Ticket purchasing if disabled through brain injury.

[Ken X]

Bit of background, my wife suffered a sudden brain infection which resulted in Sectioning and lots of rehab. She is pretty much back to normal, but the meds she is now taking result in a dampening effect on her brain to prevent it running amok. Obviously she can no longer drive and relies on public transport to get around. Currently, if she needs a train ticket she toddles down to our station (Horsham) and the very helpful ticket staff sort her out with what she requires. We are concerned to note in another thread the potential withdrawal of ticket offices. Her ability to understand the internet is limited and the automatic machines get her flustered, particularly if there is a queue. Whilst I can sort her out with a ticket on-line, she is fiercely independent and we would like to know if there are alternate avenues of ticket purchase for her should the closures come to pass. Her independence is important to her and I may not always be available to assist. We wondered if there was a telephone ticket service where she could talk to an advisor and purchase what she requires to be sent by e-mail for instance, but what we can find seems geared to assistance of the physically challenged rather than mentally? We would welcome any advice as to what services are available to people who are physically fit but struggle with the complexities of on-line ticket purchasing. Many thanks, Ken

 

[island]

Most train companies do offer telephone sales with the numbers on their websites.

 

[Mak1981]

Might be worth finding out if eligible for a disabled person railcard as that could be used to buy on board train from the guard or at ticket office at destination if she only had an option of ticket machine and has a disability which prevented her using this

 

[Ken X]

Hi All, Many thanks for your replies. We will look further into telephone sales as this would be a useful resource. I am assuming this would be a real person rather than a computerised system using voice recognition. We had looked at the Disabled Persons Railcard but she did not seem to qualify as we are not in receipt of any benefits other than free prescriptions or have any physical disability. It may well be worth us contacting the issuing authority to see if there are other qualifying criterion we can use. This has given us hope that she can continue to operate independently if the ticket office closes in the future so we are very grateful to you for taking the time to read our query. Ken

 

[717001]

I suspect any changes are a while off yet, as I believe there has to be a consultation prior to any closures - nothing showing yet on https://www.transportfocus.org.uk. [if this is wrong, please could someone more knowledgable correct me].

Also there should still be staff available to help people at stations, even if the ticket office closes.

For journeys on Southern / Thameslink / Great Northern, it might be worth looking at KeyGo, which offers payg: https://www.southernrailway.com/tickets/the-key-smartcard/keygo. Might prove more expensive than Advance tickets / carnets, but should otherwise charge best value option. Map on webpage shows area covered (NB not valid on TfL services).