Bath Spa - ticket office closed

[whole diary]

[IndustryInsider]

They are used.....by 12% of customers.

12% of the users of Bath Spa station is a lot of people.

10.9% at Bath Spa.  That's an average of 42 tickets sold each hour the office is open (52 if you include bookings collected) and there would be a lot of general enquiries and refunds etc. on top of that of course.

[johnneyw]

10.9% at Bath Spa.  That's an average of 42 tickets sold each hour the office is open (52 if you include bookings collected)

That's quite an important point.  In my experience, the prepaid ticket collect facilities at station machines, even when generally operative, all too frequently display a message to the effect that the prepaid ticket function is disabled.  The message then advises to go to the ticket office for assistance, which is fine if there is one but rather less so when this occurs at somewhere like my local Redland Station where said ticket office closed during the 20th Century.
Yes, the train managers should be able to issue the tickets from their machines....if they are present on that leg of the journey.....but for how long if such machines are being withdrawn from staff?
It all results in added complication and stress, for even experienced rail travellers, let alone those newer customers.

[ChrisB]

Yes, the train managers should be able to issue the tickets from their machines....if they are present on that leg of the journey.....but for how long if such machines are being withdrawn from staff?

Where did you get that idea from? From station staff, yes - but not from on-train staff AFAIK^▸ (as far as I know)

[johnneyw]

Yes, the train managers should be able to issue the tickets from their machines....if they are present on that leg of the journey.....but for how long if such machines are being withdrawn from staff?

Where did you get that idea from? From station staff, yes - but not from on-train staff AFAIK^▸ (as far as I know)

Unless I'm going more potty than I realised (entirely plausible) I had some printed off for me by one of the Train Manager/Revenue Protection staff on a journey earlier this year when the ticket machine at the local station TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) let me down.