But if the risk of penalties is so great, then as long as those implementations of digital railcards are deficient, getting a plastic one would seem to be a safe bet.
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Connectivity Challenges with Digital Railcard
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MrJeeves
Established Member
Not all are, I hope!
superkopite
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But where is the risk? If you can't present the device the Railcard held on doesn't have a network signal, the person inspecting waits until it does, or just goes about their day. Why should this be the customer's problem? The app is accredited, it should work. If it doesn't work, that is not the customer's fault.
Indeed. And since it's clear there's a specific app with a specific defect, the industry (whoever deals with accreditation) needs to act. Remove accreditation immediately until it's compliant.
Adam Williams
Established Member
This isn't how [some] staff at TOCs treat customers in reality, unfortunately.
You're making a common mistake and assuming rail companies want to deliver a good customer experience - as can be seen from many posts on here, not many of them are, unfortunately.
superkopite
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It's not their fault, but unfortunately given the laws currently in place it still makes them a criminal and, more unfortunately, it's possible that the operator will take advantage of that to prosecute.
superkopite
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I strongly disagree, the app not working does not make you a criminal and I fail to see how the failure of industry-accredited equipment could lead to successful prosecution
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It does. The Byelaw is strict liability and the failure of tech isn't a listed defence.
superkopite
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This is not a failure of "tech" it's the failure of the product the industry approved for use knowing its limitations. It is not prosecutable
Bletchleyite
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superkopite
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sure, it is. We can disagree all day
We certainly can but unlike a lot of internet discussions there really is a right and a wrong answer.
martin_coxy
New Member
I bought the discounted 3 year Senior Railcard from Trip.com. I’m frustrated that I can add tickets to the Google and Samsung wallets but not the railcard.
I tested it for offline use and discovered the following:
Signal is required to access the ‘account’ section of the app, so if you’re opening the app at the time you’re asked for the railcard and you’re offline you’re screwed.
However, if you access the ‘my railcards’ section when you do have a signal and then go offline you can still open the railcard and the colour changing logo still appears as it should.
So the simple workaround is to have the railcard displayed or at least be in the ‘my railcards’ section of the app while you have signal and just leave the app open in the background during your journey.
Not perfect but it solves all these extreme scares about prosecution etc..
What a faff. Just another benefit of not having a real railcard.
I think the problem is that nobody cares. Or, if someone does actually care, they're obviously powerless to fix things.
But TOCs are happy to rush their customers to court when the rubbish they inflict on customers goes wrong.
Does any other industry have such a lackadaisical approach to customer facing technology?
Western Sunset
Established Member
Is there an argument for the 26-30 railcard to be available as a physical card option until all accredited platforms are made totally robust?
Or, you know, just made available as a physical card anyway like all the other railcards?
Of course it will probably go the other way...
I doubt that senior railcard travel will ever mandate possession of a smartphone.
I don't believe any Railcards can be added to wallet apps, due to their inability to display a photograph of the holder.
People can (and should) just vote with their feet and use the official Railcard platform or a TOC-based one rather than half-baked third party nonsense apps.
The Railcard app has not been without its bugs, including some which have left passengers wrongly forced to pay penalties.
And there are plenty of third party Railcard apps that aren't "nonsense".
Haywain
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And quite a few TOC-based ones are provided by third party retailers.
Also the required animated NR logo.
MrJeeves
Established Member
Google Wallet, at least, would allow for an animated hologram (it natively supports a rainbow hologram around the barcode, but obviously not the double arrows) as well as facilitate cardholder photos with limited effort.
It'd even be able to hotlist railcards through remote updates, and that's also the case for iOS (though it's more effort I think).
The direction of travel will be for technology to play an increasing role, and the number of physical railcards issued to diminish.
Current 40 and 50 year olds, who increasingly use smartphones for every day stuff like banking, storing tickets etc aren't going to get to the age of 60 and think 'Now I qualify for a Senior Railcard I must make sure I get a physical one'.
Isn't there also a risk that if railcard could be stored in wallets, they could be downloaded multiple times?
Quite. I must say I've historically been a physical railcard person but I last year I purchased a Two Together Railcard through Trainsplit (simply because I didn't have passport photos to hand to have a photocard made up - I simply cropped photos already on my phone and used them). Got to say that I've been impressed with the user interface, and it doesn't need to be constantly connected either.
MrJeeves
Established Member
I don't personally see an issue with this. Google Wallet lets you only allow a pass to be downloaded on to one device at a given time through a generated token at the time you add the pass. I'm not sure about Apple Wallet though.
People using Trainline can download their railcard onto an unlimited amount of devices. And digital Railcards have people's photos on them for a reason — so that they cannot be transferred to other people.
I don't foresee how being able to have your rail card on as many phones as you want would reasonably increase misuse. Even if a Railcard was not scanned, you'd see from the photo. Anyone bothering to create a fake Railcard with the Google or Apple Wallet APIs would probably be smart enough to create their own fake digital railcard app in the first place, and this is exactly why people should have their Railcard scanned by staff.
I was thinking of railcards being distributed to family and friends for them to use. I don't know about Google but with Apple I routinely distribute tickets I purchase to friends and also download them all to my phone in case of issues on the day with someones phone running out of charge.
I know a photo provides some mitigation but I suspect it might still be a risk. Does anyone's passport photo actually look like them???
MrJeeves
Established Member
I mean at the end of the day the same is possible to an extent with the two Railcard downloads (or unlimited on Trainline for whatever reason) anyway.
My hair is certainly much longer than my passport photo but I feel like I'm still recognisable!