"Your ticket has expired, sir"

[blacknight]

The issue here is that some people employed as gateline staff are intelligent and others are not. That is not a critical point rather a fact. Some have a positive customer attitude, some average, some poor. Rail ticketing is really complicated and less intelligent staff with a poor attitude make for a poor travel experience because they don't understand. THOSE ones should be sacked but that is difficult, expensive and might not fix the problem.

Would have thought having a positive attitude to defending revenue would be a critical part of the job, I could give excellent "customer service" & let everyone with a rejected ticket through but would that be being good & a positive attitude to the job of revenue protection? which is like making ommelette without breaking eggs.
Should person be sacked for doing the job correctly surely valid ticket would open the gate so ticket as to be checked & passenger questioned.
I could take any return portion valid for 30 days if you read expiry date on ticket but if ticket as been put through gate & not blacklined I could in theory reuse that ticket by doing the following enter it into gate which display would state ticket expired, take it to gate line assistant to be let out manually & be outraged if staff dared to question "valid ticket" while others call for him to be sacked.

 

[sheff1]

... surely valid ticket would open the gate so ticket as to be checked & passenger questioned

If you believe that, you will believe anything. And if that is what TOCs teach barrier attendants no wonder they are not accepting valid tickets.

I have no problem with a ticket being checked but, if there is any doubt, surely checking should be the first reaction of staff, not something which only happens after much 'discussion' following an assertion that the ticket is invalid. Then, if the ticket is found to be indeed valid after all, the staff member should apologise for the inconvenience not continue to imply that the ticket is somehow still invalid.

 

[tony_mac]

I think that, had he said 'used', rather then 'expired' then it would have been easier - at least you would have known what point he was trying to make.

It is also possible that the magnetic strip could not be read, so he was giving you the benefit of the doubt, rather than completely accepting your claim that it hadn't been used.
I am sure it would be easy to use a return ticket then demagnetise the strip and use it again.

It sounds mostly like a problem with communication, rather than him not knowing what he was doing, but it's obviously still not good for the innocent passenger.

 

[sheff1]

I think that, had he said 'used', rather then 'expired' then it would have been easier - at least you would have known what point he was trying to make..

Easier to pursue a claim of slander certainly

 

[WelshBluebird]

surely valid ticket would open the gate

Not at all.
Sometimes the magnetic strip can be damaged, so the gate will reject it.
Sometimes the gates may just be having a bad day and reject your ticket for no reason at all.
Sometimes the gates are set up to reject all discounted tickets.
Sometimes the gates are set up to reject off peak (or any other type of) tickets.
Etc etc etc.

 

[aleph_0]

Sometimes the gates are set up to reject off peak (or any other type of) tickets.
Etc etc etc.

For example, I've had a barrier reject my long distance Super Off-Peak Return ticket at a time when the short distance Super Off-Peak tickets are not valid. I would expect barrier staff to realise this, and quickly check the restriction code if necessary.

 

[87 027]

Is the list of the various rejection codes displayed by the gateline publicly available?

 

[island]

Is the list of the various rejection codes displayed by the gateline publicly available?

Yes: http://www.myreader.co.uk/message/346712.aspx

 

[talltim]

Just a thought but did you have a mobile phone or anything electrical/magnetic anywhere near your ticket.If so this will corupt the strip on the back of the ticket and the ticket will not work in the barriers.Working in an SWT ticket office i have seen this many times. Being taken to the ticket office is a good idea because the STAR ticketing system can read the ticket and tell excactly what time and at what station barriers it has been used at.You would be amazed how many times people have not had their tickets checked for example putting their ticket in the barrier one end to find barriers open at the other and try to use the same ticket again.

I can understand the concept of the mag stripe stopping working, so not being allowed though the automatic barrier, but sure the ticket office wouldn't be able to read it electronically either?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I suspect they wouldn't care.

Is society really at the stage where we will sue people and kick up a storm over one minute?

I hope not. Life's too short.

There's a certain irony to the juxtaposition of your two sentences

 

[island]

I can understand the concept of the mag stripe stopping working, so not being allowed though the automatic barrier, but sure the ticket office wouldn't be able to read it electronically either?

Depends. The readers in the office probably aren't used as much and may be a little less worn-out.

 

[LondonJohn]

Shame the original poster wasn't travelling tonight as a guy manning the gateline let 3 people through that hadn't bought any ticket and asked to buy one....

 

[sheff1]

Well, I have now received a reply from SWT. Judge for yourselves whether the answer to the question at the end of my first post is 'yes' or 'no'.

Thank you for your email of 14 October 2011.

I was sorry to learn that you were unhappy with the conduct of our employee at Southampton Central Station. We set very high standards for our people and provide training so they deliver a professional, polite and helpful service.

Clearly, on this occasion, we failed to meet these standards and I have passed your comments to the Station Manager so the matter can be investigated further and any necessary action taken.

We value all feedback as this helps us in our quest to raise our standard of customer service. This sort of information is very helpful in this respect and I would like to thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.

You may be assured that we will look into this complaint and I trust that next time you travel with us you have a much more satisfactory experience.

Please accept my renewed apologies and I am sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the debate.

 

[LondonJohn]

Well, I have now received a reply from SWT. Judge for yourselves whether the answer to the question at the end of my first post is 'yes' or 'no'.


Thanks to everyone who contributed to the debate.

I would say no. Its almost identical word for word when I had a bad experience at Southampton Central.

Three words .. Cut and paste..

 

[bb21]

In the interest of balance, I will say that Southampton Central does seem to be another location where passengers seems to experience some truly awful customer service, as I have encountered a number of times myself previously. However on Saturday I was pleasantly surprised when the guy at the ticket office managed to issue an excess fare correctly for me. That was my fourth attempt on the day to get the excess sorted out and on each of the three previous attempts I was told a different reason why it could not be issued. So credit where credit is due.