Expiry of M-tickets before use

[Zamracene749]

Hi, I recently purchased a couple of advance tickets from the Northern Rail website. Said tickets were for the 13.15 York- Leeds, 1418 Leeds to Manchester vic, and 1555 Manchester vic to Liverpool. These were good value and delivered promptly to the 'Northern Railway' app. So far so good. On the day of travel, I downloaded then activated the tickets at home, got ready then set off for my journey to York to pick up the 13.15.
So I was more than a bit surprised when I checked the app to get the tickets ready to find them all showing up as Expired, with the qr code greyed out, at 1215hrs! Not owning a Tardis, I telephoned the helpline to be told, after a 20 minute rather hopeless discussion, that my tickets were expired, I would have to buy new ones at the station, and that it was my fault because the terms and conditions say that you cannot activate the tickets more than 5 hours before travel.
I've scoured the NrCoT, plus northerns own T &Cs, plus the m ticket and northern website T&Cs, but the only warnings I can find regarding activation is that you must do it on the day of travel, and that they must be activated prior to boarding, both conditions that I had complied with.

So, was the helpline chap brushing me off? Or have I missed a tiny bit in the Terms somewhere? And how on earth can a company sell tickets for a specific service then cancel the tickets as used and expired, hours before the actual journey? Cheers.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

Hi, I recently purchased a couple of advance tickets from the Northern Rail website. Said tickets were for the 13.15 York- Leeds, 1418 Leeds to Manchester vic, and 1555 Manchester vic to Liverpool. These were good value and delivered promptly to the 'Northern Railway' app. So far so good. On the day of travel, I downloaded then activated the tickets at home, got ready then set off for my journey to York to pick up the 13.15.
So I was more than a bit surprised when I checked the app to get the tickets ready to find them all showing up as Expired, with the qr code greyed out, at 1215hrs! Not owning a Tardis, I telephoned the helpline to be told, after a 20 minute rather hopeless discussion, that my tickets were expired, I would have to buy new ones at the station, and that it was my fault because the terms and conditions say that you cannot activate the tickets more than 5 hours before travel.
I've scoured the NrCoT, plus northerns own T &Cs, plus the m ticket and northern website T&Cs, but the only warnings I can find regarding activation is that you must do it on the day of travel, and that they must be activated prior to boarding, both conditions that I had complied with.

So, was the helpline chap brushing me off? Or have I missed a tiny bit in the Terms somewhere? And how on earth can a company sell tickets for a specific service then cancel the tickets as used and expired, hours before the actual journey? Cheers.

Well it's quite clearly a breach of contract. Regardless of what their terms do or don't say, a suggestion that your contractual rights somehow expire (and that they get to keep your money!) depending on the time you activate your ticket is utterly and totally ludicrous. It's as if the people who say these kinds of things don't even have "the man on the Clapham omnibus'" understanding of the basics of contract law!

Do you have something that shows the ticket as having been shown as "expired" before it was even valid? A screenshot or something similar would be good evidence. Alternatively, the fact that you called Northern will definitely help your account - even more so if you can access the call recordings (see here).

Did you buy new replacement tickets, or did you just not travel?

 

[ainsworth74]

Are you sure you bought them for the day of travel? It sounds like you were purchasing the day before so could it be you simply had the wrong date?

 

[Zamracene749]

In they end I got a pass to 'travel as detailed' from the ticket office at York- I got odd looks on the trains but was allowed to travel. I suspect that without that officially stamped advice even passing the attitude test would not have been sufficient for at least two of the guards involved. The tickets themselves have now disappeared from the App, leaving only the journey details under the expired tab. It does make me wonder how many more have been caught out and just stumped up for much more expensive open tickets on the day, or even worse suffered penalty fares?

 

[Zamracene749]

Hi Ainsworth74, absolutely the correct day and date of travel, purchased the day before, activated on day of travel!
The tickets actually showed the time and date activated as early on the 31st, valid on the 31st, yet expired.

 

[GaryMcEwan]

Not M-Ticket related, but this has also happened to me when using Scotrail's smartcard, when I uploaded the ticket and tried to get through the gates, the ticket had already expired. Got fobbed off as well and told to buy a new ticket. I pursued via Scotrail Customer Relations and also got nowhere. In the end I had to go via my bank and raise a dispute.