It impacts on customers. It's annoying to find barriers programmed to reject your ticket, staff who don't know about things like break of journey and it's a nervous experience using ticket acceptance or being legitimately on the wrong train on an Advance ticket - what happens if staff don't know/understand/care?
From my personal experience travelling, there's absolutely an issue with staff training and the absolute lack of understanding when it comes to ticket restrictions/acceptance etc. It shouldn't be the customers job to explain to a gateline employee why their wrong and, as is well documented, often creates conflict. I'm all for revenue protection but the TOCs have to live up to their side of the deal too.
It's even worse with the agency gateline staff - the level of training is abysmal, it's a fine first, ask questions later culture, and many find subsequent liaison with the TOCs revenue team worse than that of a car park operator - atleast they tend to play by their own rules.
Mind you, this has all played out quite publicly in court, with (if I recall correctly) TPE and Northern having to refund a sizeable sum in fines.
Customer service standards are low on the railway, and getting worse. TOCs have embraced their niche being transport for journeys where you have no other way of doing them, or the alternatives are even more unappealing, but have to be done (commuting, business travel, appointments) or the destination is appealing enough to put up with it (London, major events).
Absolutely agree wholeheartedly. I joined the rail industry in 2011 - at this point, the First group TOCs I worked for viewed customer service as the engine which drives the business. It showed through on a service delivery front, but even better, worked well for the bottom line. We're now going entirely the other way - to the extent that you near enough require university level training in the rail ticketing system and conflict resolution, should there be any minor deviation from the journey you initially purchased a ticket for.
It’s a government thing, as they’ve identified that this is one way they can claw back some money.
However I think many passengers do actually like it as well, as people generally don’t like seeing others get away without paying when they’ve paid themselves, especially with rail fares not exactly being cheap these days.
To an extent I do agree, however, I also think there's a whole load of people who find showing their ticket an inconvenience, especially if asked to do so multiple times in a journey. It's a balance, of course, but when you scan it through a barrier, show it to the guard, show it to revenue who board 2 stops later, show it to the second guard who gets on 1 hour 45 into your journey and decides to do a full check, then finally get to finish the ticket relay in the destination barrier, it does get a touch excessive!
There was always quite a strong ethos in Regional Railways of checking tickets. It was always quite a step-change for people used to the London/south-east area to find the guards being pretty religious on tickets. South West Trains always seemed pretty hot on it too, with the obvious exception of the London metro routes.
I think the main difference nowadays is that between the attitude of a guard and revenue protection. In my experience, guards tend to be more relaxed (along with having less enforcement powers) and more prepared to lend a sympathetic ear.
