I'm getting on a bit and easily confused, so help me out please.
As others have pointed out, e-tickets seem to be enabled for Bangor or Llandudno Junction to Liverpool. So I buy one from any online retailer.
When I get on a yellow train at Chester, am I then warned that I need to print my ticket? If so, I go to Chester's ticket office and what do they do? Tell me to go to the ticket retailer? What do they do? Fortunately there is a grey and red train I could use instead.
Or is there no warning so when I meet a Merseyrail barrier I'm told my ticket is not valid. What happens then? Penalty Fare? What if I refuse to pay because my ticket is valid? What if I pay then complain?
And what about my even more easily confused mother in law who can't understand why the ticket which worked last month is now not valid and never travels by train again (actually happened over a Cross Country fiasco).
Merseyrail don’t actually mean that they don’t accept e-tickets, necessarily.
They mean that almost all tickets purchased online for use on their services won’t be e-tickets, because they’ve arranged it so that those tickets can’t be issued as e-tickets. Those tickets are paper tickets bought from an online retailer and must be collected (from a Merseyrail ticket office, or from a ticket machine at a non-Merseyrail station). The problem is that people expect the email and details they’re sent when they buy those tickets to count as the actual ticket and travel without collecting the paper tickets. Merseyrail’s position - which is correct given the ticketing rules - is that the confirmation email, collection code, etc is not a ticket and someone travelling having not collects the ticket is travelling without a ticket even if they’ve paid for one, and can be issued a Penalty Fare or prosecuted.
Ticket retailers do point this out as part of the purchase process and in the email, but e-tickets are so widespread and commonplace now, and showing confirmation emails etc is a significant part of modern life, so a significant number of passengers don’t stop to consider that there may be an old/out of date process for obtaining Merseyrail tickets. (I think it might be better if these tickets couldn’t be sold for collection either, and had to be purchased on the day from a machine or ticket office, to be honest).