properly, then if anything should be allowed not to work properly then this is it. If the OP (having read this thread) feels hard done by, then their remedy is a complaint and compensation from the railway, which will cost the railway some hundreds of pounds to process and pay, rather than an IT fix costing some thousands.

Knowing how TVMs work with regard to ticket restrictions, it is likely that the relevant Singles are also affected, and I can see far more likelihood of those being sold and used in that time window.

But the point is that wilfully and knowingly overcharging (even one person by £0.01) is unacceptable.

alistairlees · 6 Jan 2020

If people were routinely being charged £24 for £15 of purchases in Tesco (or any other retailer), and their response was that they had other more important things to do, there would be outrage.

nickswift99 · 6 Jan 2020

alistairlees said:
If people were routinely being charged £24 for £15 of purchases in Tesco (or any other retailer), and their response was that they had other more important things to do, there would be outrage.

I quite like the retail analogy. Except it's worse. Imagine routinely being charged more for using a self-checkout till.

joncombe · 6 Jan 2020

I came across this at London Waterloo just after midnight and wanting a single ticket home on a train soon to depart. The ticket machines would only sell anytime singles. Not wanting to pay that I was pleased to see the ticket office at Waterloo is still open the member of staff there was helpful in selling me an off peak ticket for what was now the previous day, still valid to 0430. So whilst the OPs situation might be a little less usual the inability to sell the off peak tickets from machines at these times is a bigger problem I feel.

alistairlees · 6 Jan 2020

A quick count reveals 97 departures from London termini on Friday morning between 00.01 and 04.29. If TVMs are selling only Anytime singles for all of these then it’s a potentially bigger problem than may be at first apparent.

Deerfold · 6 Jan 2020

Fawkes Cat said:
It's serious in that the grumbling here seems to not recognise the commercial reality that not everything will work perfectly all the time - and it's important to prioritise the things that affect most people.

Without wanting to take away the OP's freedom to travel where and when he wants, it's hard to think of any reason why non-negligible numbers of people would want to travel Reading - Hayes and Harlington and return between midnight and 0430, while only spending six minutes at the destination. More generally, I struggle to think of any return journeys that would be (ETA) routinely (/ETA) made between those hours in that my impression is that night workers generally do 8 hours or so (longer than the four and a half hour window) and if there ever was any demand for late (early?) courier services, that will now be emailed or go by road. So given that there is close to no demand for this travel, while I can accept that everything should work properly, then if anything should be allowed not to work properly then this is it. If the OP (having read this thread) feels hard done by, then their remedy is a complaint and compensation from the railway, which will cost the railway some hundreds of pounds to process and pay, rather than an IT fix costing some thousands.

This doesn't only affect those wanting to travel and return in those 4 and a half hours.

A shift worker may want to travel at 1am and then back at 11am. This ticket would be valid and should be available to them.

PG · 6 Jan 2020

furlong said:
If the machine didn't show the off-peak fare, then it needs fixing, but don't hold your breath. This company's machines have been riddled with problems like that for as long as I can remember, and the company is either incapable or uninterested in fixing them. (The company seems to display a serious lack of professional diligence in this matter, if you ask me, and an ORR prosecution seems long overdue.)

And the likelihood of an ORR prosecution is even less than the TVM being sorted to sell valid tickets!

It makes you wonder what is the point of these regulatory bodies when they don't do what it says on the tin :rolleyes:

AnkleBoots · 6 Jan 2020

Would it have been OK to buy any other ticket to the value of £9 and exchange at the earliest opportunity?

bb21 · 6 Jan 2020

If the correct ticket weren't being retailed at the machine, then the customer should be given the opportunity to pay his correct fare at a later time, either during or at the end of the journey. There should be no obligation to overpay. I am also in agreement that misleading customers into overpaying due to deficiencies in the ticket machine software is very dodgy practice and likely on shaky legal grounds. Clearly the wording of the restriction on the Off-Peak fare in this case means that should be offered in the small hours of the day, regardless of the date on the ticket issued.

Relevant Railcard discount in this case should also be given as the minimum fare only applies between 0430 and 1000, on relevant days.

By my reading the OP lost out to the tune of £15+ in this case due to no fault of his own.

Haywain · 6 Jan 2020

alistairlees said:
A quick count reveals 97 departures from London termini on Friday morning between 00.01 and 04.29. If TVMs are selling only Anytime singles for all of these then it’s a potentially bigger problem than may be at first apparent.

Although the wording of the specific ticket restriction is relevant here. If it is "not valid for travel before 09:30" then it isn't valid at 02:00, even if a ticket purchased before midnight is valid on the following day to 04:29.

Railcard discount after midnight

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