Using etickets

[Samuel88]

I've just purchased etickets for the first time and to be honest I'm a bit worried about using them. Do gateline staff know about these tickets and am I likely to get hassle using them?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I've just purchased etickets for the first time and to be honest I'm a bit worried about using them. Do gateline staff know about these tickets

Yes.

and am I likely to get hassle using them?

No.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

I've just purchased etickets for the first time and to be honest I'm a bit worried about using them. Do gateline staff know about these tickets and am I likely to get hassle using them?

E-tickets have been around for a number of years now. From my personal experience and speaking with some members of gateline staff, at some stations the percentage of passengers who have e-tickets is anything from 50-80%. I can't imagine there will be many people in the entire rail industry who haven't heard of them, let alone seen them.

Unlike m-tickets, true e-tickets do not require any form of activation and can be displayed in any format - whether that be in an app, printed out on paper, or shown in a PDF reader on an electronic device. The important thing is simply that the barcode can be scanned and the journey details checked (in case the staff or barriers don't have a scanner). You can have the ticket on as many devices as you like.

If you print an e-ticket out it is no different to a modern loo-roll paper ticket in my mind. Same sort of size and same sort of format!

A few apps, e.g. FirstGroup's apps (GWR, SWR, Hull Trains and TPE), claim to produce e-tickets but these are not true e-tickets as they cannot be shown across different devices. I would avoid these where possible. Good apps or websites, such as the Trainline derivatives I spoke of here, will offer you true e-tickets wherever available.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A few apps, e.g. FirstGroup's apps (GWR, SWR, Hull Trains and TPE), claim to produce e-tickets but these are not true e-tickets as they cannot be shown across different devices. I would avoid these where possible. Good apps or websites, such as the Trainline derivatives I spoke of here, will offer you true e-tickets wherever available.

GWR's app now does actual e-tickets. Some others, e.g. LNR, do do odd hybrid e-ticket/m-ticket things, where you can convert an e-ticket into an m-ticket.

The purchase process is still mightily cack-handed on a mobile device, though. Near enough all of them seem to direct you to a thinly-skinned version of the web version of the purchase process. Which is pretty rubbish. I can still get a TVM to produce a ticket in a third of the time. So I might now use an e-ticket purchased on the laptop, but if I'm rocking up to the station I'll just use the TVM.

It really needs to become possible to get it down to a couple of taps (even if they insist on the use of a journey planner) and payment by Apple or Google Pay using my fingerprint to verify. Then it really will be superior.

 

[Hayleyfrank19]

If I've bought a select e-ticket for a certain time, do the scanners in train station know the time on it? I've accidently selected the wrong return time.
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