Connectivity Challenges with Digital Railcard

[Enjoy12481632]

Hi,


I have a valid 3-year railcard with trip.com, and I generally use the mobile app to access it. However, I recently faced a challenge when a train staff member insisted on seeing the railcard through the app. Unfortunately, trip.com does not allow offline storage of the railcard, and due to data constraints, I am unable to access it immediately, especially in areas with poor connectivity such as tunnels.

I understand that the staff member is just doing their job to prevent fraudulent activities related to screenshots, and I respect that. I tried showing a screenshot of the railcard, but it was not accepted.

Given this situation, I am seeking guidance on my options for handling such scenarios in the future as it's a waste of time for myself and the ticketer.

 

[AM9]

Hi,


I have a valid 3-year railcard with trip.com, and I generally use the mobile app to access it. However, I recently faced a challenge when a train staff member insisted on seeing the railcard through the app. Unfortunately, trip.com does not allow offline storage of the railcard, and due to data constraints, I am unable to access it immediately, especially in areas with poor connectivity such as tunnels.

I understand that the staff member is just doing their job to prevent fraudulent activities related to screenshots, and I respect that. I tried showing a screenshot of the railcard, but it was not accepted.

Given this situation, I am seeking guidance on my options for handling such scenarios in the future as it's a waste of time for myself and the ticketer.

If it's a railcard that's available as a real world physical card then that's your best bet. They also work just as well in tunnels and don't require any batteries to be kept charged.

 

[Narrowgauge725]

When asked once out of four ticket inspections over the last two days I didn’t have signal. Annoyingly I had it open but for some reason it dropped out. Mine is on the official Railcard App

 

[kristiang85]

Generally I find train staff quite understanding of tech issues. I once forgot to reload my Railcard after getting a new phone, and they said they'd come back later and check it. In the end I sorted it before they left the carriage and showed them, all good.

Another time it just crashed and they said fine.

But i guess it totally depends on the mood of who you get, which you can rely on. Paper is always best in that respect, as advised above.

 

[Birmingham]

I understand that the staff member is just doing their job to prevent fraudulent activities related to screenshots, and I respect that. I tried showing a screenshot of the railcard, but it was not accepted.

Out of interest, what happened on this occasion?

 

[Mcr Warrior]

By the way, what was the rationale, when they were first introduced in/around 2018/9, for 26-30 Railcards being made available in digital format only?

 

[lfc84]

Hi,


I have a valid 3-year railcard with trip.com, and I generally use the mobile app to access it. However, I recently faced a challenge when a train staff member insisted on seeing the railcard through the app. Unfortunately, trip.com does not allow offline storage of the railcard, and due to data constraints, I am unable to access it immediately, especially in areas with poor connectivity such as tunnels.

I understand that the staff member is just doing their job to prevent fraudulent activities related to screenshots, and I respect that. I tried showing a screenshot of the railcard, but it was not accepted.

Given this situation, I am seeking guidance on my options for handling such scenarios in the future as it's a waste of time for myself and the ticketer.

I'm sure I read in a other thread on here that railcards stored in the trip.com app don't require data connectivity. They used to (according to the thread but not anymore).

Put your phone in flight mode and try and access the Railcard. See what happens. That would be a test which mimics the connectivity issues on a train / in a tunnel.

 

[Hadders]

By the way, what was the rationale, when they were first introduced in/around 2018/9, for 26-30 Railcards being made available in digital format only?

Because people in that age group tend to do more things online and through apps compared to older people. Also, it gives the railway the opportunity to test out moving things to digital only.

I've got a railcard on the Trainsplit app. My observations are it doesn't need a continuous data signal to show in the app. It does need to connect to data eevery so often (I'm not sure exactly how often it needs to do this) but I've experimented by turning off the data and wifi to my phoen and it still shows.

Screen shots of railcards are (rightly) not accepted because of the risk of them being shared with others. To answer your question you need to make sure you have sufficient data to be able to use the railcard. If you can't do this then you're better off having a physical railcard.

 

[SussexSeagull]

I once had to ask a ticket inspector to wait going into Horsham while I reloaded the Railcard app on my iPhone because it was so long since I had been asked to show my Network Card my phone offloaded the app!

 

[island]

Screenshots of Railcards aren't acceptable; you need to display it through the correct app.

If you've chosen to use some unconventional app to buy and display your Railcard, then you need to be able to do whatever is necessary to display it when requested by staff. Consider using a physical Railcard, or a better app, for future Railcard purchases.

Many trains have Wifi now.

 

[CharlieSpotted]

Many trains have Wifi now.

Which, in my experience, rarely works to any acceptable degree (or at all) but, yeah...

 

[Bletchleyite]

Which, in my experience, rarely works to any acceptable degree (or at all) but, yeah...

Rail wi-fi is just a mobile phone in a box and thus other than having a slightly bigger aerial isn't really significantly better than your own phone.

If you've chosen to use some unconventional app to buy and display your Railcard, then you need to be able to do whatever is necessary to display it when requested by staff. Consider using a physical Railcard, or a better app, for future Railcard purchases.

Dare I suggest, at the risk of sounding like a shill the way I've been defending them the past few weeks, that T*******e might be the least worst? It certainly seems least flaky, though it's a pain if you didn't buy through them as you have to go through menus to get to it.

I think Trainsplit (and the forum version?) do them too now, though, that may be better?

 

[Haywain]

Rail wi-fi is just a mobile phone in a box and thus other than having a slightly bigger aerial isn't really significantly better than your own phone.

The real advantage is that the train wifi will feed from multiple networks, while your phone will only use one at a time. Plus, on many trains, your phone is inside an inefficient Faraday cage!

 

[WelshBluebird]

If you've chosen to use some unconventional app to buy and display your Railcard, then you need to be able to do whatever is necessary to display it when requested by staff. Consider using a physical Railcard, or a better app, for future Railcard purchases.

I'd hardly say an accredited retailer is "some unconventional app".

Many trains have Wifi now.

Which hardly ever works

 

[island]

I'd hardly say an accredited retailer is "some unconventional app".

"Trip.com" is absolutely an unconventional app to buy a Railcard from. Normal people use the Railcard website, or maybe Trainline or a TOC.

Which hardly ever works

I've found very few issues with train Wifi.

 

[Bletchleyite]

"Trip.com" is absolutely an unconventional app to buy a Railcard from. Normal people use the Railcard website, or maybe Trainline or a TOC.

It's accredited and therefore should work properly.

You can't just set up your own Railcard sales sites, you have to be accredited.

 

[WelshBluebird]

"Trip.com" is absolutely an unconventional app to buy a Railcard from. Normal people use the Railcard website, or maybe Trainline or a TOC.

It is an accredited retailer that has been given the ok by the RDG (which is comprised of the ToCs - as you know). It isnt just a random website. If passengers can't trust officially accredited retailers - what can they trust?

I've found very few issues with train Wifi.

Lucky you.

 

[SussexSeagull]

If you genuinely can't access your railcard due to unavoidable connectivity issues, such as being in a bad reception area (as opposed to battery running out or no credit) then they should either wait for you to be able to get a signal or come back to you.

If the industry wants to push people into having cards on their phones they need to accept it isn't without challenges.

 

[Titfield]

If you genuinely can't access your railcard due to unavoidable connectivity issues, such as being in a bad reception area (as opposed to battery running out or no credit) then they should either wait for you to be able to get a signal or come back to you.

If the industry wants to push people into having cards on their phones they need to accept it isn't without challenges.

Yes indeed. I find the on train wi-fi with SWR to be horrendous yet the station wi-fi is usually excellent.

 

[Adam Williams]

Proper offline support is an accreditation requirement for Digital Railcard retailers, and it's something we made damn sure we got right when we implemented railcards at Raileasy, because it's so important to be able to show a Railcard to a member of on-train staff and there's no guarantee whatsoever of adequate mobile signal on the UK rail network. The data required to display the card gets persisted into a local, offline SQLite database.

TrainPal/CTrip/Trip.com would've been subject to the same requirements as everyone else, in theory. If you can prove it doesn't work satisfactorily offline, I would complain to the retailer in the first instance.

I do disagree slightly with the posters here suggesting that it's OP's fault for choosing an unconventional retailer. The entire point of the accreditation process is to ensure passengers are not disadvantaged based on who they buy from when it comes to the basics.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I wonder if the problem isn't when fully offline, but when the phone thinks there's one bar of signal but it isn't useful? I've had that before with OS Maps - stick it in flight mode and it works off the downloads, but if there's *almost* no signal it tries to download and fails.

 

[CharlieSpotted]

I wonder if the problem isn't when fully offline, but when the phone thinks there's one bar of signal but it isn't useful? I've had that before with OS Maps - stick it in flight mode and it works off the downloads, but if there's *almost* no signal it tries to download and fails.

That's quite possible but isn't impossible to handle, at least on Android, where there are mechanisms available to detect a "poor" connection as opposed to a lost connection and adapt accordingly.

 

[Spurs]

That's quite possible but isn't impossible to handle, at least on Android, where there are mechanisms available to detect a "poor" connection as opposed to a lost connection and adapt accordingly.

Does this work when the phones connected to the WiFi, and that connection itself is absolutely fine, but the WiFi provider isn't actually accessing the internet reliably?

 

[CharlieSpotted]

Does this work when the phones connected to the WiFi, and that connection itself is absolutely fine, but the WiFi provider isn't actually accessing the internet reliably?

It works regardless of the connection medium - Mobile, WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, Ethernet... whatever. It uses network metrics - throughput, jitter, packet loss, etc.

 

[WelshBluebird]

If that is the issue then surely the answer is to load the Railcard from the offline state and them do any network connectivity related bits afterwards. Would be disappointed in the developer and the accreditation process if that got through!

 

[Llanigraham]

Which hardly ever works

I have been using trains with wifi in many areas of the country and haven't found that to be the case at all.
Even in poor areas of "off-rail" reception on the Cambrian I have been able to get a good service, and on my numerous journeys to London it has never failed.

 

[James H]

I find the on train wi-fi with SWR to be horrendous

I find it much better these days than it was a couple of years ago. Likewise GTR wifi is fairly robust

 

[sor]

If you've chosen to use some unconventional app to buy and display your Railcard, then you need to be able to do whatever is necessary to display it when requested by staff. Consider using a physical Railcard, or a better app, for future Railcard purchases.

Many trains have Wifi now.

Though it should be incumbent on the various app developers to think about the situation in which their product will be used and design for it. eg. outside of mobile coverage, the customer might not have a data plan, the train may not have wifi or it may be broken. If it's some RDG imposed thing (unlikely as the official app, shoddy though it is, does not have that restriction) then that needs changing too. Better still would be a more robust process to link a railcard to a purchase so that it doesn't require you to show it, or changes to the rules that account for the nature of app based railcards - but that's a well trodden topic for another thread

Your argument especially falls flat for the 26-30 which you can't get even a physical version - not an issue in the OP's case but it is for many.

 

[Enjoy12481632]

Screenshots of Railcards aren't acceptable; you need to display it through the correct app.

If you've chosen to use some unconventional app to buy and display your Railcard, then you need to be able to do whatever is necessary to display it when requested by staff. Consider using a physical Railcard, or a better app, for future Railcard purchases.

Many trains have Wifi now.

It is not an unconventional app. They are subject to regulations just like the rest of the companies. If train companies have a problem - then suggest for railcards not to be allowed to partner with them.

Out of interest, what happened on this occasion?

He came back after 10 minutes.

 

[island]

It is not an unconventional app.

As I said above in post 15, it is.