Merseyrail customer issued £20 Penalty Fare due to there being no facility to print the ticket

[urbophile]

To continue using this forum, you must only access it via a PC in a library 5miles from your home

Spot on! This highlights the nonsense of the whole issue. No online forum would ever dream up such a nonsensical condition, but here we have a major transport company insisting that a customer does much the same thing (in fact, makes a 20 or so mile round trip to collect a ticket to allow them to make effectively the same trip again.) No amount of printed or online publicity, posted warnings, or legal recriminations makes this a sensible or reasonable or fair policy. If I was told to pick up my ticket at the station before travelling, and there was no available machine or staff member to issue that ticket, I would assume that the confirmation on my phone would amount to permission to travel. Just as a notice on the booking office window saying 'staff not available; pay at destination' would do. Why such a draconian attitude to one and not the other?

 

[Watershed]

No amount of printed or online publicity, posted warnings, or legal recriminations makes this a sensible or reasonable

Agreed.

or fair policy

I can't agree there. Regardless of which booking site you use, you will have to navigate past a screen or selection process where it is made clear you must collect your ticket at one of a selection of stations. You will be given a list of stations where you can obtain your ticket and in most cases you will even have to select one of these stations before you can proceed.

It may not be very customer friendly - but those are the conditions on which online sites will sell you a ticket. You have no more a right to force them to issue you an e-ticket, than you could force this forum to stop showing adverts because you find them annoying. Or demand that a motorway petrol station sells you fuel for £1.50 a litre because that would suit you rather better than £1.70.

If I was told to pick up my ticket at the station before travelling, and there was no available machine or staff member to issue that ticket, I would assume that the confirmation on my phone would amount to permission to travel.

And when you make that assumption, rather than heeding the signage present at the station, or (perish the thought) speaking to the member of staff in the booking office, you are in the wrong.

Just as a notice on the booking office window saying 'staff not available; pay at destination' would do. Why such a draconian attitude to one and not the other?

Because with one, you have specifically agreed to a term whereby you must pick up your ticket at one of a certain selection of stations. With the other, you have not agreed to anything at all - and indeed at stations without a TVM, there is no alternative means at the station for you to obtain a ticket.

 

[urbophile]

And when you make that assumption, rather than heeding the signage present at the station, or (perish the thought) speaking to the member of staff in the booking office, you are in the wrong.

This is definitely my last contribution to this thread! Why then are not Merseyrail staff able to issue a 'permit to travel' in the case of a scenario such as that encountered by the unfortunate young people mentioned in the OP?

 

[Watershed]

This is definitely my last contribution to this thread! Why then are not Merseyrail staff able to issue a 'permit to travel' in the case of a scenario such as that encountered by the unfortunate young people mentioned in the OP?

They would certainly be able to do so (the circumstances under which they would do so is another matter). But we have nothing to suggest that the young people tried to speak to any member of staff before reaching their destination.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Anyone travelling under such a mistaken assumption would have to fail to read, and fail to comply with:

• their booking site's terms - which will include a term requiring you to collect your ticket before travel, for example Trainline's condition 4.2says:
  • Once you’ve booked, we’ll get your tickets to you as soon as possible, and always before your train, coach or bus departs.
  • ...
  • Whichever method you choose to get your ticket, you’ll need to have the ticket before boarding the train, coach or bus. For some services, it may be that collection at the station is the only possible option so you will need to leave enough time to collect your ticket before boarding your train. If you don’t show a valid ticket when asked, you’ll be responsible for paying your full fare again as well as a penalty fare
• the National Rail Conditions of Travel - which will be linked to during the booking process, and whiich state (para. 6.1):
  • You must have a valid Ticket to travel before you board a train where there was the opportunity to buy one
• the 'readily visible' Penalty Fare signage displayed before they reached the platform.

And, in the case of a Merseyrail operated station as here, they would also have to walk past a booking office that's open.

Whilst ignorance of the law isn't a defence, I can appreciate that not everyone will read the first two documents - after all, who ever really reads the small print.

But failure to heed the latter two clues that - who knew - you actually need a ticket on you before boarding? Sorry, that's on them.

You can quote the small print as much as you like, the fact remains that in this day and age, requiring a customer to collect a physical ticket is lets say antiquated at best!

For nearly any industry / event, 99% of all online "ticket" sales now just send you a confirmation email - sometimes the email itself is your ticket and other times there is a pdf attachment. That is what people have become used to over the last decade.

And in terms of your particularly patronising comment about the surprise of needing a ticket before bording - shock horror but maybe a passenger would think their email IS their ticket and so think they did have one on them? You know like pretty much every single other industry works these days. The railway is pretty much on its own here.

And one final comment about reading the terms etc - it is probably worth pointing out that a lot of T&C's written these days are actually pretty out of date. A lot of concert tickets I get still say you have to print them but in reality showing it on your phone is absolutely fine. I recently went to a Rugby match where I hadn't even realised I was supposed to print the ticket until I got near the stadium and read "please fold ticket here" on the PDF I had - but given Rugby clubs are much more customer friendly than the railways they still just scanned my phone screen with no problem or complaint! So it is entirely possible that someone may actually read the T&C's but just assume the railway is like every single other industry where showing it on your phone is fine (after all, why would they have any reason to think the railway acts differently to every other industry out there).

Should people read the T&C's and fully understand what they need to do beforehand? Yes. But I don't think that absolves the railway of its responsibility to keep with the times and to actually provide customer service. These days the usual expectation of an online ticket sale is the email confirmation (or a pdf attached to it) is your ticket. The railway lives in that specific world now, so any difference to it in how it operates needs to be spelled out as clear as day.

 

[cactustwirly]

Anything using Evolvi as a backend should work. Try trip.com as it’s fast and shows eticket availability right on the results page.

Any named Merseyrail station or Liverpool Stations to Manchester, London Euston, Sheffield etc all dish out eTickets for both directions.
Journeys that touch the tube won’t offer them as TFL don’t accept them. I.e. Bootle to Brighton won’t offer them.

Obviously TfL (Rail) have to accept e tickets between Reading and Paddington.

 

[Watershed]

You can quote the small print as much as you like, the fact remains that in this day and age, requiring a customer to collect a physical ticket is lets say antiquated at best!

Absolutely.

For nearly any industry / event, 99% of all online "ticket" sales now just send you a confirmation email - sometimes the email itself is your ticket and other times there is a pdf attachment. That is what people have become used to over the last decade.

Indeed. But there are still places that are antiquated. Merseyrail is undoubtedly one of those places, but it might surprise you to find that, for example, you can't just show a Ryanair boarding pass as a PDF. They'll gladly relieve you of £20 to print your boarding pass if you turn up without it printed or displayed in their app. Coincidentally, exactly the same £20 as the Penalty Fares in this case...!

The point being - you can't assume.

And in terms of your particularly patronising comment about the surprise of needing a ticket before bording - shock horror but maybe a passenger would think their email IS their ticket and so think they did have one on them? You know like pretty much every single other industry works these days. The railway is pretty much on its own here.

And one final comment about reading the terms etc - it is probably worth pointing out that a lot of T&C's written these days are actually pretty out of date. A lot of concert tickets I get still say you have to print them but in reality showing it on your phone is absolutely fine. I recently went to a Rugby match where I hadn't even realised I was supposed to print the ticket until I got near the stadium and read "please fold ticket here" on the PDF I had - but given Rugby clubs are much more customer friendly than the railways they still just scanned my phone screen with no problem or complaint! So it is entirely possible that someone may actually read the T&C's but just assume the railway is like every single other industry where showing it on your phone is fine (after all, why would they have any reason to think the railway acts differently to every other industry out there).

Merseyrail's aversion to e-tickets certainly isn't customer friendly, but if I go to a gig or something, I don't just assume I'll be OK to get in with my booking confirmation email. I check to make sure. And if I got turned away because I didn't check, I wouldn't go running to the media with a sob story.

This whole situation only arises where people fail to pay proper attention to what they're doing, the warnings they're given and the small print they agree to. You wouldn't say "well normally it's 70mph on a motorway so I didn't look at the signs - it's unfair I got a speeding ticket"...

 

[WelshBluebird]

Absolutely.


Indeed. But there are still places that are antiquated. Merseyrail is undoubtedly one of those places, but it might surprise you to find that, for example, you can't just show a Ryanair boarding pass as a PDF. They'll gladly relieve you of £20 to print your boarding pass if you turn up without it printed or displayed in their app. Coincidentally, exactly the same £20 as the Penalty Fares in this case...!

You can't show the PDF but you can get a mobile boarding pass for any Ryanair booking whenever you want (e.g. if you printed out your PDF at home but got to the airport and realised you didn't have it, you could just get a mobile boarding pass there and then without extra cost). So you are just proving how bad the railways can be there. Ryanair, one of the most well known examples for penny pinching and treating customers badly actually treat customers better than Merseyrail here.

Merseyrail's aversion to e-tickets certainly isn't customer friendly, but if I go to a gig or something, I don't just assume I'll be OK to get in with my booking confirmation email. I check to make sure. And if I got turned away because I didn't check, I wouldn't go running to the media with a sob story.

Except that is a pretty poor analogy because with gigs either you get an email / pdf ticket which you can show on your phone, or your name is on the door and you don't need to show anything, or its a physical ticket that was posted directly to you, or its a physical ticket you collect at the venue box office. I don't think I've ever seen an example with a gig where it was a physical ticket that you had to collect from somewhere other than the venue you were going to (which is what the correct analogy would be).
Oh and in my experience with gigs and sports matches (a couple of decades of going to multiple football / rugby matches and gigs each week - so I've been around!), even if you did get a physical ticket and you didn't bring it with you, they will make sure you get in without having to pay anything extra.

This whole situation only arises where people fail to pay proper attention to what they're doing, the warnings they're given and the small print they agree to. You wouldn't say "well normally it's 70mph on a motorway so I didn't look at the signs - it's unfair I got a speeding ticket"...

I mean poor or unclear signage absolutely is a defense for speeding so I think your analogy fails there too. If all ticketing websites and apps had it in big bold letters "YOU HAVE SELECTED A PHSYICAL TICKET THAT YOU MUST COLLECT BEFORE TRAVELLING, YOUR ORIGIN STATION LACKS THE FACILITIES FOR THIS SO YOU MUST GO TO ANOTHER STATION FIRST TO COLLECT YOUR TICKET, FAILURE TO DO SO MEANS YOU DO NOT HOLD A VALID TICKET TO TRAVEL" then I'd agree with you. Or if were ten years ago back in a world where physical tickets for online purchases were the norm, I'd agree with you. But these days if you are doing online ticket sales but requiring the collection of physical tickets at a place that isn't where you are going, then you need to spell that out as clearly as possible - and the railways just don't do that at the moment (they make a small effort, but it isn't enough).

 

[Skie]

Merseyrail DO accept eTickets though. You’ll get through their manned barriers no problem with them. There’s some shenanigans with buying them, but anyone travelling in from outside on one will be okay.

They just won’t print ToD, which is causing the bulk of the problems. Which is exacerbated a bit by the shenanigans with eTicket availability (which isn’t entirely their fault).

 

[Bletchleyite]

Ormskirk to Preston is available as an m-ticket but not an e-ticket. Here's the data:



fm 2 is m-ticket. fm 1 is smartcard. TOD is allowed by default.

Thanks. Must have been an m-ticket, then. To be fair at the time I would have been using the old LNR app which made them look very similar if used in-app.

Given that Northern do do e-tickets perhaps they need to enable them for all their flows, then, and Trainline sort their shop out!

 

[Foxcover]

I asked Trainline this morning - response: ‘it is not our decision to enable mobile ticketing as certain tech is required by stations and train operators. We work with train operators and will continue to offer mobile ticketing on new routes as and when we can’. Probably a standard response but it does imply Trainline see this as Merseyrail’s call, not theirs.

 

[_toommm_]

I asked Trainline this morning - response: ‘it is not our decision to enable mobile ticketing as certain tech is required by stations and train operators. We work with train operators and will continue to offer mobile ticketing on new routes as and when we can’. Probably a standard response but it does imply Trainline see this as Merseyrail’s call, not theirs.

Why would it be TL’s problem for them to force Merseyrail to enable their flows for e-tickets? I wouldn’t message TrainSplit asking them to enable e-tickets for Southeastern.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Why would it be TL’s problem for them to force Merseyrail to enable their flows for e-tickets? I wouldn’t message TrainSplit asking them to enable e-tickets for Southeastern.

It's Trainline's fault that they aren't correctly offering e-tickets for flows on which Merseyrail allows them to be sold. Non-Trainline based sites, as discussed above, correctly offer them.

 

[185]

Cynical conspiracy theorist view... Could Merseyrail's retail boss be deliberately not allowing TOD collection to justify persuading the PTE to shut booking offices so they can claim they are 'no longer useful'?

If some TOCs can now print uncollected tickets onboard with mobile devices (ie Avantix successor devices), Merseyrail's booking offices certainly should be able to print them off.

As for this instance, imo, I feel sensible discretion should have been applied with a stern reminder.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Cynical conspiracy theorist view... Could Merseyrail's retail boss be deliberately not allowing TOD collection to justify persuading the PTE to shut booking offices so they can claim they are 'no longer useful'?

I'd say quite the opposite - the commission from the sale of long distance tickets at the booking offices partly contribute to the cost of maintaining them.

 

[Skie]

I asked Trainline this morning - response: ‘it is not our decision to enable mobile ticketing as certain tech is required by stations and train operators. We work with train operators and will continue to offer mobile ticketing on new routes as and when we can’. Probably a standard response but it does imply Trainline see this as Merseyrail’s call, not theirs.

Referring to them as mobile tickets is a good indicator they don’t even know what they’re talking about.