• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Validation of Railcards

Status
Not open for further replies.

crablab

Member
Joined
8 Feb 2020
Messages
772
Location
UK
I suspect an integrated national railway would develop their on line ticket purchasing system where the railcards were registered back to a single database integrated with your ticket sales software, so that if you set it up properly would know that your railcard was invalid and help prevent such errors occurring, but we don't seem to have that sort of approach in UK sadly for reasons no doubt outside the scope of this thread!

From another thread...

Railcards all carry an ID number (do ones sold at stations?). The plastic cards don't have a machine readable code, but the digital on phone ones do (don't know the type of code).

Given this, certainly online, why don't we ask people to 'add' a Railcard to their account and validate the ID provided against the database that exists?

Advantages:
- lots of metadata for RDG
- a degree of fraud prevention/mapping
- prevent innocent mistakes such as using an invalid Railcard etc.
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

Haywain

Veteran Member
Joined
3 Feb 2013
Messages
14,869
From another thread...

Railcards all carry an ID number (do ones sold at stations?). The plastic cards don't have a machine readable code, but the digital on phone ones do (don't know the type of code).

Given this, certainly online, why don't we ask people to 'add' a Railcard to their account and validate the ID provided against the database that exists?

Advantages:
- lots of metadata for RDG
- a degree of fraud prevention/mapping
- prevent innocent mistakes such as using an invalid Railcard etc.
Disadvantages:
- Lots of data sharing between different retailers.
- Lots of people not carrying a railcard and finding it unfair that they get challenged when travelling with discounted tickets (different type of innocent mistake).
- Lots of sharing of railcards and/or discounted tickets (ie: different types of fraud).
- Impossibility of buying tickets in advance without having a valid railcard (currently the railcard can be purchased later).
 

alistairlees

Established Member
Joined
29 Dec 2016
Messages
3,724
The last time it was looked at the cost, especially for TVMs, was considered to be rather too much.
 

crablab

Member
Joined
8 Feb 2020
Messages
772
Location
UK
Ah, we're finally going to see Railcard data being written to smartcards?
 

Bletchleyite

Veteran Member
Joined
20 Oct 2014
Messages
97,531
Location
"Marston Vale mafia"
I suppose the logic would be that the Railcard is a smartcard and the only way to issue discounted tickets is on that smartcard?

That is a considerable loss of flexibility, though.
 

Haywain

Veteran Member
Joined
3 Feb 2013
Messages
14,869
I suppose the logic would be that the Railcard is a smartcard and the only way to issue discounted tickets is on that smartcard?

That is a considerable loss of flexibility, though.
I think the logic would be that the railcard is also a smartcard that tickets can be loaded on to, but that it could also be used in conjunction with e-tickets or paper tickets.
 

RPI

Established Member
Joined
6 Dec 2010
Messages
2,742
Of interest, GWR have recently replaced Fujitsu star with TTK Avocet for on board ticket issuing (a far better system but that's another story) and I only discovered the other day that if you scan the QR code on a digital railcard whilst setting up to issue a ticket then it selects the relevant railcard into the discount field along with the railcard number, maybe this is something for the future.
 

Wallsendmag

Established Member
Joined
11 Dec 2014
Messages
5,132
Location
Wallsend or somewhere in GB
Of interest, GWR have recently replaced Fujitsu star with TTK Avocet for on board ticket issuing (a far better system but that's another story) and I only discovered the other day that if you scan the QR code on a digital railcard whilst setting up to issue a ticket then it selects the relevant railcard into the discount field along with the railcard number, maybe this is something for the future.
No need to thanks us ;)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top