Railcard not accepted when buying ticket at destination

SLC · 19 Jan 2020

Yesterday I travelled from Stalybridge to Manchester Victoria on the 13:30 service. We (there were 4 of us in total) arrived about 7 minutes before the train was due as we needed to buy a ticket.

Unfortunately the desk was closed and there was a queue of at least 5 people in front of me to use the ticket machine. I asked the two groups in front of me if they were getting the same service (the next one) and if not could I jump ahead of them. They let me but I still didn't have enough time to complete my purchase as the machine froze on me. The guard didn't come through the train on the journey so at Victoria we went to the designated spot to purchase tickets.

There was a man stood beside a ticket desk - it wasn't clear what his role was but he was wearing hi-vis and a woman behind the desk. Between them they effectively accused me of not buying a ticket when I had the chance and that I should have bought one at Stalybridge. They also claimed that the ticket desk there was open and that there are two ticket machines (both untrue and I almost took photos to prove it just in case as I have read many reports on this forum of people not being believed but unfortunately I didn't).

They also refused to accept my Two Together railcard as they insisted I had the opportunity to purchase my ticket before boarding the train so therefore I was not eligible for this discount. My view is that I hadn't had opportunity to do this and this was the earliest point I had to buy a ticket.

My understanding is that I shouldn't have delayed my journey due to the ticket desk being closed and the long queue at Stalybridge - is this correct?

In the end the woman sold me the return tickets I wanted, without the railcard discount, and I left the station as I had a booking elsewhere.

Were the rail staff correct in their actions? If not what do you suggest I do by means of complaint? At the very least I would expect the railcard discount to be refunded (if they were incorrect).

Many thanks for your advice.

RailUK Forums

Bletchleyite · 19 Jan 2020

Yes, correct. Not delaying your journey for a ticket queue only applies when changing trains. At your origin you must arrive in time to purchase before boarding if there is any facility.

SLC · 19 Jan 2020

Thanks for the clarification. What does "arrive in time to purchase" mean in reality? I rarely have to wait at all to purchase a ticket at this station so in my opinion we had enough time.

Edit: If the rule is that I should have purchased a ticket before travelling then should they not have sold me the return ticket? It would have made more sense if they'd made me buy 4 singles (or the penalty fare, I think these are the options if you haven't bought a ticket?) but not applying the railcard seems odd.

thejuggler · 19 Jan 2020

SLC said:
Thanks for the clarification. What does "arrive in time to purchase" mean in reality? I rarely have to wait at all to purchase a ticket at this station so in my opinion we had enough time.

You can ask that when you write and complain and ask for a refund equivalent to the railcard discount.

As the number of facilities to buy tickets varies depending on station size there must be a figure somewhere. I think 5 minutes should be ample time.

221129 · 19 Jan 2020

SLC said:
Thanks for the clarification. What does "arrive in time to purchase" mean in reality? I rarely have to wait at all to purchase a ticket at this station so in my opinion we had enough time.

Edit: If the rule is that I should have purchased a ticket before travelling then should they not have sold me the return ticket? It would have made more sense if they'd made me buy 4 singles (or the penalty fare, I think these are the options if you haven't bought a ticket?) but not applying the railcard seems odd.

You're lucky that they didnt go down the prosecution or penalty fare route.

I'd chalk this one up to experience.

SLC · 19 Jan 2020

221129 said:
You're lucky that they didnt go down the prosecution or penalty fare route.

I'd chalk this one up to experience.

I was quite aware this was a possibility so didn't push too hard but I'm quite confused as to what I should have done in this situation. Should I have missed my train in order to buy a ticket? How much time should passengers allow to purchase a ticket? What if the ticket office is supposed to be open but isn't (due to staff illness for example)? Do passengers have to take all of this into account?

I'm not suggesting any of this applies to me, I'm trying to understand the passenger's responsibility and what the areas of leeway are.

WesternLancer · 19 Jan 2020

SLC said:
Yesterday I travelled from Stalybridge to Manchester Victoria on the 13:30 service. We (there were 4 of us in total) arrived about 7 minutes before the train was due as we needed to buy a ticket.

Unfortunately the desk was closed and there was a queue of at least 5 people in front of me to use the ticket machine. I asked the two groups in front of me if they were getting the same service (the next one) and if not could I jump ahead of them. They let me but I still didn't have enough time to complete my purchase as the machine froze on me. The guard didn't come through the train on the journey so at Victoria we went to the designated spot to purchase tickets.

There was a man stood beside a ticket desk - it wasn't clear what his role was but he was wearing hi-vis and a woman behind the desk. Between them they effectively accused me of not buying a ticket when I had the chance and that I should have bought one at Stalybridge. They also claimed that the ticket desk there was open and that there are two ticket machines (both untrue and I almost took photos to prove it just in case as I have read many reports on this forum of people not being believed but unfortunately I didn't).

They also refused to accept my Two Together railcard as they insisted I had the opportunity to purchase my ticket before boarding the train so therefore I was not eligible for this discount. My view is that I hadn't had opportunity to do this and this was the earliest point I had to buy a ticket.

My understanding is that I shouldn't have delayed my journey due to the ticket desk being closed and the long queue at Stalybridge - is this correct?

In the end the woman sold me the return tickets I wanted, without the railcard discount, and I left the station as I had a booking elsewhere.

Were the rail staff correct in their actions? If not what do you suggest I do by means of complaint? At the very least I would expect the railcard discount to be refunded (if they were incorrect).

Many thanks for your advice.

Have a look at their customer promise or elsewhere to see if they have target queuing times for ticket sales. If you waited longer than that (or allowed at least that time before train departure) then IMHO you can argue that you acted reasonably when you got on the train and decided to pay later.
https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/corporate/passengers-charter

If they are vague on the matter - default to this:
https://www.transportfocus.org.uk/a...train-if-the-ticket-office-queue-is-too-long/

since this is also what you could expect to apply were you to appeal to Transport Focus / Rail Ombudsman if you are required to do so to claim your railcard discount.

7 mins over the 5 mins 'target' is probably cutting it a bit fine...but it should in theory have been enough. I typically find a TVM a slower way to get a ticket than a staffed desk personally!

It would always be more hassle free to try and find the gaurd, if feasible.

SLC · 19 Jan 2020

WesternLancer said:
Have a look at their customer promise or elsewhere to see if they have target queuing times for ticket sales. If you waited longer than that (or allowed at least that time before train departure) then IMHO you can argue that you acted reasonably when you got on the train and decided to pay later.
https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/corporate/passengers-charter

If they are vague on the matter - default to this:
https://www.transportfocus.org.uk/a...train-if-the-ticket-office-queue-is-too-long/

since this is also what you could expect to apply were you to appeal to Transport Focus / Rail Ombudsman if you are required to do so to claim your railcard discount.

7 mins over the 5 mins 'target' is probably cutting it a bit fine...but it should in theory have been enough. I typically find a TVM a slower way to get a ticket than a staffed desk personally!

It would always be more hassle free to try and find the gaurd, if feasible.

I suspect the important part of the Transport Focus link is this:

If you do get on the train without having bought a ticket and there were facilities to pay, or you did not get permission from station staff to get on without a ticket, you may be prosecuted for fare evasion, charged the full fare for the journey or issued with a penalty fare.

The "may" that I have highlighted is key. What scenarios mean you would be treated differently? The ambiguity is very unhelpful.

WesternLancer · 19 Jan 2020

SLC said:
I suspect the important part of the Transport Focus link is this:

The "may" that I have highlighted is key. What scenarios mean you would be treated differently? The ambiguity is very unhelpful.

staff or customer services discretion, or discretion used after ombudsman involvement I suspect...

always the problem with discretion - it creates inconsistency - and therin lies scope for costly argument....

I assume this is one reason why some TOCs have decided it's better to treat all customers as criminals / fare dodgers until proven otherwise....

Bletchleyite · 19 Jan 2020

SLC said:
The "may" that I have highlighted is key. What scenarios mean you would be treated differently? The ambiguity is very unhelpful.

Staff discretion, or staff who are either not PF trained or don't issue PFs/prosecute in order to prevent them being vulnerable to assault e.g. guards who are on the train alone.

I agree it isn't helpful and my personal view is that, for any given route, it should be more absolute, i.e. on a PF train, which should be shown on timetables as a PF train, there should be no on-board sales at all, and a train can't be a PF train if it serves a station without ticketing facilities. That's how the Swiss did it until they moved to all trains being PF trains.

trentvalley · 19 Jan 2020

Surely you should have bought the ticket via your phone???

gray1404 · 19 Jan 2020

Based on your account, the ticket office was closed and there was only one ticket machine at the station. When you came to use the machine (the fact about the other people there and the time is irreverent now because you were able to use the machine before departure) it froze on you and because the machine froze you were unable to purchase your ticket before departure. This is, in essence, a non working machine. In that case you were not provided by the train company a opportunity to purchase before travelling.

If the above is correct and as the guard did not come through the train selling tickets then your arrival at Manchester Victoria was your first opportunity to purchase. As such, you should have been able to buy the full range of tickets with your railcard discount applied. As such you were overcharged and Northern should refund you the additional fare paid. Can I also check you were sold the correct ticket type? i.e. they didn't insist on only selling you an Anytime ticket if you wanted an Off Peak one. I believe it would also be reasonable to complain about the poor customer service you received on arrival.

That also means the staff would have had no basis whatsoever for taking your details to report you. I would therefore make a complaint to Northern complaining about the fact you were over charged and the poor service you received. Staff should not be treating customers in this way if they have not had an opportunity to purchase.

I stress that all of the above is: 1. provided the booking office was indeed closed and 2. there was only that 1 ticket machine functioning at the station (which in the end didn't function as it froze).

gray1404 · 19 Jan 2020

trentvalley said:
Surely you should have bought the ticket via your phone???

There is NO requirement for customers to buy tickets by phone in the absence of facilities at a station. Please don't give out incorrect information.

martinsh · 19 Jan 2020

I too was at Stalybridge on Saturday - using the facilities. Whilst it was a little later when I walked past (about 1415), I can confirm that the ticket office was shut, and there was a large queue of people waiting to use the machine, and people seemed to be having trouble using it.

yorkie · 19 Jan 2020

trentvalley said:
Surely you should have bought the ticket via your phone???

There is no requirement to do this; people may choose to do this but there could be all sorts of reasons why they may choose not to.

WesternLancer · 19 Jan 2020

trentvalley said:
Surely you should have bought the ticket via your phone???

I often still use payphones, do they supply train tickets in less than 7 minutes?

My partner has a smart phone tho - often the battery is flat. She often does not find charging points, even on the pacer fleet...

rs101 · 19 Jan 2020

trentvalley said:
Surely you should have bought the ticket via your phone???

That's assuming you can even buy the appropriate ticket via phone. I certainly can't always do that - London Travelcards aren't available via the Greater Anglia app.

rs101 · 19 Jan 2020

WesternLancer said:
Have a look at their customer promise or elsewhere to see if they have target queuing times for ticket sales. If you waited longer than that (or allowed at least that time before train departure) then IMHO you can argue that you acted reasonably when you got on the train and decided to pay later.
https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/corporate/passengers-charter

If they are vague on the matter - default to this:
https://www.transportfocus.org.uk/a...train-if-the-ticket-office-queue-is-too-long/

since this is also what you could expect to apply were you to appeal to Transport Focus / Rail Ombudsman if you are required to do so to claim your railcard discount.

7 mins over the 5 mins 'target' is probably cutting it a bit fine...but it should in theory have been enough. I typically find a TVM a slower way to get a ticket than a staffed desk personally!

It would always be more hassle free to try and find the gaurd, if feasible.

If the ticket office was supposed to be open, but wasn't, then I'd also expect that to be relevant when explaining the time you allowed to purchase a ticket. Had this problem recently at Manningtree on a Saturday. the office had closed at 11am for the day, despite it supposedly being open until 8:45pm according to NRE.
That caused long delays in ticket purchasing as many of the travellers weren't regular commuters and were unfamiliar with the ticket machines.

trentvalley · 19 Jan 2020

gray1404 said:
There is NO requirement for customers to buy tickets by phone in the absence of facilities at a station. Please don't give out incorrect information.

I wasn’t giving any information out purely asking a question. Maybe I should have written could instead of should.

I do find the hostility towards e-tickets on this forum a little bemusing though.

Brissle Girl · 19 Jan 2020

trentvalley said:
I wasn’t giving any information out purely asking a question. Maybe I should have written could instead of should.

I do find the hostility towards e-tickets on this forum a little bemusing though.

Having seen many problems from using e-tickets on this forum, including one very current, I can absolutely see why some people are uncomfortable using them.

SLC · 19 Jan 2020

Thank you all for your thoughts. I intend to make a complaint but want to check that the TOC (in this case, Northern I believe?) have no recourse to take any further action against me? They can't retrospectively decide to issue a penalty fare (if valid, I'm not sure if it applies to this journey) or prosecute can they?

To answer the question about which ticket we were sold, they were Anytime Day Returns. I didn't even notice this at the time, I would have expected them to be off peak day returns.

Bevan Price · 19 Jan 2020

SLC said:
Yesterday I travelled from Stalybridge to Manchester Victoria on the 13:30 service. We (there were 4 of us in total) arrived about 7 minutes before the train was due as we needed to buy a ticket.

Unfortunately the desk was closed and there was a queue of at least 5 people in front of me to use the ticket machine. I asked the two groups in front of me if they were getting the same service (the next one) and if not could I jump ahead of them. They let me but I still didn't have enough time to complete my purchase as the machine froze on me. The guard didn't come through the train on the journey so at Victoria we went to the designated spot to purchase tickets.

There was a man stood beside a ticket desk - it wasn't clear what his role was but he was wearing hi-vis and a woman behind the desk. Between them they effectively accused me of not buying a ticket when I had the chance and that I should have bought one at Stalybridge. They also claimed that the ticket desk there was open and that there are two ticket machines (both untrue and I almost took photos to prove it just in case as I have read many reports on this forum of people not being believed but unfortunately I didn't).

They also refused to accept my Two Together railcard as they insisted I had the opportunity to purchase my ticket before boarding the train so therefore I was not eligible for this discount. My view is that I hadn't had opportunity to do this and this was the earliest point I had to buy a ticket.

My understanding is that I shouldn't have delayed my journey due to the ticket desk being closed and the long queue at Stalybridge - is this correct?

In the end the woman sold me the return tickets I wanted, without the railcard discount, and I left the station as I had a booking elsewhere.

Were the rail staff correct in their actions? If not what do you suggest I do by means of complaint? At the very least I would expect the railcard discount to be refunded (if they were incorrect).

Many thanks for your advice.

If you are unable to buy a ticket at the station, I would suggest that you board the train by the door where the conductor / guard is standing, and tell him/her that you need a ticket.....

gray1404 · 19 Jan 2020

An Off Peak Day Return is available for the journey you made. If this is the ticket you wanted then you should have been sold it on arrival at Manchester Victoria (subject to my post above about if there was no opportunity to purchase before boarding). In which case Northern should be refunding you the difference between the railcard discounted off peak day return fare for your journey (if this is the ticket you wanted) and the price you were forced to pay (the undiscounted Anytime Day Return) as a minimum.

To confirm, Northern have no case whatsoever to take action against you "after the event." Putting in a customer service complaint will not cause the former to happen. They cannot process your details for that purpose. You details were not taken on the day as you were not "reported" for fare evasion.

WesternLancer · 20 Jan 2020

It might be helpful for you to calculate exactly what you have been over charged by (Anytime vs Off peak, Railcard discount, also would any group ticket discount apply - would probably be instead of using the railcard I suspect) and request that amount.

This site may help - feel free to ask if you are not sure which ticket option listed would be what you would have had
http://www.brfares.com/#home
It looks like £5.50 off peak vs £6.50 Anytime before railcard discount applied to the fare (which is returns)

packermac · 20 Jan 2020

gray1404 said:
There is NO requirement for customers to buy tickets by phone in the absence of facilities at a station. Please don't give out incorrect information.

Not everyone has a smartphone or wants one, (I certainly want nothing with to do with touch screen technology on my own devices).
Based on how passengers get treated surely it would be clearer to say if you can not buy a ticket at a station that has either a booking office or a TVM(s) because they are closed or not working then you cannot travel. Removes all confusion.

scrapy · 20 Jan 2020

Bevan Price said:
If you are unable to buy a ticket at the station, I would suggest that you board the train by the door where the conductor / guard is standing, and tell him/her that you need a ticket.....

Again not a requirement. My interpretatation of this is that Northern have acted wrongly and a discounted ticket should have been issued as there was no open ticket office and the machine was faulty (assuming the machine actually froze and wasn't just slow in processing the transaction) ten seconds processing can seem a lifetime when you're late for a train.

Antman · 21 Jan 2020

SLC said:
Yesterday I travelled from Stalybridge to Manchester Victoria on the 13:30 service. We (there were 4 of us in total) arrived about 7 minutes before the train was due as we needed to buy a ticket.

Unfortunately the desk was closed and there was a queue of at least 5 people in front of me to use the ticket machine. I asked the two groups in front of me if they were getting the same service (the next one) and if not could I jump ahead of them. They let me but I still didn't have enough time to complete my purchase as the machine froze on me. The guard didn't come through the train on the journey so at Victoria we went to the designated spot to purchase tickets.

There was a man stood beside a ticket desk - it wasn't clear what his role was but he was wearing hi-vis and a woman behind the desk. Between them they effectively accused me of not buying a ticket when I had the chance and that I should have bought one at Stalybridge. They also claimed that the ticket desk there was open and that there are two ticket machines (both untrue and I almost took photos to prove it just in case as I have read many reports on this forum of people not being believed but unfortunately I didn't).

They also refused to accept my Two Together railcard as they insisted I had the opportunity to purchase my ticket before boarding the train so therefore I was not eligible for this discount. My view is that I hadn't had opportunity to do this and this was the earliest point I had to buy a ticket.

My understanding is that I shouldn't have delayed my journey due to the ticket desk being closed and the long queue at Stalybridge - is this correct?

In the end the woman sold me the return tickets I wanted, without the railcard discount, and I left the station as I had a booking elsewhere.

Were the rail staff correct in their actions? If not what do you suggest I do by means of complaint? At the very least I would expect the railcard discount to be refunded (if they were incorrect).

Many thanks for your advice.

Surely if the ticket office was closed the TOC have failed? Sounds like the staff at Manchester Victoria were just being awkward.

Snow1964 · 21 Jan 2020

I'm not sure what the ticket machines are like at your start station
But some used to not be able two-together railcard tickets as the option doesn't appear
Not sure if this is still the case

Presumably if you photographed a machine frozen or unable to complete transaction then it is bonkers for Inspector to claim it was working

SteveM70 · 21 Jan 2020

Greenboy said:
Sounds like the staff at Manchester Victoria were just being awkward.

Standard behaviour for them I’m afraid

Default position is the customer is in the wrong and trying to evade their fare

bkhtele · 27 Jan 2020

The best way to avoid a problem is to buy before you board. If the service/ speed of service is poor complain. In a penalty fare area you may have to deal with revenue protection, who may choose to prosecute or threaten to prosecute. If this happens it can at a minimum lead to a lot of inconvenience. Remember many people arrive at a station at the last minute choose to board without queuing and may also avoid paying for a ticket. We all end up paying for their fare avoidance. Of course If the machine was not working you can buy later. However if the user before & after your transaction made successful transactions it could be difficult to prove it wasn't working in court.

Railcard not accepted when buying ticket at destination

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