Indeed this has happened to me at Sheffield Ticket Office as well, bought a ticket to Grindleford and asked for a TfGM Wayfarer and the clerk at the ticket office told me to buy the Wayfarer from the guard on the train….!
Is it any wonder ticket offices face closure/reduced opening hours!
Perhaps the clerk who was probably about 60 was hoping to be made redundant with a large severance payment!
I don't think this sort of thing in any way
explains the desire to cut ticket offices or hours of operation. But it certainly serves to alienate people ticket office staff would be well advised to keep onside, thereby making it easier for those who want to cut costs to do so.
It baffles me that some ticket office clerks only seem to want to sell tickets that people could have bought online. If I were in their position I'd be keeping a log of all the tickets I'd sold that couldn't have been bought online (Rovers, Rangers, PlusBuses, excesses).
Recent improvements in the availability of Rovers and Rangers at TVMs are a jolly good thing, of course, but the OP's story does show that even where that has been done, relying solely on TVMs is problematic when so many stations only have one TVM. There's no resilience, there. And if the guards are supposed to be the failsafe to ensure people can still get tickets when TVMs are out of service, they need to be able to sell the full range of tickets. So, are we saying we think the guard in this case just didn't know how to issue the ticket requested by the OP?
Because of an out of order ticket machine at the station, I tried to purchase a GM Wayfarer from the train conductor this morning. Information I found on the web led me to believe this is possible. The conductor told me he could sell me one but I needed a smart card. Is he not able to sell me a paper version of the ticket?
How was the situation resolved? Did the guard just leave you to buy the Wayfarer at the next opportunity, or did he want you to buy another ticket?
