Upon these posters being made I made a complaint to Merseyrail, and I just recieved a response:
Unsurprisingly, they've completely missed the point
yet again. It's a terrible response that doesn't begin to address the issues properly.
It's too eloquent to be a basic cut & paste job off a script - so you have to wonder how senior the person is that wrote (or dictated) this response, and just how deep the incompetence and stubborness runs at Merseyrail.
I'll go through each bit below.
In the past, Merseyrail has been unable to make the significant investment needed to introduce digital ticketing
Absolutely no investment at all is needed to introduce digital ticketing. They could always be accepted using the Mk1 eyeball - that was the position a lot of TOCs accepted when electronic tickets of various kinds first began being rolled out. Indeed some TOCs still work that way for on-train checks due to industrial disputes over scanning payments - yet they seem to manage just fine.
Moreover, retailers pay levies when selling electronic tickets that pay for the infrastructure used to check them. Therefore, this claim is nothing short of a bare-faced lie - or alternatively utter incompetence in not realising that they can make use of industry funding. We're not even half-way through the first sentence of their response; they're not exactly off to a good start...
due to the fact we invest in staffing ticket offices at all but four of our stations from start to end of service every day
"Invest"? Investing would involve capital expenditure (capex) into assets of some kind. You'd want to see a business case justifying why the money is being spent and how long it will take to pay for itself.
No, the cost of staffing ticket offices represents ongoing
operational expenditure (opex). It's again completely misleading to describe opex as "investment". In reality, staffing ticket offices at all but 4 stations all day is a complete waste of money; no other rail network has such overstaffing and inefficiency.
Given that over 90% of journeys that take place on Merseyrail are between stations entirely on our network
How can they be so sure? Lots of people will "rebook at Lime Street" - whether through misinformation from poorly trained booking office staff, or simply force orf habit. Perhaps they want an e-ticket for most of their journey! In other words, I would be surprised if the real figures are as high as that when you take into account splits.
But even if (as I'd admit) the majority of passengers - perhaps closer to 80% - are making self-contained journeys...
this didn’t cause any issues until recent years.
...this completely misses the point. You can't and shouldn't ignore minorities just because it's convenient to do so. The railway went to considerable effort to modify all trains to be PRM-compliant, even though only a tiny minority of passengers - probably less than 5% - truly rely on the accessibility modifications that were undertaken. But there could have been no question of ignoring this minority just because it was expensive and inconvenient to perform PRM mods or to replace older fleets.
The statement is also symbolic of their rather parochial attitude. Merseyrail simply don't seem to realise - or care - that there are places other than Liverpool that people might want to travel to or from, and the issues which their outdated attitudes to ticketing have caused. I wonder when their senior managers last took the time to speak to passengers 'on the coalface' to find out what they think?
We are now in a position where an increasing number of passengers want to buy tickets digitally
It's fair to say that the
overwhelming majority of passengers want the ability to have e-tickets. On other nearby TOCs such as Northern, passengers have had that ability for several years and it's now somewhat unusual to see any paper tickets at all in a given coach when tickets are checked.
however we do not have the infrastructure to validate their tickets
They have
chosen not to have any infrastructure, and they have
chosen not to allow e-tickets to be rolled out in the interim whilst they address that.
This means we are at risk of passengers travelling with fraudulent digital tickets
Then how about you join the 21st Century and issue your staff with scanning devices? Even TfL are further advanced, and they have far more reason to be slow about it!
Merseyrail are trying to make their incompetence and tardiness the passenger's problem. That's rather a reflection of their general attitude to passengers.
or the main issue we have is that because we do not have the technology to validate tickets, if a passenger does not print a digital ticket
Either through rank incompetence or to try and incite confusion, they are mixing up e-tickets and ToD bookings here. ToD bookings are just the same as normal tickets sold at a ticket office once printed.
they are automatically issued with a refund by the third-party retailer and Merseyrail currently has some of the highest refund rates in the country.
Trainline automatically refunds uncollected ToD bookings after the date of travel. Not all retailers do this and to the extent there's an issue here, it's entirely of Merseyrail's own making by forcing people to go for ToD - and then making it less than obvious how to collect your ticket.
Lots of other TOCs won't even let you collect at the ticket office unless there's a problem with the machine - and it's only recently that Merseyrail have even offered this "facility" so many occasional travellers won't be familiar with what to do. It's therefore very hard to feel any sympathy for Merseyrail for the elevated refund rates they claim they're facing.
With only 4% of tickets sold by Trainline this issue affects a relatively small number of customers
Ah, here we go again - the stinking attitude of 'it's only a minority, so who cares?'. I'm sure the percentage would be rather higher were it not for Merseyrail's refusal to join the 21st Century. For the likes of Northern, I'd be surprised if that percentage weren't well into the double digits. They also conveniently omit to mention the percentage of tickets sold by other third party and TOC retailers; Trainline may be the biggest third party retailer, but there are still plenty of other retailers out there.
I'm sure they wouldn't be caught dead saying "with only 1% of passengers requiring wheelchair assistance, this issue affects a relatively small number of customers so we have decided to withdraw this service to reinvest in other parts of our service"...
and we have worked hard with the companies that sell these tickets, including Trainline, to make it clear to passengers at the point of purchase and through the booking confirmation that is sent to them, that they must print a ticket bought online before they begin their journey.
This is the only part where I have a sliver of sympathy with Merseyrail. A lot of retailers don't make it clear enough that you actually need to collect a ToD booking before you travel. Given how (comparitively) rare this is nowadays, in my view it justifies a warning of some sort, perhaps having to select a collection station manually, as some of the better retailers do - otherwise it's easy to click/tap through without reading properly.
Some of the worse retailers out there even email you a PDF purporting to be "your ticket" (which people might reasonably assume to be an e-ticket) ... which, when opened, just contains instructions of how to collect your ticket!
We have also tried to make the process as easy as possible
No they haven't. They could just enable e-tickets and avoid all this hassle!
by offering the ability to collect a ticket at any of our staffed ticket offices across the Merseyrail network
Only very recently - there was nothing stopping them from doing so 20 years ago - and even then, it's an entirely non-standard way of handling ticket collection. Every other TOC just has ticket machines.
and by putting up clear posters and other signage at each station
If their highly misleading posters are supposed to be "clear", I've got a bridge to sell them...
Aware of the fact that Merseyrail live in the 1970s? It's hardly a good look to say "ah, but we warned you that we're highly outdated!"
To further confirm this is not inconsistent with NRCoT that state "4.2 - Some Tickets are held as an electronic record on a smartcard or electronic device or may be transmitted to you for you to show or print out yourself. In such cases you will be advised of (and must comply with) the specific conditions applying to Tickets held in those formats."
This is misleading and completely irrelevant to the issue at hand; if they're talking about ToD, condition 4.2 doesn't apply as it is about electronic tickets. And if they're talking about e-tickets, there is nothing in the "specific conditions" for e-tickets that says you need to print them just to suit awkward TOCs like Merseyrail.
Merseyrail has a clearly advertised buy before you ride policy in place
But passengers who buy their ticket online
have bought a ticket! They just haven't got a
physical ticket, something that nowadays seems anachronistic to most.
and all passengers must have a valid ticket for travel. We are unable to allow passengers to travel on our network with a booking reference because any tickets that are bought online for travel on the Merseyrail network, that are not printed, can be automatically refunded.
They absolutely
can. They just
choose to be harsh on unwitting passengers and issue Penalty Fares left, right and centre. It must be quite the moneyspinner!
As more and more passengers are becoming aware of this, this type of ticket fraud is increasing.
Then perhaps they could do something about the underlying cause? Nope, must have never occurred to them.
In addition to the above, as per the Metro Mayors recent announcement we do have a more digital ticketing solution coming to the network very soon which will be rolled out in stages. More information can be found here:
https://www.merseyrail.org/tickets-passes/tap-and-go/
That's all well and good for adult-rate journeys entirely within the Merseyrail network, but as with most contactless-based PAYG solutions it doesn't sound like it will be of any use for those with discounts. "Jam tomorrow" is also no excuse for prevaricating on the rollout of e-tickets, nor does the initial rollout address the issue of multi-modal journeys or journeys beyond Merseyrail's fiefdom - where it will often be cheaper to buy a through ticket rather than unnecessarily splitting.
No doubt Merseyrail will also seek to wash their hands of anyone who
intended to use PAYG if there's disruption, claiming (as some TOCs do in Oyster-land) that you "don't hold a ticket yet" so they're not obliged to help you out.
