E-Tickets being inaccessible/difficult to use for the elderly.

[miklcct]

Whenever I've used e-tickets (which isn't often since I live in the land of Southeastern), I've always saved them to my Google Wallet. I've always found it very convenient, particularly how it automatically brightens the screen when displaying the ticket. Is there any significant advantage to using a different wallet app?

Not all retailers support Google Wallet as they use a proprietary format, compared to PKPASS which is an open standard. For example, Southern, National Express, and for a long time ago in the past, Trainsplit only support Apple Wallet.

I started using an Apple Wallet-compatible wallet on Android when I joined Aeroflot Bonus programme a few years ago, which only supported Apple Wallet by then and recommended a compatible wallet app for use on Android.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Whenever I've used e-tickets (which isn't often since I live in the land of Southeastern), I've always saved them to my Google Wallet. I've always found it very convenient, particularly how it automatically brightens the screen when displaying the ticket. Is there any significant advantage to using a different wallet app?

Google Wallet doesn't do the ubiquitous PKPASS. However increasingly websites also support that.

iPhone is not a good value of money considering that, by installing the appropriate combination of apps, other phone models can do more at a cheaper price.

There are literally hundreds of apps on the Google Play store to handle pkpass files.

My recommendation was to someone who has difficulty with tech. Without any shadow of a doubt iOS is more intuitive for non tech people. Of course you can make Android do stuff if you are tech savvy, but this thread is about people who are not.

 

[Halwynd]

My wife and I successfully completed our outing yesterday with our EIGHT hardcopy e-tickets. Southport gateline could not cope with them, had to show them at the manual gate. Successfully scanned on 3 out of 4 trains. Not asked for Senior Railcards (plastic ones of course) on the one train where they were applicable. Return journey delayed by 23 minutes. Not going to claim the 96p each Delay Repay! By the way, I have a subscription for inkjet printer ink at £4.50 per 100 pages, and 500 sheets of paper recently cost about £6.

That's interesting. Does the £4.50 for 100 pages cover any density of print? For example, could you print 100 A4 photographs for £4.50 - or is it 100 pages at a certain average text density?

From what I have seen, the print density of e-tickets is such that I'd probably be paying 15p a copy. At a ticket a week that's £7.80 - enough for a nice Cornish pasty and a cream bun in my neck of the woods!

 

[ainsworth74]

That's interesting. Does the £4.50 for 100 pages cover any density of print? For example, could you print 100 A4 photographs for £4.50 - or is it 100 pages at a certain average text density?

From what I have seen, the print density of e-tickets is such that I'd probably be paying 15p a copy. At a ticket a week that's £7.80 - enough for a nice Cornish pasty and a cream bun in my neck of the woods!

I had HP instant ink for a while and it was x number of pages per month. No restriction beyond that.

 

[Halwynd]

I had HP instant ink for a while and it was x number of pages per month. No restriction beyond that.

OK, thanks for that. Not being a heavy printer user I always took the view that I'd be better with a mono laserjet on the basis that inkjets have to be used fairly regularly to avoid the nozzles becoming clogged up. Sorry, I digress, but I appreciate the info - something to bear in mind in the future.

 

[zero]

The vast majority of scanning issues are caused by screen brightness. Open up a QR code an an airline app. Look what happens to the screen brightness. Rail apps don't do that. The biggest constraint with mobile phones is battery. They have thousands of lines of code designed to save battery life by turning down the brightness, a whole theme on adaptive brightness and another on power saving settings.

Why has this app logged me out? It was literally working 10 minutes ago and now I am standing in front of the ticket gates and it isn't. You need a phone signal to log back in, and a busy city railway station or a very quiet rural one can be the worst places for that.

Railcard? Ah that is on *another* app. For some reason I need some download code to get it there. Thank goodness they don't do that for each ticket.

You don't need to display e-tickets in a "rail app". I have always taken screenshots of the e-ticket PDF files and then display them for scanning in my photo display app.

Railcards I agree, personally I would prefer them to come as a physical card as well as being available on an app, many membership/loyalty/status cards from various organisations come in multiple forms.

At the moment phone railcards do need to be in an app, because otherwise the photo could be tampered with, but there are several solutions to this (some more sinister than others).

 

[AndrewE]

You don't need to display e-tickets in a "rail app". I have always taken screenshots of the e-ticket PDF files and then display them for scanning in my photo display app

Is that (just) on a phone? I can do it easily on a laptop, but have no idea how to do it on my new-to-me smartphone.

 

[zero]

Is that (just) on a phone? I can do it easily on a laptop, but have no idea how to do it on my new-to-me smartphone.

You need to work out how to take a screenshot on your phone. On my phones it involves pressing two of the buttons, or swiping three fingers on the screen, in a specific manner.

Also as an alternative to a "rail app", you can display PDF files in a dedicated app such as adobe reader, or your phone probably comes with a basic document app that can show PDFs too.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's interesting. Does the £4.50 for 100 pages cover any density of print? For example, could you print 100 A4 photographs for £4.50 - or is it 100 pages at a certain average text density?

If it's HP Instant Ink then it's simply per page, doesn't matter if there's one letter on it or it's solid black. It might even charge for a blank page if it's fed through the printer.

 

[PeterC]

Is that (just) on a phone? I can do it easily on a laptop, but have no idea how to do it on my new-to-me smartphone.

I have more event than rail tickets but in all cases I just downloaded the PDF on my phone and display that.

 

[Haywain]

Is that (just) on a phone? I can do it easily on a laptop, but have no idea how to do it on my new-to-me smartphone.

I cannot comprehend why you would choose to show a screenshot of a ticket rather than the ticket itself. After, you have to be able to display the ticket on the phone to be able to take a screenshot.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I cannot comprehend why you would choose to show a screenshot of a ticket rather than the ticket itself. After, you have to be able to display the ticket on the phone to be able to take a screenshot.

Remember we're talking technophobes here. It's not intuitive getting a PDF attachment out of the email box into e.g. Acrobat on an Android device. And if there's no signal, you can't access the attachments in your email.

I'd again push iOS as being the best option for anyone who doesn't get computers. Adding a PKPASS to the Wallet is intuitive, and designed to be so. Android makes more sense to people who understand computers because it largely behaves like a computer operating system. The thread title is pointing at people who do not.

 

[Haywain]

And if there's no signal, you can't access the attachments in your email

If you've opened it to screenshot it, you might as well continue to download it so that you can open it without a signal. Technophobes will find taking a screenshot more difficult!

 

[Bletchleyite]

If you've opened it to screenshot it, you might as well continue to download it so that you can open it without a signal. Technophobes will find taking a screenshot more difficult!

Taking a screenshot on an iPhone involves saying "Hey Siri, take a screenshot" (though there's also a key combination). I don't know if Android is more complex? Downloading it is not obvious and requires understanding of what a filesystem is. Again, think like a technophobe, not someone who understands computers.

 

[Haywain]

Taking a screenshot on an iPhone involves saying "Hey Siri, take a screenshot" (though there's also a key combination). I don't know if Android is more complex? Downloading it is not obvious and requires understanding of what a filesystem is. Again, think like a technophobe, not someone who understands computers.

I suggest you think the same way. Talking to a phone is not the obvious thing to do for a technophobe. And it took me longer to figure out how to do a screenshot than it did to download a file when I got an iPhone.

 

[pedr]

Modern phone operating systems appear to be training people out of any understanding of “download” (at least outside a specific app) or “file system”. So for younger users and those whose first experience of computer technology was a modern phone, such as some older users who used computers very infrequently before getting a smartphone, it’s entirely plausible that they wouldn’t have any understanding that something displayed in the email app could be retrieved in any other way - and may have experiences of the email app requiring attachments to be downloaded each time they’re opened. At which point, since they’ve learned that screenshots go into the Photos app, using that to store a ticket makes sense.

Similar things are happening with university students - people we’d expect to be confident with computer technology find tasks which their parents (& grandparents) generation consider intuitive to be impenetrable, because in attempts to be easy to use, smartphone operating systems work without the user having to learn a great deal which was required to operate earlier systems.

 

[swt_passenger]

I suggest you think the same way. Talking to a phone is not the obvious thing to do for a technophobe. And it took me longer to figure out how to do a screenshot than it did to download a file when I got an iPhone.

I was surprised by a screenshot appearing when I tapped the back of my iPhone 3 times…

 

[sor]

OK, thanks for that. Not being a heavy printer user I always took the view that I'd be better with a mono laserjet on the basis that inkjets have to be used fairly regularly to avoid the nozzles becoming clogged up. Sorry, I digress, but I appreciate the info - something to bear in mind in the future.

HP doesn't "charge" for test pages and cleanings though, so that is an advantage for infrequent users. I have sometimes gone weeks between prints and its still fine.

I have an inkjet because it included so much instant ink credit that the printer was basically free & I wanted the auto feed scanner part more. I still have instant ink because I'm on a plan that gives me 15 pages per month for free. This is why (as I've mentioned elsewhere in the thread) it is irritating that e-tickets don't come two to a page, when they know it's an outbound/return for the same person

 

[Lemmy99uk]

Taking a screenshot on an iPhone involves saying "Hey Siri, take a screenshot"

Well I never- it worked!

 

[HarryF]

Apologies if it’s already been covered, I prefer e-tickets but can’t use them for a cross London journey (for example, Doncaster to Swindon) because of the TFL non-acceptance. Would through tickets like this be withdrawn? What if my train is late into Kings Cross and I miss the train out of Paddington? Will I have to pay again because the tube “ticket” on contactless or Oyster will only have been “purchased” once I knew about the delay.
other than this issue, with ticket offices selling e-tickets, I am confident they are easier than collecting tickets from a machine.

 

[Hadders]

Apologies if it’s already been covered, I prefer e-tickets but can’t use them for a cross London journey (for example, Doncaster to Swindon) because of the TFL non-acceptance. Would through tickets like this be withdrawn? What if my train is late into Kings Cross and I miss the train out of Paddington? Will I have to pay again because the tube “ticket” on contactless or Oyster will only have been “purchased” once I knew about the delay.
other than this issue, with ticket offices selling e-tickets, I am confident they are easier than collecting tickets from a machine.

We’ll probably get to a situation in the not too distant future where TfL accept e-tickets for cross London journeys, and some barrier gates at gateway stations getting suitably equipped.

As for the removal of through tickets, I doubt they will be withdrawn but given potential forthcoming revamps of the ticketing system no-one can really say.

As for delays you would be covered as long as you’ve left sufficient time to cross London.

 

[Halwynd]

HP doesn't "charge" for test pages and cleanings though, so that is an advantage for infrequent users. I have sometimes gone weeks between prints and its still fine.

I have an inkjet because it included so much instant ink credit that the printer was basically free & I wanted the auto feed scanner part more. I still have instant ink because I'm on a plan that gives me 15 pages per month for free. This is why (as I've mentioned elsewhere in the thread) it is irritating that e-tickets don't come two to a page, when they know it's an outbound/return for the same person

OK, thank you for that too - something for me to consider in the future.

 

[jayah]

You don't need to display e-tickets in a "rail app". I have always taken screenshots of the e-ticket PDF files and then display them for scanning in my photo display app.

That said, if you do present them on an app, the ticket gate and staff readers should actually be able to read them.

Apps have been able to force brightness for years and using the app means that the 'surge brightness' is only used for QR codes.

You need to work out how to take a screenshot on your phone. On my phones it involves pressing two of the buttons, or swiping three fingers on the screen, in a specific manner.

No they shouldn't, the people who design mobile phones need to engage braincell.

Are you pulling my leg or do you think I'm thick?
I meant to be in possession of one if
you have bought an E -ticket.

The curse of the national standard!

m-ticket available on fewer retailers but on more routes must be on a device.

e-ticket available on more retailers and fewer routes is also sent on pdf and can be printed or downloaded offline, no device required.

 

[yorkie]

Apologies if it’s already been covered, I prefer e-tickets but can’t use them for a cross London journey (for example, Doncaster to Swindon) because of the TFL non-acceptance. Would through tickets like this be withdrawn? What if my train is late into Kings Cross and I miss the train out of Paddington? Will I have to pay again because the tube “ticket” on contactless or Oyster will only have been “purchased” once I knew about the delay.
other than this issue, with ticket offices selling e-tickets, I am confident they are easier than collecting tickets from a machine.

The forum booking site has a new feature (experimental) under advanced options which enables a search for splits which exclude the cross London transfer; this may unlock e-tickets on more flows involving an Advances into King's Cross and another out of Paddington. Please let us know how you get on

By purchasing it in this manner, all etickets would be on a single PDF document, and the through itinerary offers evidence which could be used in any dispute. If you have difficulty obtaining a satisfactory outcome in any dispute when purchasing tickets from the forum site, feel free to contact me directly.

 

[Class800]

Related point, I hope, probably not worthy of a new thread. Beware that some sites offer e-tickets that can be printed as PDF and some offer e-tickets that must be used in an app. Technically, the latter are m-tickets, but the sites refer to both as e-tickets. GWR is one that says e-tickets bought from them can only be used in GWR app - hence I got a paper ticket for the journey in question, but some e-tickets from LNER for advances

 

[Kite159]

GWR is one that says e-tickets bought from them can only be used in GWR app - hence I got a paper ticket for the journey in question,

I believe it's a known issue with the wording on the First group websites, those tickets are issued as e-tickets with pdfs emailed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I believe it's a known issue with the wording on the First group websites, those tickets are issued as e-tickets with pdfs emailed.

It originally was the case that if you bought an e-ticket on one of the FirstGroup apps you'd not be sent a PDF, but it'd still be an e-ticket in the sense of not requiring activation. They've fixed it now so you are sent a PDF but as @Kite159 says seem to have failed to bother to update the text.