Incorrectly Printed Tickets

[DynamicSpirit]

I'd always assumed that, in this age of computer-printed tickets, it would be virtually impossible for a ticket to be incorrectly printed (other, of course than if the customer or member of staff making the purchase attempted to key in the wrong ticket). But perhaps not... See if you can spot the mistake in this cycle reservation I had a few days ago.

I wonder how this could have happened? It's hard to imagine that being caused by a human error, so I'm guessing a software bug.

Anyone else ever had similar examples of tickets that were correctly purchased but incorrectly printed?

 

[Jonfun]

It would be helpful to report that to the issuing TOC. They're generally proactive about resolving those kinds of issues with the manufacturer.

 

[bb21]

Did you book it as part of a return journey? Very odd and needs to be reported.

 

[jfisher21]

i do occasionally get an extra ticket with Void stamped all over it, not sure what that is all about.

 

[Wallsendmag]

keying in the wrong info has very little effect on how the ticket would be formatted. There are a thousand and one ways tickets can be incorrectly formatted a lot of them are very frustrating.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

It would be helpful to report that to the issuing TOC. They're generally proactive about resolving those kinds of issues with the manufacturer.

Good point. They were issued at Windermere station - I'm guessing that means Northern are the TOC I'd need to report it to? (And would it be the issuing TOC, I should report it to - not Virgin - who presumably are responsible for the reservation system on that route?)

Did you book it as part of a return journey? Very odd and needs to be reported.

Kinda. I already had an open return ticket, which I presented to the clerk and asked for a seat and cycle reservation.

 

[WelshBluebird]

I had an interesting date related issue happen a couple of months ago with one of the new paper roll ticket machines GWR guards are using (that are also used by some staff who sell tickets at normally unmanned stations such as Oldfield Park. Wanted to buy a ticket for my journey that day and for a journey the day after. The member of staff put in all the details correct (the position of the machine meant I could see the screen) and yet the tickets came out, all dated for that day. She had to cross out the date on the ticket bought for the next day and write the correct date, together with an official stamp to show it was a authorised change. Still had a bit of grief at Newport with it though!

 

[djpontrack]

Last year I purchased 2 Northern day rangers from Morecambe station, luckily I checked them before getting on the train as the valid date on it was about 3 weeks in the past but the current date and time was printed at the bottom.

 

[RussellFM]

i do occasionally get an extra ticket with Void stamped all over it, not sure what that is all about.

Not a receipt?

 

[island]

i do occasionally get an extra ticket with Void stamped all over it, not sure what that is all about.

These normally print if a ticket misfeeds or is otherwise unusable, in order to avoid blank stock being made available.

 

[Mojo]

I haven’t obtained a cycle reservation in a while but I had the exact same thing occur to me on a number of occasions about two years ago when collecting from GWR ToDler machines, whereby one portion of the cycle reservation prints with the journey details transposed.

 

[mallard]

As a software developer (in a completely different field, so this is strictly supposition), I'll take a punt at why the orgin/detination reversal gets reversed on cycle reservations; presumably, in order to print the "attach to cycle" and "passenger copy" tickets, the system marks it as a "two-part ticket". Somewhere, the software that prints it assumes that "two-part ticket" = "two-part return" and flips the orgin/destination for the second part. It may even be that "two-part ticket" = "two-part return" is correct for all ticket types except "cycle reservation" and therefore the printing logic has something like "if it is a two-part ticket, flip the origin/detination for the second part" where it should be "if it is a two-part ticket and not a cycle reservation, flip the origin/destination for the second part".

 

[DynamicSpirit]

As a software developer (in a completely different field, so this is strictly supposition), I'll take a punt at why the orgin/detination reversal gets reversed on cycle reservations; presumably, in order to print the "attach to cycle" and "passenger copy" tickets, the system marks it as a "two-part ticket". Somewhere, the software that prints it assumes that "two-part ticket" = "two-part return" and flips the orgin/destination for the second part. It may even be that "two-part ticket" = "two-part return" is correct for all ticket types except "cycle reservation" and therefore the printing logic has something like "if it is a two-part ticket, flip the origin/detination for the second part" where it should be "if it is a two-part ticket and not a cycle reservation, flip the origin/destination for the second part".

That's certainly possible. However, there would need to be some other factor involved since this is clearly only a very occasional bug. I've booked numerous cycle reservations in the past without seeing this issue. And since hundreds of cycle reservations must get printed every day across the country, it's a pretty good bet that, if this bug occurred on more than a very tiny fraction of cycle reservations, it would have been reported and fixed long ago.

 

[trainophile]

I had a weird one today - the ToD machine spat out my PlusBus tickets, but not the train tickets bought on the same collection ref. Luckily the desk clerk was able to print them for me when I queried it. Seemed to be a mystery how that could have happened.