Return Ticket Expiry Enquiry

[rubin]

I know the validity for return ticket is always one month but today when I collected my tickets it shows from 1-Mar to 28-Mar?! Can I use that on 29 or 30 Mar?

 

[alistairlees]

I know the validity for return ticket is always one month but today when I collected my tickets it shows from 1-Mar to 28-Mar?! Can I use that on 29 or 30 Mar?

Well, unless this is something like a West Midlands season ticket (which is valid for four weeks), then I would say that this is a programming error where February's shorter month is not correctly understood. Where did you buy these tickets from? Where did you collct them from? What are the ticket details?

 

[rubin]

Well, unless this is something like a West Midlands season ticket (which is valid for four weeks), then I would say that this is a programming error where February's shorter month is not correctly understood. Where did you buy these tickets from? Where did you collct them from? What are the ticket details?

Thank you. I assume so. Tickets are bought for Manchester to Newport off-peak return collected at Manchester Piccadilly(bought from Trainline). Weirdly when I check confirmation email it shows from 1 to 31 - Mar which looks correct I think

 

[alistairlees]

Thank you. I assume so. Tickets are bought for Manchester to Newport off-peak return collected at Manchester Piccadilly(bought from Trainline). Weirdly when I check confirmation email it shows from 1 to 31 - Mar which looks correct I think

This is probably the TVM misinterpreting things. I would expect that Trainline have this right. Though it could be that the data they send to LSM (the system the TVMs use) is incorrect.

 

[KNN]

I'd check at a ticket office. Who might refer you back to Trainline. I personally wouldn't try and travel on a day outside what's printed on my ticket.

 

[Haywain]

Can I use that on 29 or 30 Mar?

Or even 31st March! Seriously though, if you are planning to travel on one of those three days it may be advisable to contact the retailer and/or train operator beforehand.

 

[Adam Williams]

collected at Manchester Piccadilly

Do you remember the type of machine you used? I seem to recall there being machines from more than one manufacturer there.

Alternatively, can you post the entire ticket with the bottom row of text visible.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Can we see the whole ticket so that the machine type can be known?

 

[John R]

Or even 31st March! Seriously though, if you are planning to travel on one of those three days it may be advisable to contact the retailer and/or train operator beforehand.

Or take the confirmation email with you, preferably with a hard copy.

 

[KNN]

Or take the confirmation email with you, preferably with a hard copy.

I wouldn't expect that to count for much, Trainline is notorious for getting things wrong, what's on the ticket is likely to be the rule they work by.

 

[Adam Williams]

I wouldn't expect that to count for much, Trainline is notorious for getting things wrong, what's on the ticket is likely to be the rule they work by.

Some staff seem to have this impression, but I'm not sure it's consistently backed up with evidence.

I would put money on this particular case being a TVM problem, which is of course the station operator's responsibility.

 

[KNN]

When it comes to this I confess I follow what my friends and colleagues impressions are (which is that Trainline mess things up and leave other people to sort it out).

It would be hard to back it up with evidence in a public forum.

What is your reason for saying it's a TVM problem? I'd have thought for ToD tickets a TVM just prints whatever it's told to by the source.

 

[Adam Williams]

What is your reason for saying it's a TVM problem? I'd have thought for ToD tickets a TVM just prints whatever it's told to by the source.

It's gut feeling from dealing with cases over the years where customers report issues with printed tix.

TVMs do quite a bit when they fulfil a ToD booking - more than you would perhaps expect them to do - it's much more akin to being given instructions on products to automatically "sell" than it is to being told what to print like a printer we might print things to at home. They use their own fares data for this (this is great fun when the machine has outdated fares data that doesn't match the retailer's data / hasn't updated it on schedule properly!).

I might be completely wrong in this particular instance - I haven't looked at the LSM spec or some example bookings this weekend to try and figure it out for definite - but that's my thought process. They'll have the fare validity periods for each ticket type as part of the fares data.

From a software perspective, if Trainline were getting this wrong, I'd expect it to be wrong across the board (and affecting e.g. E-Tickets too) just because this isn't the sort of logic you really want in more than one place.

TVM = Ticket vending machine
LSM = The Live Sales Management system which is where ToD bookings get written to at booking-time and later retrieved from at print-time
ToD = Ticket on Departure, the fulfilment method involving customers printing tickets at the station prior to departure

 

[MrJeeves]

What is your reason for saying it's a TVM problem? I'd have thought for ToD tickets a TVM just prints whatever it's told to by the source.

To reiterate Adam's reply more explicitly, retailers don't actually write a ticket expiry date to LSM. They instead write a start date and a validity period in months and days which the ticket issuing system should use to calculate the correct expiry date.

Whether the TIS even pays attention to this validity period from the LSM data or chooses to use its own fares data instead seems to be pot luck, too.

 

[KNN]

To reiterate Adam's reply more explicitly, retailers don't actually write a ticket expiry date to LSM. They instead write a start date and a validity period in months and days which the ticket issuing system should use to calculate the correct expiry date.

Whether the TIS even pays attention to this validity period from the LSM data or chooses to use its own fares data instead seems to be pot luck, too.

So the implication here is that it says start date, then validity 1 month, and because it was printed in Feb it treats a month as 28 days?

That sounds like a pretty serious glitch. Who operates the TVMs there? Someone should definitely tell them

 

[Haywain]

because it was printed in Feb it treats a month as 28 days?

The OP states it was collected "today" when they posted on Saturday - that's Saturday 1st March.

Who operates the TVMs there? Someone should definitely tell them

Yes, clearly that should happen. Faults don't get fixed if they don't get reported.

 

[OscarH]

Calculating the dates is poorly specified and counter-intuitive. I'm not surprised there's machines getting it wrong, though I didn't think it to go wrong in that specific way, that is intriguing.

If you use the standard `.AddMonths` methods in your favourite programming language, you'll get it wrong in some cases.

When it comes to this I confess I follow what my friends and colleagues impressions are (which is that Trainline mess things up and leave other people to sort it out).

I think it's fair to say from the (not Trainline) retail side the impression is (some not all!) staff make up some reason to blame the retailer for the TOCs error and leave the retailer to sort it out

 

[Haywain]

I think it's fair to say from the (not Trainline) retail side the impression is (some not all!) staff make up some reason to blame the retailer for the TOCs error and leave the retailer to sort it out

From the point of view of railway staff they will see more problems from Trainline sales than from any other retailer. However, that's simply because Trainline sells more tickets than any other retailer, and the problem free transactions go unnoticed.

 

[KNN]

I think it's fair to say from the (not Trainline) retail side the impression is (some not all!) staff make up some reason to blame the retailer for the TOCs error and leave the retailer to sort it out

I'm sure that's true, but at at least one of the TOCs I'm thinking of they wouldn't need much encouragement to criticise the TOC

From the point of view of railway staff they will see more problems from Trainline sales than from any other retailer. However, that's simply because Trainline sells more tickets than any other retailer, and the problem free transactions go unnoticed.

They also don't do any sort of after care for their customers. Wrong platforms and seat reservations are common, split tickets in different classes of travel, all sorts of things left for others to deal with.

 

[MrJeeves]

They also don't do any sort of after care for their customers. Wrong platforms and seat reservations are common, split tickets in different classes of travel, all sorts of things left for others to deal with.

Platform information will come from the real-time information system run by Thales on behalf of RDG and the TOCs called Darwin. All retailers, including TOCs, use this system for real-time running information.

 

[Adam Williams]

split tickets in different classes of travel

What's wrong with this? It's a legitimate way to save money; you're entitled to sit in standard class with a first class ticket.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

What's wrong with this? It's a legitimate way to save money; you're entitled to sit in standard class with a first class ticket.

Surely irksome if you have to move from First Class to Standard, at an intermediate split point, particularly so if the train is busy?

 

[KNN]

What's wrong with this? It's a legitimate way to save money; you're entitled to sit in standard class with a first class ticket.

It's obviously not that way round or no one would notice, it's people with a FC/SP ticket for part of their journey and then having to move for a later part (which they don't want to do).

Platform information will come from the real-time information system run by Thales on behalf of RDG and the TOCs called Darwin. All retailers, including TOCs, use this system for real-time running information.

It should, but it seems common for people who booked on Trainline to be at the wrong platform because the app told them. I'm not making this up, though it is second hand.

 

[robbeech]

I wouldn't expect that to count for much, Trainline is notorious for getting things wrong, what's on the ticket is likely to be the rule they work by.

The most restrictive element will be what is worked to, regardless of whether that approach is legally sound or not. I’d fully expect a ticket that says it expires on the 28th to be rejected on the 30th.

When it comes to this I confess I follow what my friends and colleagues impressions are (which is that Trainline mess things up and leave other people to sort it out).

Whilst we have no data to suggest whether Trainline mess up more frequently that other retailers as a percentage, they do in terms of absolute numbers and it’s absolutely true (and easily provable from threads here alone) that they do wipe their hands of it. So your friends impressions are quite accurate here.

That sounds like a pretty serious glitch.

That sounds like the railway.

 

[Adam Williams]

Surely irksome if you have to move from First Class to Standard, at an intermediate split point, particularly so if the train is busy?

The stipulation that you can only reserve a first class seat with a first class ticket is entirely within the TOC's control though, and down to how they've configured the train (well, the tariffs and inventory classes) in RARS. It's out of alignment with the NRCoT, but that's what they've chosen to do.