West Yorkshire MCard - Slow progress with implementation?

[Deerfold]

I purchased a bus only DaySaver today(£5.50) using one of the MCard machines at the bus station - quite impressive in that if you don't have an MCard already you can buy the 'ticket' and just like Oyster the machine can chuck you out a pink MCard - there isn't a charge but obviously you have to be buying a travel product.

Really a pain though how they won't allow you to buy a combined bus and train product - at Castleford you can't even buy those at all and since the rail station is unstaffed you're slightly screwed! Not sure why Metro can't stock these self service machines with some rail ticket stock as that is all that would be required I assume, in order to produce a rail ticket counterpart to show to conductors - obviously on the bus / some rail ticket barriers everything is done by scanning your MCard these days.

I'm surprised they haven't been shouting louder about the fact you can now put tickets on yourself if you've an NFC phone. That's made my life a lot easier - especially as they sorted out the problems with my local PayZone store by stopping advertising it as issuing MCard products (still never sorted out its opening times for the other PayZone products it sells...).

You know Daysavers drop to £5 if you buy 3 at once?

 

[johntea]

£2 charge coming in soon if you want a pink MCard from a travel centre or MCard machine, so those were a huge waste of money as I can’t see too many people using them to acquire the cards once the charge comes in!

 

[Deerfold]

£2 charge coming in soon if you want a pink MCard from a travel centre or MCard machine, so those were a huge waste of money as I can’t see too many people using them to acquire the cards once the charge comes in!

Well they're now the only way to get season tickets for Bus and Train across multiple operators. There's been a £2 charge from other vendors from the start. I'm not saying it's good or will be popular, but people can no longer avoid the charge by going somewhere else.

It's annoying how much harder it is to buy some products than it used to be. Bus only ones are great, so long as you've got NFC on your phone.

Because of a family emergency I was in Halifax on the last Bank Holiday Monday and needing to get an MCard charged with a Bus and Train ticket as I would be spending a lot of time travelling back and forth.

I went to the bus station - the machine there only sells Bus only products. I went to the railway station. The machine there was broken and the staff can't sell them. I looked up other vendors. The first was listed as opening 7 days a week. It was closed. The next was open. Doesn't really encourage people to use them.

 

[Bantamzen]

Well they're now the only way to get season tickets for Bus and Train across multiple operators. There's been a £2 charge from other vendors from the start. I'm not saying it's good or will be popular, but people can no longer avoid the charge by going somewhere else.

It's annoying how much harder it is to buy some products than it used to be. Bus only ones are great, so long as you've got NFC on your phone.

Because of a family emergency I was in Halifax on the last Bank Holiday Monday and needing to get an MCard charged with a Bus and Train ticket as I would be spending a lot of time travelling back and forth.

I went to the bus station - the machine there only sells Bus only products. I went to the railway station. The machine there was broken and the staff can't sell them. I looked up other vendors. The first was listed as opening 7 days a week. It was closed. The next was open. Doesn't really encourage people to use them.

What happened to the function to buy Rail Zones 1-5 on the mobile app? When I last looked a couple of months ago it was there, but having read your post & checked the app right now it does now only sell bus tickets? That's a serious step backwards, although my pass is still more than 7 days from expiry. The Google store still shows it as being a function, so is it still available but only within 7 days of expiry?

As for the new Northern TVMs & MCards, well I have written to Northern with a few suggestions about this. The readers are, to say the least a bit flakey and it doesn't take a lot of movement of the card to make the process fall over. And that's once you've figured out which reader to use! The old TVMs displayed a picture of the reader when it was to time scan / download, the new ones don't so this would be a useful addition. If MCards are going to be made more widely popular, perhaps the new TVMs could be modified to carry a small stock and released when ordering an MCard product for the first time.

 

[ASharpe]

Is it just me being unlucky or are the readers at Leeds station ticket barrier often faulty. It must be about every other week that one of the readers doesn't work for me and after trying for a second or so I need to move to a different barrier.

I've got my walking pace right so I don't need to stop at all to use a barrier.

 

[yorksrob]

Is it just me being unlucky or are the readers at Leeds station ticket barrier often faulty. It must be about every other week that one of the readers doesn't work for me and after trying for a second or so I need to move to a different barrier.

I've got my walking pace right so I don't need to stop at all to use a barrier.

They do seem very temperamental. Presumably they sourced them from Steptoe's yard.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

£2 charge coming in soon if you want a pink MCard from a travel centre or MCard machine, so those were a huge waste of money as I can’t see too many people using them to acquire the cards once the charge comes in!

They kept that quiet!

Given that I've had to ask for a replacement pink card 3 times in the last 18 months after mine became unreadable by the machines on buses, I hope the charge will be waived for replacing defective cards.