No tickets on sale at many locations (10/09)

[itsonlyme]

Travelling Crewe to Manchester today on tickets purchased yesterday. I noticed that at Crewe no ticket machine working and office closed. Passengers with prepaid tickets to collect being advised to travel on booking reference number. Passengers without tickets beign advised to pay on train. On train no ticket check passeneger sat opposite me tried to purchase ticket from Guard who was unable to sell. Similar situation on arrival at Manchester Picc except girl with machine by exit who did not appear to be checking tickets let alone selling them. On return this afternoon exactly the same applied. Notices saying National problem.

:roll: Next time I may think twice before buying in advance :roll:

 

[Aws87024]

Travelling Crewe to Manchester today on tickets purchased yesterday. I noticed that at Crewe no ticket machine working and office closed. Passengers with prepaid tickets to collect being advised to travel on booking reference number. Passengers without tickets beign advised to pay on train. On train no ticket check passeneger sat opposite me tried to purchase ticket from Guard who was unable to sell. Similar situation on arrival at Manchester Picc except girl with machine by exit who did not appear to be checking tickets let alone selling them. On return this afternoon exactly the same applied. Notices saying National problem.

:roll: Next time I may think twice before buying in advance :roll:

All the ticket machines at Preston weren't working, booking office open as normal and extra staff selling tickets from the hand held machine.

 

[Hellfire]

All the ticket machines at Preston weren't working, booking office open as normal and extra staff selling tickets from the hand held machine.

Birmingham New Street has been Tweeting that there is an IT problem and that ticketing was being affected across a lot of the WCML

 

[Robertj21a]

Was told it was a Virgin systems problem - ticket machines, barriers, info screens etc etc

 

[trash80]

Yes i had to show the guard and barrier people the code on my phone as i couldn't pick my tickets up. Down at New St and Lime St.

 

[bb21]

:roll: Next time I may think twice before buying in advance :roll:

Why? Care to elaborate?

 

[M28361M]

Birmingham New Street has been Tweeting that there is an IT problem and that ticketing was being affected across a lot of the WCML

Liverpool Lime Street's Twitter also posted a message that the Virgin TVMs were not working and advising anyone wishing to collect tickets to use the Northern machines instead. That would seem to confirm it was a Virgin (West Coast) problem.

 

[Phil.]

Travelling Crewe to Manchester today on tickets purchased yesterday. I noticed that at Crewe no ticket machine working and office closed. Passengers with prepaid tickets to collect being advised to travel on booking reference number. Passengers without tickets beign advised to pay on train. On train no ticket check passeneger sat opposite me tried to purchase ticket from Guard who was unable to sell. Similar situation on arrival at Manchester Picc except girl with machine by exit who did not appear to be checking tickets let alone selling them. On return this afternoon exactly the same applied. Notices saying National problem.

:roll: Next time I may think twice before buying in advance :roll:

Well that's put the mockers on the people who love to type, "boarding a train without a ticket is a criminal offence".

 

[Solent&Wessex]

It was, or rather still is, a Virgin Trains West Coast problem. At Manchester Piccadilly the ticket office was open but couldn't accept card payments. The Virgin SSTMs were all offline. The Northern SSTMs were working normally for cash and card transactions. Other TOCs at other stations were also working normally.

Word was, when I left work at 2130, that it might not be rectified until after the weekend.

 

[MikeWh]

Well that's put the mockers on the people who love to type, "boarding a train without a ticket is a criminal offence".

It is.

Unless you are given permission which was clearly the case yesterday.

 

[Lrd]

Looks like someone at Virgin forgot to pay the internet bill!

 

[SickyNicky]

Looks like someone at Virgin forgot to pay the internet bill!

Or chose to connect to the internet via Virgin Media

 

[Blindtraveler]

Or chose to connect to the internet via Virgin Media

That would certainly produce a similar result

 

[AM9]

That would certainly produce a similar result

That makes a funny line but Virgin Media has nothing to do with Virgin Trains nor any part of the Branson empire other than a long-standing permission to use its branding.

 

[dave87016]

I believe some of Northern TVM's across the network had the same problem Friday

 

[itsonlyme]

Why? Care to elaborate?

Can't I take the mickey at the railways incompetence!!!!!!

Where is the back up, where is the management? (oops it was Saturday)

If this had happened on a Monday to Friday morning, stopping the receipt of Virgin's rip-off fares, it would probably have been quickly fixed or an enforced effective work around introduced.

Why was Arriva Wales unable to sell tickets on train, and why no on-board tickets checks each way when they are normally done?

Notices at Crewe and Piccadilly gave me the impression it was a National not a TOC problem.

 

[Hadders]

Can't I take the mickey at the railways incompetence!!!!!!

Where is the back up, where is the management? (oops it was Saturday)

If this had happened on a Monday to Friday morning, stopping the receipt of Virgin's rip-off fares, it would probably have been quickly fixed or an enforced effective work around introduced.

Why was Arriva Wales unable to sell tickets on train, and why no on-board tickets checks each way when they are normally done?

Notices at Crewe and Piccadilly gave me the impression it was a National not a TOC problem.

It's unfortunate when this sort of thing happens but IT issues happen frequently across all organisations.

For example, bank payment networks have 'gone down' for a period in recent times, card payments sometimes aren't possible, broadband sometimes goes down etc etc.

A company has to balance the cost of having IT specialists available 24/7 against the likelihood of a failure, and the cost to the business that such a failure would have.

It's really isn't worth getting too worked up over it.

 

[Tim R-T-C]

Well that's put the mockers on the people who love to type, "boarding a train without a ticket is a criminal offence".

Where the facility exists to purchase tickets.

If all of the machines are non-functional, there is then no way to purchase tickets.

Tickets must be purchased at the first possible opportunity. If none is presented, no offence has been committed.

 

[yorkie]

Can't I take the mickey at the railways incompetence!!!!!!

To some extent, but if it's just a rant, it is going to just annoy some people.

Your last sentence suggests that in future you may hope to benefit from it yourself. That's probably not how you intended it to come across.

Why was Arriva Wales unable to sell tickets on train, and why no on-board tickets checks each way when they are normally done?

Presumably they use different providers.

Notices at Crewe and Piccadilly gave me the impression it was a National not a TOC problem.

I would imagine any TOC who used that particular supplier would have those facilities provided by that supplier affected.

 

[martinsh]

Got caught up in this at Crewe yesterday. The notice I saw said "due to a nationwide problem with our IT systems ..." and was signed VT Crewe. Took a photo in case of future problems, but in the end it didn't matter. I didn't travel at all due to my train being cancelled !

 

[Bletchleyite]

A company has to balance the cost of having IT specialists available 24/7 against the likelihood of a failure, and the cost to the business that such a failure would have.

Indeed, 100% availability as one might require on an aircraft or in a nuclear power station is hugely costly and limits innovation because everything has to be mathematically proveable for absolute assurance that there can be no bugs.

It is probably cheaper for the railway to take the hit of a few tens of thousands of passengers getting a free journey than it is to ensure ticketing systems have 100% availability.

FWIW, at least with the railway people can just travel anyway. This happens to airlines from time to time - and when it does everything gets grounded and nobody goes anywhere.

 

[najaB]

Indeed, 100% availability as one might require on an aircraft or in a nuclear power station...

Most of which only operate to "nine nines" anyway.

 

[embers25]

It's unfortunate when this sort of thing happens but IT issues happen frequently across all organisations.

For example, bank payment networks have 'gone down' for a period in recent times, card payments sometimes aren't possible, broadband sometimes goes down etc etc.

A company has to balance the cost of having IT specialists available 24/7 against the likelihood of a failure, and the cost to the business that such a failure would have.

It's really isn't worth getting too worked up over it.

To be fair railway IT systems seem less prone to wide spread failures than most. The fact proven by how rare these sort of threads are. There is much more likelihood of your train being significantly delayed than you not being able to buy/pick up a ticket.

 

[AlterEgo]

To be fair railway IT systems seem less prone to wide spread failures than most. The fact proven by how rare these sort of threads are. There is much more likelihood of your train being significantly delayed than you not being able to buy/pick up a ticket.

There's a good half dozen or so nationwide TVM failures every year. That's not that rare.

 

[trainophile]

ATW Journey Check reporting all ticket machines out of order at Man Picc today, so looks like problem is ongoing.

 

[Bertie the bus]

Travelling Crewe to Manchester today on tickets purchased yesterday. I noticed that at Crewe no ticket machine working and office closed.

Unless I've just been unlucky this seems to happen quite frequently at Virgin West Coast stations. I had it a Crewe a couple of years ago and Preston last year and I'm not that frequent a user of WCML services.

 

[infobleep]

Indeed, 100% availability as one might require on an aircraft or in a nuclear power station is hugely costly and limits innovation because everything has to be mathematically proveable for absolute assurance that there can be no bugs.

It is probably cheaper for the railway to take the hit of a few tens of thousands of passengers getting a free journey than it is to ensure ticketing systems have 100% availability.

FWIW, at least with the railway people can just travel anyway. This happens to airlines from time to time - and when it does everything gets grounded and nobody goes anywhere.

Perhaps they should ground the trains. Imagine the chaos.

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

 

[CharlieSpotted]

I traveled through Birmingham New Street late night on the 9th while this was ongoing. They had put paper "out of order" signs on the machines next to the ticket office (and some of them had messages on the screen, too) but hadn't ventured out to the machines elsewhere in the station. I tried twice on the machines by the Bullring entrance before giving up and going to the ticket office, where there was one solitary person behind a desk taking cash payments only.

I have some sympathy for the staff when things like this go wrong (especially if it's only just happened) but think it would have been prudent to go out to the machines at the other entrances and tape a sign up. Or put a message out on the PA, or something. The machines I went to appeared to be working normally until you tried to pay, then they just "hung" and eventually dropped back to the homepage.