Great Western Coffee Shop

Smart train tickets reach tipping point as paper tapers off from Rail Delivery Group (https://www.raildeliverygroup.com/media-centre/press-releases/2019/469775968-2019-10-14.html)

Interesting to see the unit of saved paper is km - I would have thought an area measure, or better still a weight might have made more sense.

That aside, are they saving paper? When I booked a forthcoming trip to London, I noted that GWR have started charging £1.50 to deliver paper tickets; this was enough to persuade me to accept electronic tickets on my phone. However, I've also just booked a trip to Nottingham - and rather than install another app, I have printed the tickets on A4 sheets of paper (I don't have any other size to print on).

Overall, for the two trips, allowing for envelopes and so on, I reckon I'm probably about quits!

I confess I've so far stuck with paper tickets, at least for train journeys. But it does seem that all sorts of money-handling operations: tickets, payments, other banking operations – are moving to to phones for more and more people, so it's probably inevitable that tickets end up there too. What's more, this seems to be a worldwide movement.

I wonder how much it is expressed in double decker buses?  ;)

Only time I used my phone with a ticket, the reader at the gateline didn't want a bar of it, but the staff just waved me through. My smartcard usually works - sometimes it plays up but eventually opens. One thing I wish we had was the ability to read it in the GWR app to see whats on the card.

Oddly when I had to renew at Maidenhead the other week (ticket machine was OOO and office closed at Goring), they refused until I produced my old paper photo card (the pink one), which was just weird as you dont need it when you buy at the machines, and I dont recall every having to show it at Goring when I have bought a weekly at the desk. Luckily I managed to find it, but did strike me as somewhat odd, given there is a (completely different) photo on the back of the smartcard anyway.

Did any one visit any of these smartcard workshops?

I had a bad experience with buying an e-ticket using the GWR app a couple of months back.

I was entering the details for my journey while waiting for my train on the platform, and had just pressed the 'pay now' button as the train rolled into the platform.  Unlike previous times I have used it, I was asked to answer several multiple-choice security questions, after which there was an unusually long delay followed by a message to say it had been unable to collect payment.

By this time I was already on the train and the conductor was doing his rounds.  So I bought a ticket from him, of course (I had joined at an unstaffed station without a ticket machine, so no issues there.)  A minute or two later, I discovered that GWR *had* taken payment, *and* issued my e-ticket - so now I had two tickets for the same journey!

GWR subsequently gave me a full refund for my ticket - I wasn't sure they would. since this type of issue isn't listed as a valid reason for a refund - so all ended well.  However, it didn't do much at the time for my confidence in the GWR mobile app as a good way to buy and use tickets.


One other (unrelated) point on mobile e-tickets.  I find the barcodes scan more readily at ticket barriers that the ones printed on paper tickets.  Sometimes it takes me 2 or 3 goes to get a paper ticket to open the barrier, whereas the one on my phone normally works first time.  Has anybody else found that?

I've never had a problem with paper tickets opening barriers. Is this something you've noticed a specific station?

On my PC at home I have had several occasions where the GWR website tells me my purchase has been unsuccessful. I have been about to start again when I get a confirmation email with my ticket code :-\

To be clear, I'm talking about paper tickets with barcodes, not the ones with magnetic strips.  They seem more temperamental when the print is blacker.
Bristol Parkway is the station I'm most often passing through the barriers with one of the things.

I get this error message about payment *every* time I buy through the app & have learnt to wait for the email, which usually is only 90 secnds or so to arrive - and the ticket arrives in the app even quicker.

Seems like an app problem....been going on for a while now.
No other TOC app has this problem in my experience - and I use most of them.

For the first time ever, I'm using e-tickets tomorrow. Going up to Yorkshire, back on Tuesday. My mind, inevitably, is full of possible breakdowns: what if my phone dies? what if I can't open the pdf on my phone tomorrow? etc, etc. Was it worth it just to save £1 for picking up tickets at the station? But I'm sure it will be fine. If not, I'll let you know next week!

E-tickets could be all well and good if you are buying for yourself.  However what if you are organising travel for your proverbial aged aunt?

If you can print them as well I’d do so.  Apparently prints of the e-ticket pdf are valid for travel. 
However I understand this is not possible with the badly specified “m-tickets” which were only valid if shown within an App.

Paul

I have pdf but no time to print now, unfortunately.

As for my Aged Aunt, she (84) would be fine with e-tickets. However, my young middle-aged friend (45) with terrible vision has real problems using the websites to buy tickets; has to zoom in to 175% and still the colours cause her problems. But buying at the station is also a problem, due to deafness.  :(

As an aside, if you use GWR, at the top there is an Accessibility Tools link that allows the user to alter the site layout and saves those preferences for every visit (so long as cookies are accepted and kept).  This includes zoom level and colours.  You'll probably find other websites have the same.

The badly publicized National Rail Smartcard App can read the tickets on a smartcard (available on the App Store or Google Play). It can also activate passes on Flexi Season Tickets.

I'm not a fan of Paper Roll Ticket (PRT), it's seems like a bit a throwback to the SPORTIS era, but without the perforations to separate your return ticket portions. It's quite an unsubtle way by the RDG to shove people to smart fulfilment methods, especially when 7 day seasons are issued on them.

Thanks, I'll pass that on.

 :) I refuse to use e-tickets, why should I do something DfT think is best thing since sliced bread for no real benefit to me. Just an excuse to say look how many people use them - lets shut ticket offices ! If they were that bothered they'd force Tfl to accept them on tube for cross London journeys ??

I tend to hold out for as long as possible with such things. Automatic checkouts in shops being one example.  But eventually I bow to ‘progress’ and grudgingly accept!

My e-ticket trip to Yorkshire went well. I didn't actually get to open the barriers with my phone, because we made impromptu extra journeys at each end (Redland to Temple Meads, then Leeds to Shipley) (getting printed tickets, but those stations don't have barriers anyway). In fact, my QR code only got scanned on the return journey – on the outward leg the conductor just looked at it.

Nevertheless, I've opted for printed tickets for my trip to sunny Cornwall later this month. Why? Mostly just because the GWR site offers either for free, whereas XC charges (albeit only £1) to pick up a printed ticket. Also because this journey is planned well in advance, the trip to Yorkshire was somewhat last minute and mostly planned by someone else.

I sincerely hope that the £1 fee is then paid to the TOC that runs the ticket office/TVM where the ticket is collected from!

As it's charged at time of purchase that seems unlikely, though there may be some accounting later. But perhaps XC has to pay other TOCs an annual fee to let their tickets be collected from other TOCs stations? Which would have to include NR.

My understanding is that the other TOCs all run stations with TVMs and have an agreement that it balances out when customers pick up from someone else's machine. XC don't run any stations (not even the ones at which they provide all the services) and so are not part of this agreement.

I've started using e-tickets on the GWR app more now that Charlbury ticket office is closed more often than not, and there are often long queues at the ticket machine.

I am, however, not entirely happy about the surveillance implications. The app operator can (and, from reports elsewhere, does) keep a travel history keyed to your user account. I don't like Google or Facebook recording what websites I visit, when; by the same token, I don't like GWR recording where I visit, when. So when the ticket machine is free, I'll continue to use it.

I have had to revert to a paper annual travelcard instead of an Oyster card one because……
The ticket machines can’t do one,
The Tube ticket offices are all shut,
The Overgound/TFL Rail ticket offices can’t do it,
National rail ticket offices can’t do Oyster.

The paper ticket stopped working in the barriers a day or so after I got the blasted thing. As a result I have to have staff let me through manually. This can add a few minutes to my journey which is not good. I am going to get staff at my local something for Christmas for all the times I’ve been helped through the barriers. I was told that I might find it cheaper to use contactless rather than a travelcard. I asked if I would still get 1/3 off my rail fares doing that and they said no an annual travelcard will be better in my case.

GWR and others can do an annual travelcard on Smartcard. GWR's is called Touch. You order the smartcard and ticket online. Select which station you will be activating your smartcard at, tap at the barrier or validator of that station. They'll then send you your paper Gold Card Record card to get your rail discounts.

If you're only buying a weekly or monthly travelcard, you can also activate by using the NFC chip on your phone.

Yes that’s true, except I live in London and use the Tube and London buses daily. I can’t use anything except an Oyster card with a travelcard loaded on it on the those. So staff would still have to pass me through the barriers each time on the tube.

Oh, sorry to hear that. GWR tickets page suggests that it does seem possible to get what I think you want. Away from London & TfL stations you would use the validator or ticket gates at a nominated station to load the ticket to your GWR Touch smartcard. I don't know if it works the same inside London.

See the attached screenshot. The £2164 price quoted is just West Drayton to Paddington without travelcard. The £2812 is a zones 1-6 travelcard. I also played around with Hayes (Zones 1-5) and Ealing Broadway (Zones 1-3).

TfL are resisting allowing Travelcards entirely within Zones 1-6 on TOC Smartcards. The technology isn't anywhere near as clever as Oyster and has at least one fraud loophole which I won't go into here as it doesn't yet seem to be common knowledge judging by a quick Google search I've just done.  1st fan could have ordered an Oyster one online from the TfL website to pick up at a gate, or a few of the TfL Visitor Centres still do them on the spot, but too late now as I don't think you can swap from paper once you've bought it.  TfL seem to have stopped doing telephone sales.

Yeah the issue I had with ordering online is that I couldn’t travel on GWR the next day with the gold card discount without the record card to prove I was entitled. GWR confirmed this at Paddington saying that the Train Managers can’t read Oyster cards. You also apparently can’t order an annual travel card on an Oyster card online far enough in advance that the record card will arrive same day as the new travelcard starts. It’s a mess and my renewal comes up soon.

Happened to be passing StPancras earlier and stopped very briefly into the TFL visitor centre there. The nice gentleman informed me that they can do annual travel cards. In my haste I didn’t check whether they could do them onto an oyster and a record card but as they have readers on the desk I hope so. This will solve the problem if so.

They will ONLY be able to do them on Oyster with a record card; the mag stripe ticket option was taken off long ago.  Looks like that's the best bet for now at least.

Have now got an Oyster with annual travelcard loaded onto it and a gold record card as well. Took less than a minute at the visitor centre and has made my life much easier.

Somewhat tangential to this thread (if there's a more appropriate one, mods please move) but I was pleased to see that paper tickets are also getting smarter – or at least better designed. The ones I picked up on Monday for a journey tomorrow have all info on one card; that's time and reservation as well as destination, ticket type etc.

I've been getting these for ages....maybe they've recently upgraded the software in your TVM?

'Advance' tickets have been like that for some time.

That would be sensible. I was going to say "my last lot weren't" but probably I'm failing to distinguish between Advance and non-Advance with separate reservation.