E-ticket "battery" issue - is names on tickets an option for a fix?

[ComUtoR]

Or try this one:

"If you had misplaced or forgotten your ticket, or if your phone battery had run out, and you discovered this when your ticket was being inspected, would you prefer...

a. To be prosecuted under the Regulation of Railways Act, including a criminal record and a three figure fine
b. To be able to log into your LNER account at a ticket machine and reprint your ticket for free"

What if you are on a moving train. TVMs on trains ?

 

[Flying Snail]

Clearly most people don't think they will need such a feature, but when they need it they will REALLY need it. Thus, it is a beneficial feature.

What you do need to avoid is anyone being REQUIRED to log in to use a TVM. Some may fear that.

The main issue I would have with having a "dead phone" alternative is it runs the risk of being another way for fare evaders to game the system.

 

[Haywain]

I think you're drawing wrong conclusions here. There is no reason to oppose such a feature (if you don't want a given feature, you simply don't use it), and so I doubt there was opposition.

So, if you ask people if they would like the ability to log into their account at a TVM and the response is along the lines of 'Absolutely not', that isn't opposition?

 

[londonbridge]

If you cannot show an e-ticket when asked because your battery is flat then it is no different to losing a physical ticket.

It’s the holders responsibility to maintain their phone to be able show the e-ticket.

If you know your battery or phone is iffy then you buy a physical ticket from either a booking office or a print of your e-ticket just in case. Many print a copy as back up which is a good idea.

The problem is some don’t agree. When challenged and the phone is flat some passengers accept this and pay up.

Some will also argue the toss waving their blank phone at you. At least if they accept a UFN they can at least provide evidence to perhaps nullify it later. Unfortunately scrotes also wave blank phones at you claiming they’re flat without having bought a ticket in the first place.

The key word being “If”. I once had my phone crash and shut down when the battery was on 40%. This was the first indication that something was amiss with either it, or the battery. How do you account for that, and subsequently being unable to access the ticket, when you genuinely had no idea anything was wrong? I would have thought your body language would also be a good indicator in weeding out those who genuinely needed to charge from those who were pretending to have a flat battery in order to hide the absence of a ticket.

 

[Bletchleyite]

What if you are on a moving train. TVMs on trains ?

RPIs generally carry handheld devices which print off PF "tickets" and the likes. It wouldn't exactly be hard to make those devices able to look up an e-ticket based on a few pieces of information about it (e.g. purchaser name, origin, destination, first day of validity) and reissue it. That's enough information that there's no way anyone could usefully randomly guess it.

 

[mmh]

What if you are on a moving train. TVMs on trains ?

Simple. The person asking you if you have a ticket uses their magic device to check, which I think has been rather the point of this thread all along...

 

[Bletchleyite]

So, if you ask people if they would like the ability to log into their account at a TVM and the response is along the lines of 'Absolutely not', that isn't opposition?

It depends on the precise question that was asked and in what context. Survey questions are often very leading.

But no, even that doesn't mean they oppose others being able to do so. It means they don't want to.

But even if a person did object, it might be the grounds for objection are spurious, e.g. a security concern (which is really a non-issue, as why would someone go and log onto someone's account for nefarious purposes on a TVM when they could do it more surreptitiously on their phone or PC?)

 

[mmh]

But even if a person did object, it might be the grounds for objection are spurious, e.g. a security concern (which is really a non-issue, as why would someone go and log onto someone's account for nefarious purposes on a TVM when they could do it more surreptitiously on their phone or PC?)

Given the railway wants us to stop using cash, would it be possible to have a system which didn't even require a login? Present your card, the machine shows you your tickets and allows you to print them.

I have no idea if this is feasible currently, but it is how some TOD machines used to work, so it is or was technically possible.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Given the railway wants us to stop using cash, would it be possible to have a system which didn't even require a login? Present your card, the machine shows you your tickets and allows you to print them.

I have no idea if this is feasible currently, but it is how some TOD machines used to work, so it is or was technically possible.

It was stopped because people picked up dropped cards/pickpocketed people and went to the TVM to print any tickets and then resell them. That's why another piece of information is required.

 

[ComUtoR]

Simple. The person asking you if you have a ticket uses their magic device to check, which I think has been rather the point of this thread all along...

This magic device... Would it have the ability to look up a persons LNER account ?

 

[WelshBluebird]

If you had been issued an e-ticket, you should also have been sent the PDF; no need to use an app.

You may show an e-ticket as a PDF using any device, or use an app (where applicable) or print it onto paper

Tickets that are restricted to apps are *not* e-tickets.

There was a middle ground when GWR first introduced etickets where they were using the standard eticket format (so not an mticket which as someone else has described requires activation etc), but only delivered the tickets via their app. That has thankfully now changed so you also get the PDF too, but certainly did cause a fair amount of confusion in the early days. Given the person you were replying to was talking about GWR I'm willing to bet it was during this period of time where the incident occurred. I do wonder if there are other ToC's doing something similar still!

An electronic ticket only accessible via an app is the older m-ticket style. They typically require activation and once this is done have a moving coloured bar across the top and a real time clock display; presumably this is a security feature to prevent them being screenshotted and shared

As above. Thankfully GWR have sorted this now but was a pain at the time!

 

[mmh]

It was stopped because people picked up dropped cards/pickpocketed people and went to the TVM to print any tickets and then resell them. That's why another piece of information is required.

Seems a little far-fetched to me. As it worked back then, you'd have to assume every card you find or pickpocketed had been used to buy a ticket.

Way back when you'd have used the card somewhere you knew didn't do online checking, with a locally stored list of cards to reject only updated once a day overnight. People knew the floor limit of such places to make sure they didn't need an authorisation phone call.

The first generation of London Underground ticket machines that took cards made no checks, just read the strip. I imagine that was taken advantage of a lot.

In the modern world you'd just go into any shop and use it as contactless and hope. If it's declined, "oh damn, must have used it too many times, can't remember the PIN, sorry," and walk out.

 

[miklcct]

I think that "failing to show a ticket" needs to be decriminalised as soon as possible. In such case it should be mandatory to be dealt with a penalty fare. To deal with "battery" cases, we can have a policy that a penalty fare can be refunded if the explanation given is "battery died", and subsequently the customer shows a valid ticket for the journey.

 

[stuu]

There was a middle ground when GWR first introduced etickets where they were using the standard eticket format (so not an mticket which as someone else has described requires activation etc), but only delivered the tickets via their app. That has thankfully now changed so you also get the PDF too, but certainly did cause a fair amount of confusion in the early days. Given the person you were replying to was talking about GWR I'm willing to bet it was during this period of time where the incident occurred. I do wonder if there are other ToC's doing something similar still!

As above. Thankfully GWR have sorted this now but was a pain at the time!

When did they start sending PDFs as well? I haven't actually needed to buy an advance since last August, but they definitely didn't then

 

[AlterEgo]

Italy doesn't even issue proper tickets. A code is all that is needed. It can be verbally regurgitated from memory, displayed on tissue paper, an email, a tattoo on your backside, conveyed via Morse Code to the guard, etc etc.

Of course that relies on a central database and the sheer simplicity of that system and the presence of a database scares some people on here, but is not a concern for most normal travellers.

 

[Clayton]

With yet another thread having come up in D&P about a battery having run out and a hefty out of court settlement being demanded, is there a simple fix to all this staring the railway in the face?

Most train tickets are bought by the person who will use them with no intention of transfer, and of the ones that aren't, they are bought for a known individual such as husband, wife, friend or children. So why not offer the option of tickets being named, in return for which if a phone battery had run out, you could later produce the ticket in the same manner as you can a forgotten Railcard or season ticket to have any penalty cancelled, as with a name on it it wouldn't likely have been used by someone else?

There doesn't seem to be much scope for abuse unless you know someone of the same name, and e-ticket scans can similarly be checked which would identify misuse like someone going through a gateline with it showing that transfer had taken place. Yet it would deal with this issue quite nicely. It could be limited how often an individual could do it in order to further control abuse - perhaps free the first time in a rolling 12 months and then £10 admin fee for the second and third instance - beyond that you really do need to think about what you're doing.

Obviously tickets could still be issued unnamed for those who prefer that, but then if you can't produce the ticket you could be prosecuted.

I use my phone all the time for all sorts of things, but I am a bit nervous about e-tickets for long train journeys. You can’t be sure of having access to a charger. However, I certainly wouldn’t pay a fine for having a flat phone battery! How could that stand up in court if there was an electronic record of you having bought the ticket prior to travel?

 

[johncrossley]

Surely in the unlikely event of a phone problem, it should be easy enough for the customer to ask a friendly fellow passenger or staff member to log in to the customer's email and retrieve the pdf.

 

[87 027]

This puts me in mind of the Scout motto "be prepared." I travelled on GWR last week, e-ticket saved into Apple Wallet but backup printout in the back pocket just in case

 

[Class800]

I think that "failing to show a ticket" needs to be decriminalised as soon as possible. In such case it should be mandatory to be dealt with a penalty fare. To deal with "battery" cases, we can have a policy that a penalty fare can be refunded if the explanation given is "battery died", and subsequently the customer shows a valid ticket for the journey.

would make sort of sense to me, although would prefer to have a requirement for evasion to be deliberate and proof on the railway to prove you deliberately didn't prove it, with actions not necessarily taken as proof of intent. There's too much punishment of accidental mistakes.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

There is nothing wrong with e-tickets; if people are concerned their device may run out of battery they should print the ticket. Simple.

Though I suspect a very large percentage of purchasers don’t actually have a printer.

 

[Furrball]

Yes, it was an interim thing so a member of staff could verify it by looking at it. The barcode, which leads to a record of usage, now solves that problem. It was innovative for its time (though it was done on buses* first) but it's not needed now.

The mind boggles as to why ScotRail are still pushing this outmoded system.

* Amazingly it was Arriva - it was so far back that the original app ran on featurephones, which took rudimentary Java apps.

The ScotRail app has the moving bar and clock on the human readable ticket

On the QR code page there is nothing and it can quite happily be screengrabbed and shared (which is what we do when using the app to buy tickets with Two Together railcard)

 

[miklcct]

would make sort of sense to me, although would prefer to have a requirement for evasion to be deliberate and proof on the railway to prove you deliberately didn't prove it, with actions not necessarily taken as proof of intent. There's too much punishment of accidental mistakes.

The RoRA offence of avoiding payment requires intent so it is good for prosecuting fare evasion.

A penalty fare isn't a mean for punishment - it's a way to regularise ticketless travel so one can't be held for fare evasion, and by refunding such penalty fare if it's truly accidental (such as forgetting railcard), travellers are protected. I also think that a penalty fare should be changed to a flat "on board surcharge" (e.g. the appropriate single + £50) to reflect that it isn't a punishment.

 

[johncrossley]

Are there any cases of passengers who have been prosecuted after being pickpocketed on the train?

 

[Haywain]

Though I suspect a very large percentage of purchasers don’t actually have a printer.

And manage perfectly well. This forum can get very hung up about problems encountered by a very tiny minority.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The ScotRail app has the moving bar and clock on the human readable ticket

On the QR code page there is nothing and it can quite happily be screengrabbed and shared (which is what we do when using the app to buy tickets with Two Together railcard)

That is physically true, but an m-ticket is not valid unless that "moving bar and clock" can be verified. I would very much not do this, just show the two tickets from the same phone. An RPI in a bad mood could cause you a load of issues here.

 

[yorkie]

Though I suspect a very large percentage of purchasers don’t actually have a printer.

I don't have a printer but I have access to a printer.

As I said before, the rail industry could offer the ability to print them from a TVM.

It was stopped because people picked up dropped cards/pickpocketed people and went to the TVM to print any tickets and then resell them. That's why another piece of information is required.

Not quite; there was a thread about it at the time if you want more info

 

[WelshBluebird]

When did they start sending PDFs as well? I haven't actually needed to buy an advance since last August, but they definitely didn't then

Certainly looking back at my emails I have booking confirmation emails from GWR that have the eticket as a pdf going back to June 2020.

Surely in the unlikely event of a phone problem, it should be easy enough for the customer to ask a friendly fellow passenger or staff member to log in to the customer's email and retrieve the pdf.

Not always. Especially these days when 2FA / MFA is heavily recommended and many people use password managers and the like.

 

[mmh]

Not always. Especially these days when 2FA / MFA is heavily recommended and many people use password managers and the like.

This is a very good point. Without a working phone or computer handy I'd know hardly any passwords, and that's before multi-factor auth.

 

[johncrossley]

If you've got some webspace then you could upload pdfs there and in an emergency you can simply give an inspector the web address. Or use something like pCloud where you can create a short downloadable link to a directory where you save all your pdfs. This can be written down or memorised. Then you can give the inspector that link.

 

[Haywain]

If you've got some webspace then you could upload pdfs there and in an emergency you can simply give an inspector the web address. Or use something like pCloud where you can create a short downloadable link to a directory where you save all your pdfs. This can be written down or memorised. Then you can give the inspector that link.

To which they will show a complete lack of interest. It’s for you to show a ticket not for rail staff to go and find it.