A picture of the Western ticket office in Easter. Summer is approaching with an influx of tourists expected between June and August - a considerable amount with £50 notes which aren't accepted by ticket machines.
Not to mention how many incorrectly purchased bus & tram tickets that will need to be refunded!
It would also be interesting to know exactly what you mean by 'teething troubles', especially as there are 2 other ticket offices (&Visitor Information Centre) to deal with the customers whose transactions can't be managed on the POMs!
(Also posted another picture which shows how much ticketing demand there can be there!)
I am assuming that when your pictures were taken the VC was not yet open; it has helped a lot with many queries, particularly when the TfL Ambassadors are outside.
We do regularly direct customers to the North & Tube ticket halls if they cannot complete their transactions on the POMs, or if it would be quicker for them to do so during times of demand (a mixture of radio communication and experience).
A very insignificant number of people purchase tram & bus tickets erroneously.
I am not prepared to go into further detail on an open forum (For what I hope are obvious reasons), however if anyone would like further detail please PM me and I will see what I can sort out. If, as I think, you're a member of LU staff, you'd be more than welcome to come along to KXX during one of my meal breaks and I'm happy to go through it in further detail still.
I am still intrigued though as to why you're singling out KXX when there are examples of much smaller stations that I've come across that aren't coping with the changes happening across the Combine. As I said in my initial post - yes, there are teething problems, but no, it is not chaos. It is to be expected when there are such wholesale changes taking place, after all.
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My friend needed his railcard added to his Oyster Card last Saturday. We tried at the first station we came to, Embankment. We were helped quickly by staff but after about 10 minutes, and 4 different members of staff trying they were unable to actually add the railcard and advised a visit to the ticket office at Charing Cross instead. It was done there in less than a minute, after around 5 minutes waiting in the queue.
All staff should be gaining the ability to carry out these functions on the POMs; if they either won't or don't know how to do so I would strongly recommend getting in touch with LUL Customer Service and letting them know the location and time. The 'upgrade' is being carried out at local level and from what I've experienced some locations are better than others at ensuring the training course is being undertaken or not.
If your Oyster card is registered already the operation to add a railcard can be carried out in a maximum of five minutes. If not, it will take a little longer to do so whilst the card is registered.
It takes a similar amount of time to resolve journeys and such like on the POMs.
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When I went to King's Cross to get my Gold Card added to my Oyster, a lot of people in front of me were being told about Oyster and how it would save them money, and staff also trying to explain where it would cost little more to get Oyster (with the deposit) but then mean having the card for future travel, as against buying a paper ticket. Naturally, some people needed that explaining and some people ignored or didn't understand the advice.
It was good that staff took the time, except when you're queuing!
Catch 22, this one. Educating people on how to use Oyster correctly should in theory mean that less time is spent with staff resolving journeys through errors, or working out what paper tickets to buy each day, thus freeing up staff to spend more time assisting with operations that can only be done with staff intervention, such as adding railcard discount flags.
This isn't a new problem though, and occurs at King's Cross' two remaining ticket offices, and no doubt elsewhere on the Combine. The best advice I can offer (where practical, of course) is to avoid peak times if you need to use such features, or pop your head around each of the ticket halls and simply pick the quietest.
Or, of course, if you ever see me on a gateline, give me a shout and I'll be more than happy to help if possible. As mentioned above, it's a very quick operation the majority of time.
