Paying with Cards

[whole diary]

[mada]

You would be though as judging from your previous post you travel for free!!!

[vacman]

You would be though as judging from your previous post you travel for free!!!

I have to buy a PRIV ticket if travelling on another TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) and I can't use a fast ticket machine to buy one of those so I would have to queue up at the booking office!

[smokey]

Remember FGW^▸ (First Great Western) got in Deep S*** when they had put a ^1 admin charge on telephone sales,
they had to pay all those ^1's back and I think they paid back more than was taken because Wessex could't be bothered to sort out which Advanced tickets were by phone and which were taken at booking offices they just refund a ^1, after all First were paying no Skin of Nex's nose.

So to charge a Fee on small Card transaction would proberly break the same rules.

However what could be done is this, a MINIMUM ^10 charge on a Card, with a voucher for the Change to be collected at a booking office, so when a fare is only 90p a voucher for ^9.10 is issued that can only be collected at a booking office.

Of course if the Fare is only 90p and that happened, MORE people would pay by Cash or buy season tickets.

[Westernchallenger]

There's always the Ryanair approach which is to impose a fee irrespective of the means of payment - including the privilege of using their branded credit card!

[Chris from Nailsea]

Have you noticed how many people pay using cards, even for very small amounts? The number commuting in from Nailsea who pay ^3.50 every day by card is significant, with the result that the train manager is rarely able to get through the train ...    

Ah ... that'll be me, then!

Fair comment, John: I always used to pay by cash, even trying whenever possible to have the correct change, when we had our excellent station manager in the good old days of Nailsea being a manned station.  However, when he was replaced by the machines, I found they were so particular about what coins they would accept that I resorted to using my card - and similarly used a card when the ticket machine was too soggy to work and I had to buy my ticket on the train, or at BTM^▸ (Bristol Temple Meads (strictly, it should be BRI)).

However, in view of the various comments in this thread, I will mend my ways, and resume paying with cash from now on!

Vacman - thanks for your comments, from someone on the other end of such transactions!  I must say, I thought it would be easier for train crew to deal with cashless transactions (no bulky coins to carry/count up, for example), but apparently not.  I'm happy to resume cash transactions, if that helps! 

[John R]

Ah yes, happy days, when Dave would store up a pile of returns to Temple Meads, and could sell 3 cash tickets whilst processing a card transaction. Now I always thought that was very enterprising, and certainly kept the queues down. And it encouraged cash, because you knew he could serve you a lot quicker than if he had to sell you one out of the machine and process your card transaction.