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Questions for people who have used e-tickets

What do you think of e-tickets ?

  • I have never used e-tickets

    Votes: 54 17.5%

  • I prefer e-tickets to orange paper tickets

    Votes: 85 27.6%

  • I don't have a preference regarding e-tickets or orange paper tickets

    Votes: 46 14.9%

  • I prefer orange paper tickets

    Votes: 153 49.7%
  • Total voters
    308
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M

Mathew S

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talltim said:
I’ve just done some more observation of the passengers standing around me on a Northern train. One guy had some some sort of season/pass that just needed a glance. A woman had a large QR code on her phone, took a while to read using the guard’s phone as each time he got it lined up the train swayed. In the end he had to hold her phone steady (while she was still holding it)
Another woman had a card single or return that he looked at and clipped very quickly. Last guy also had a QR code, but it was smaller in terms of how much screen it took up and his phone was smaller. He had the same problem with the devices moving relative to each other and in the end he had to take the phone off him to read it. Then he had to give it back to him to bring up his railcard. I would say that it took roughly as long to do three paper tickets as one of the e-tickets.
The EMT revenue staff I’ve seen have a separate reader that is linked to their devices, these seem to get a reading better, but I’ve not seen them in use on a rough riding train.
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I don't know where in Northern-land you are, but certainly in the Manchester area, I can't remember the last time I had my ticket checked. I use a smart card, and I may as well not have a ticket on it at all because only one guard (literally, one guy - his name's Alan) ever bothers to actually scan and check it. I don't use e-tickets as much for local journeys, but the situation seems to be similar, they look at it but rarely if ever bother to scan. I do understand that it takes long to scan a load of tickets than it does just to look at them, I do, but I do think there needs to be a solution found.
ashkeba said:
Not as long as the scan locations don't suggest you've gone backwards in between. I think some might try to challenge it incorrectly but will it be any bigger problem than certain gatelines incorrectly not allowing breaks of journey with paper tickets?
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There are problems with e-tickets at certain gatelines, but then there are with mag-stripe tickets as well. If you ever try to use a West Midlands Day Ranger, in any format, for example, the barriers hate them, for example.
 
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talltim

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Mathew S said:
I don't know where in Northern-land you are, but certainly in the Manchester area, I can't remember the last time I had my ticket checked. I use a smart card, and I may as well not have a ticket on it at all because only one guard (literally, one guy - his name's Alan) ever bothers to actually scan and check it. I don't use e-tickets as much for local journeys, but the situation seems to be similar, they look at it but rarely if ever bother to scan. I do understand that it takes long to scan a load of tickets than it does just to look at them, I do, but I do think there needs to be a solution found.

There are problems with e-tickets at certain gatelines, but then there are with mag-stripe tickets as well. If you ever try to use a West Midlands Day Ranger, in any format, for example, the barriers hate them, for example.
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I commute Chesterfield-Sheffield. No barriers, but tickets seems to get checked about 80-90% of the time on all three TOCs
 
M

Mathew S

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talltim said:
I commute Chesterfield-Sheffield. No barriers, but tickets seems to get checked about 80-90% of the time on all three TOCs
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Shows the east/west divide on Northern rather well that, because if it's 5% for me I'd be amazed.
 
ashkeba

ashkeba

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Mathew S said:
Shows the east/west divide on Northern rather well that, because if it's 5% for me I'd be amazed.
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It may be more to do with having three TOCs on the route. I would expect a higher chance of excessing or fining passengers with one-TOC tickets there and so a natural prioritising of it for inspectors.
 
transmanche

transmanche

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td97 said:
There are better and worse ways of scanning the Aztec code. LNER & VT (now Avanti) issued staff with a dedicated barcode reader which scans quickly with a laser emission. Northern, on the cheaper end of the scale, issued their staff with a phone app.
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Interestingly, a 2011 blog post from Masabi (the company behind the systems/apps used by Chiltern, Greater Anglia, Northern, TfW Rail and others) says:
The essential difference between the more common QR code and Aztec is that QR codes are better for being read by consumers’ phones. Aztec, however, is better for being displayed on consumers’ phones – essential for high-speed scanning in a busy transport environment.
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matt

matt

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maniacmartin said:
I just bought an Anytime Day Return on LNER website and the PDF shows the selected service with no indication that it's not mandatory to get that service, as I feared
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My Avanti e-ticket shows a reservation but it is labelled "Itinerary - Optional Reservations"
 
Starmill

Starmill

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Mathew S said:
Shows the east/west divide on Northern rather well that, because if it's 5% for me I'd be amazed.
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I currently have a record of something like 3% of journeys with onboard ticket inspection on a season not far from you, which represents 1 journey this year.
 
T

talltim

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Mathew S said:
Shows the east/west divide on Northern rather well that, because if it's 5% for me I'd be amazed.
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I should say that I only catch Northern trains about a 3rd of the time, but none of the companies seem to be better or worse at inspections.
This evening I was on an EMR service. Four ofus in the vestibule. First guy had an e-ticket, she checked another guy’s card ticket while she was waiting for him to open the app. She had a separate scanner which worked first time. Then she checked mine and the last guy’s card tickets while she waited for him to get his railcard up on his phone.
I know some people are oblivious to inspections and don’t get their tickets out quickly, and also don’t show their railcards without being asked, but with e-tickets there seems to be always a delay and they can’t show both at once.
 
ashkeba

ashkeba

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talltim said:
I know some people are oblivious to inspections and don’t get their tickets out quickly, and also don’t show their railcards without being asked, but with e-tickets there seems to be always a delay and they can’t show both at once.
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Why can't they show both at once? Bad app design and it doesn't support split-screen?
 
_toommm_

_toommm_

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ashkeba said:
Why can't they show both at once? Bad app design and it doesn't support split-screen?
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Split screen works for the railcard app (at least on Samsungs) but I've found theres often a scaling issue even on a phone with a 6.5' screen like mine. It often misses out dates on the railcard app so theres no point split-screening it.
 
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edwin_m

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Ironically the move to make the ticket electronic seems to create another reason why railcards should remain in physical form.
 
3

35B

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Bletchleyite said:
But that isn't incompatible with it being an e-ticket. An e-ticket just means (a) the ticket is a record in a database, the thing you have is just a reference to it, and (b) in railway terms, it is referred to using a 2D barcode. No reason why you couldn't walk up to a TVM and purchase an e-ticket, the referring barcode to which could then be printed on a bit of orange card for you. Perhaps if you had something like a Railcard or other identification to use at the TVM, it could even be attached to your railway ticketing account, and so cancelled and reprinted if you lost it. Win-win, no?
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Indeed, those would be useful implementations of the tech, and welcome enhancements for those of us who do buy online. But why does that purchase need to be associated with that electronic record in that way, and the purchasing system built to support that level of record keeping? And you don't answer my final point - that there should be no discrimination in terms of how I, the customer, wish to hold my ticket.
 
Starmill

Starmill

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Bletchleyite said:
But that isn't incompatible with it being an e-ticket.
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I think what we've learnt from this thread is that the general idea of tickets stored as central electronic records works perfectly. But that's hardly news is it? Airlines, Megabus etc have been doing that for literal decades now. The railway companies have been doing it for longer than weekly season tickets for decades themselves, but still enforcing the requirement to carry a single print of the ticket. Since the broad adoption of the Internet almost all other large firms have adopted this kind of electronic booking database. Imagine if your hotel issued you a ticket which if lost would mean you were unable to access your room? It would be crazy. You wouldn't stay there again.

All of the problems in this thread are because the railway companies are bad at customer service. Some of them are just about acceptable, most of the time, but still make fatal errors. Others treat their consumers with contempt, tell untruths and make threats and criminal charges at their whim. They refuse to respond or engage through customer relations, they don't have an accurate technical understanding of the issues they've created, and they deliberately make it difficult for consumers to get recourse for issues they face in the unfair ecosystem they've set up. Front line staff are empowered to treat consumers in a less than respectful way and frequently make administrative errors or have an inaccurate understanding of the facts which causes the consumer's contract to be breached.

Nearly all of the problems we've identified here are real problems that will negatively affect consumer rights in practice, although some are more significant than others. But the reality is that the industry doesn't have a good implementation of e-tickets, and hasn't managed to for years now, because of it's historically bad attitude to customer service, and not because of the technology.
 
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A

Alteran Ancient

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I prefer to use digital and smart tickets where possible - less bits of paper to carry around and damage or lose, and less use of single-use disposables. I know that people will say: "But it's paper! Why don't you just recycle them?" Because the thermally-reactive compound that sits on the top of the tickets is too difficult to separate from the actual paper/card stock, making them impossible to recycle. Paper will degrade, eventually, but "Reduce" is the first "R" of the "four R's" - "Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle" - of course, Repair is largely irrelevant in this situation.

The only annoyance for me right now with e-tickets, m-tickets and Smartcard tickets is that the cheapest fares are not always available. I'm looking at Southern in particular here - who will offer Super Off-Peak fares on certain routes, but only have non-super fares available if you're redeeming as a mobile ticket or Smartcard fare. I made an enquiry to Southern but they couldn't give me a good answer for this.
 
Starmill

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Alteran Ancient said:
I prefer to use digital and smart tickets where possible - less bits of paper to carry around and damage or lose, and less use of single-use disposables. I know that people will say: "But it's paper! Why don't you just recycle them?" Because the thermally-reactive compound that sits on the top of the tickets is too difficult to separate from the actual paper/card stock, making them impossible to recycle. Paper will degrade, eventually, but "Reduce" is the first "R" of the "four R's" - "Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle" - of course, Repair is largely irrelevant in this situation.
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Concern about saving resources is admirable, but the effect of saving train ticket stock is ~0. Your energy could be far better spent than thinking about this. Even for someone using hundreds of thousands of orange tickets a year.
 
ashkeba

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Starmill said:
Concern about saving resources is admirable, but the effect of saving train ticket stock is ~0. Your energy could be far better spent than thinking about this. Even for someone using hundreds of thousands of orange tickets a year.
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That sounds like the old "it is not worth diverting any rain drops from the sewers because water will still get into them" demotivational argument. I hope you are not involved in any flood defence work!
 
Starmill

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ashkeba said:
That sounds like the old "it is not worth diverting any rain drops from the sewers because water will still get into them" demotivational argument. I hope you are not involved in any flood defence work!
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It's not that argument at all. In that case, a small part of a large whole is significant if scaled.

On the railway, even if you eliminated the issues of orange tickets from tomorrow, the effect would be essentially zero.

At the same time, the railway wastes lots of water, diesel fuel and energy on electrical appliances all the time.
 
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Bletchleyite

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yorksrob said:
I , like 35B also believe that ticketing should be format blind.
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I agree with that in the sense that everything should be an e-ticket and you should be able to choose your preferred method of carrying that barcode with you, i.e. a bit of A4 from your own printer, a PDF, something in an app or a bit of card from a TVM. But in all cases the technology behind it should be the barcoded e-ticket. That's the beauty of it. If a barcode can be displayed on it, it can be used as a medium for an e-ticket.
 
yorksrob

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Bletchleyite said:
I agree with that in the sense that everything should be an e-ticket and you should be able to choose your preferred method of carrying that barcode with you, i.e. a bit of A4 from your own printer, a PDF, something in an app or a bit of card from a TVM. But in all cases the technology behind it should be the barcoded e-ticket. That's the beauty of it. If a barcode can be displayed on it, it can be used as a medium for an e-ticket.
Click to expand...

As long as I can go to the station and buy any ticket (in a handy wallet sized format) I agree.
 
Starmill

Starmill

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Bletchleyite said:
I don't really agree, to be honest.
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Bletchleyite said:
I agree with that in the sense that everything should be an e-ticket and you should be able to choose your preferred method of carrying that barcode with you, i.e. a bit of A4 from your own printer, a PDF, something in an app or a bit of card from a TVM. But in all cases the technology behind it should be the barcoded e-ticket. That's the beauty of it. If a barcode can be displayed on it, it can be used as a medium for an e-ticket.
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It looks like you've become confused.
 
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Bletchleyite

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Starmill said:
It looks like you've become confused.
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I thought 35B was suggesting that he should be able to have a classic orange card ticket, i.e. one that itself held the validity by its existence, not one that was a reference to an e-ticket in a database?

I am also not opposed to charging for more expensive methods of fulfillment, e.g. a fee for purchasing from a staffed ticket office as the Dutch have, or a fee for ToD when you can use PDF e-tickets or print your own instead, or a reprint fee if lost and wanting to print it at the station.
 
Starmill

Starmill

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Bletchleyite said:
I thought 35B was suggesting that he should be able to have a classic orange card ticket, i.e. one that itself held the validity by its existence, not one that was a reference to an e-ticket in a database?
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A ticket issued on receipt roll is a that refers to a central database to demonstrate its validity, though, and that's not re-printable despite that? A ticket bought from the TransPennine Express website is the same but its not re-printable, it can only be shown on one copy at a time.

The current rules and implementation quite allow for this.
 
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