Are e-tickets the way forward?

[yorkie]

Nothing wrong with it, but it's hardly the way forward! I don't look back to the long queues at ticket offices and think 'ah yes I want to go back to those days' and most people seem to agree. But of course we are all entitled to our own opinions

 

[johncrossley]

What is wrong with that?

It means you can only buy tickets when the ticket office is open. Not much good if your local station is unstaffed. A lot of ticket offices aren't even open on weekday afternoons.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

It means you can only buy tickets when the ticket office is open. Not much good if your local station is unstaffed. A lot of ticket offices aren't even open on weekday afternoons.

I cannot disagree with what you say, but in our case, the two stations with booking offices we had used in recent years (my wife died last November) were at Manchester Airport and Wilmslow railway stations which were well patronised four-platform railway stations with numbers of staff.

 

[Skymonster]

And yet "normal" rail travellers also prefer e-tickets.

in your mind… And yet the poll running on this forum currently shows around a two thirds / one third majority in favour of paper tickets. I suspect the real reason why many average punters use e-tickets now is not a preference for them, but because ticket retailing websites have been redesigned to coerce people into e-tickets by making other fulfilment methods more difficult to find / navigate (Or in the case of the wretched Cross Country more expensive by charging a TOD collection fee).

 

[yorkie]

in your mind… And yet the poll running on this forum currently shows around a two thirds / one third majority in favour of paper tickets. I suspect the real reason why many average punters use e-tickets now is not a preference for them, but because ticket retailing websites have been redesigned to coerce people into e-tickets by making other fulfilment methods more difficult to find / navigate (Or in the case of the wretched Cross Country more expensive by charging a TOD collection fee).

On the websites I've used, it's a simple button selection.

For anyone who prefers TOD it would be trivial to press that button. But only a small proportion of people do.

I am confident the proportion of people using e-tickets will continue to grow.

 

[alistairlees]

in your mind… And yet the poll running on this forum currently shows around a two thirds / one third majority in favour of paper tickets. I suspect the real reason why many average punters use e-tickets now is not a preference for them, but because ticket retailing websites have been redesigned to coerce people into e-tickets by making other fulfilment methods more difficult to find / navigate (Or in the case of the wretched Cross Country more expensive by charging a TOD collection fee).

When presented with the option, customers choose eTickets over 90% of the time. The sample size is several million.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I am confident the proportion of people using e-tickets will continue to grow.

I would use them for 100% of journeys if only the railway would let me!

 

[Bald Rick]

Still more complex than having a simple CCST in a shirt pocket.

I disagree, especially if you:

a) put said shirt in wash, forgetting there was a ticket in the pocket, or,
b) don’t have a shirt pocket.

 

[maniacmartin]

It feels that we have a new thread about this every few weeks! I'm in my 30s and very tech savvy and I do not use e-Tickets for a few reasons which I've mentioned in similar threads:

1. Buying tickets for others is more fiddly - you can't just hand the tickets over to someone else in your household
2. I don't trust phones not to have a flat battery or no signal etc, which is much more likely to happen when I'm on a train and bored so playing with my phone, or on a train going through an area with no signal, so I would need to print them anyway
3. If you print them, you end up with a massive piece of paper which doesn't fit in your wallet. Worse, a split ticket or a return will have multiple pieces of paper instead of an option to have them all next to each other on one sheet
4. Getting them to scan the gates is fiddly and slow - you have to have the phone unlocked at just the right time, line the barcode up and as the scanner is face up you can't see what you're doing.
5. They aren't enabled for flows with cross-London transfers, which most of my non-PAYG journeys have
6. They're more difficult or impossible to get excess fares on
7. Break of journey is more difficult with them
8. TOCs bungled the rollout with the confusing distinction between m-Tickets, eTickets and print@Home. Even now, I have no idea which TOCs' apps give you a PDF or pkpass file and which require you to display the ticket in an awful app. I seem to recall that FirstGroup are or were the offenders here, and even used the term "eTicket" to describe the app-locked ones at one point in time? Either way, because no standard naming and implementation was mandated across all TOCs, its totally undermined my trust in the whole system. I have no idea what I'll get.
9. If I accidentally get stuck with an mTicket by mistake, I have no confidence in the app to not break and refuse to show the ticket
10. The extra tracking allows TOCs such as Greater Anglia to challenge Delay Repay claims more easily (legit or otherwise)
11. The scanning app that staff use is a black box, and if it does not like my route for whatever reason then it will be much harder to argue that it is valid, as it could be a case of "computer says no"

Now, if they had implemented it the way full service airlines do, with a common behaviour between all TOCs, and the ability to access your PNR (ticket) and print it at TVMs onto CCST then I would try them again. Barcodes would fit on CCST if the industry wanted them to. But the way they've been implemented it, for me the negatives outweigh the positives.

Also, I find it a bit insulting that those of use who are not in favour of the current eticket implementation are labelled as luddites on this thread. It's precisely because I'm a heavy tech user that I know of the downsides to these tickets!

 

[Skymonster]

When presented with the option, customers choose eTickets over 90% of the time. The sample size is several million.

And as I said, some of the apps (especially) and some of the websites deliberately make opting for TOD paper tickets more difficult - and if I recall from a recent debate in the Case of at least one app impossible. This almost certainly skews the numbers significantly.

 

[maniacmartin]

I would like to know what customers choose 90% of the time if ToD is the top, default option.
I suspect many people just click Next Next Next on whatever comes up

 

[Alex365Dash]

They're more difficult or impossible to get excess fares on

I, of course, can’t speak for everyone, but personally I haven’t had any issues getting excess fares on an eTicket. Brighton Travel Centre managed to do an overdistance excess on one for me perfectly fine! (Although, ironically, the excess was issued on CCST.)

The only difference between an excess fare with CCST and an eTicket is the ticket number put in - being the last five digits if the TIS takes alphanumeric characters, or if it doesn’t, there’s always 00000.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

To be honest, your posts are turning me against TOD even more and making me realise just how rubbish that system is compared to modern methods.

After a few responses from different website members, I felt in something of a stand-alone position with my liking for the credit card sized tickets.......

Then I saw the poll results on the associated thread......and felt very much better...

 

[plugwash]

I don't object to replacing magstripes with something more modern.

I do think the railway are doing a bad job of it in several ways.

1. Form factor, the credit-card sized card ticket form factor feels right, PRT feel cheap and nasty. Printed e-tickets are also quite unweildly if you aren't travelling with a bag that has a pouch for documentation*. I think if the railway had not been penny-pinching they could have come up with a soloution that retained the form-factor while switching to optical scanning.
2. Confusion from earlier smart ticket types like m-tickets and print at home tickets that really should have been killed off by now but haven't been.
3. Infighting within the industry, with some operators pushing e-tickets and yet others obstinately refusing, I kind of hoped that with the DFT now controlling the purse strings for transport in the UK they would go and give the reluctant parties (particularly TFL) an ass-kicking on this issue but it seems they have not done so yet.

As long as the railway retains potentially very harsh (though very inconsistent) penalties for ticketless travel I do not intend to rely on my phone for ticketing. I could buy e-tickets and print them but it's a hassle and the form-factor is annoying. I would be more likely to do it for a long journey than for local travel, but many of the long journeys I make involve (or potentially involve) a cross-london connection.

So for the moment I will continue buying tickets from ticket offices and TVMs.

If they were to introduce a PAYG system with intermodal capping in the conurbation where I live I would buy a lot less tickets.


* I carry such a bag on long journeys, but not when just travelling locally.

 

[Deafdoggie]

Nothing wrong with it, but it's hardly the way forward! I don't look back to the long queues at ticket offices and think 'ah yes I want to go back to those days' and most people seem to agree. But of course we are all entitled to our own opinions

I find it ironic that some heritage railways let you book their version of e-tickets online. Maybe we should be forced to queue at the ticket office for the full heritage experience

 

[yorkie]

It feels that we have a new thread about this every few weeks! I'm in my 30s and very tech savvy and I do not use e-Tickets for a few reasons which I've mentioned in similar threads:
Buying tickets for others is more fiddly - you can't just hand the tickets over to someone else in your household

I find it much easier; in the past I may have needed to post tickets to people or make sure I saw them. Now I can just forward the ticket to them.

I don't trust phones not to have a flat battery or no signal etc, which is much more likely to happen when I'm on a train and bored so playing with my phone, or on a train going through an area with no signal, so I would need to print them anyway

No need to have signal for an e-ticket; once downloaded that's it. You are thinking of m-tickets, which are awful.

If you print them, you end up with a massive piece of paper which doesn't fit in your wallet. Worse, a split ticket or a return will have multiple pieces of paper instead of an option to have them all next to each other on one sheet

The PDF software I use will print multiple pages per sheet.

Getting them to scan the gates is fiddly and slow - you have to have the phone unlocked at just the right time, line the barcode up and as the scanner is face up you can't see what you're doing.

I find ticket inspections to be quicker than with paper tickets; it is usually quick for them to read the barcode (bear in mind Aztec codes used by train tickets are faster to scan than QR codes used for other applications) and the staff see the tick and move on to the next person, without having to take a close look at the small font and figure out if the ticket is valid or not.

They aren't enabled for flows with cross-London transfers, which most of my non-PAYG journeys have

But my point is that they should be

They're more difficult or impossible to get excess fares on

That is a training issue for staff, not a drawback of the actual medium

Break of journey is more difficult with them

I find it easier as you don't have the 'passback' issue with them and e-tickets are less likely to be rejected by barriers in my experience. My last paper ticket was rejected everywhere; maybe it got demagnetised but I didn't do anything to obviously cause that.

TOCs bungled the rollout with the confusing distinction between m-Tickets, eTickets and print@Home. Even now, I have no idea which TOCs' apps give you a PDF or pkpass file and which require you to display the ticket in an awful app. I seem to recall that FirstGroup are or were the offenders here, and even used the term "eTicket" to describe the app-locked ones at one point in time? Either way, because no standard naming and implementation was mandated across all TOCs, its totally undermined my trust in the whole system. I have no idea what I'll get.

I agree that TOCs have tarnished the reputation of e-tickets by introducing m-tickets and some TOCs continue to behave in this manner. It should be outlawed. But that is not a reason against genuine e-tickets.

If I accidentally get stuck with an mTicket by mistake, I have no confidence in the app to not break and refuse to show the ticket

You are thinking of m-tickets! No app is required for e-tickets!

The extra tracking allows TOCs such as Greater Anglia to challenge Delay Repay claims more easily (legit or otherwise)

I do not see how this can be used against you and have never known it; yes if someone is on the fiddle they can be caught but that isn't a sensible drawback.

The scanning app that staff use is a black box, and if it does not like my route for whatever reason then it will be much harder to argue that it is valid, as it could be a case of "computer says no"

I've never had any issues in this area; I have had paper tickets rejected on multiple occasions but not yet an e-ticket. If anything I would say using a ticket that may be deemed questionable is better on an e-ticket because the staff are more likely to accept it than look at the price and say "your ticket is too cheap"; I know many people had issues with the South Yorkshire to Kent tickets which had the pricing error but with e-tickets they would simply give the satisfying acceptance beep and staff would move on.

Now, if they had implemented it the way full service airlines do, with a common behaviour between all TOCs, and the ability to access your PNR (ticket) and print it at TVMs onto CCST then I would try them again. Barcodes would fit on CCST if the industry wanted them to. But the way they've been implemented it, for me the negatives outweigh the positives.

Collectively and very generally, the TOCs are always misbehaving to some extent, but that is not a reason against using e-tickets IMO.

Also, I find it a bit insulting that those of use who are not in favour of the current eticket implementation are labelled as luddites on this thread. It's precisely because I'm a heavy tech user that I know of the downsides to these tickets!

Yes but you have made some key mistakes where you have confused m-tickets and e-tickets. As I have said before the rail industry is to blame; m-tickets should never have been introduced and they have tarnished the reputation of e-tickets and knocked some peoples' confidence. This is a good argument to say the TOCs are incompetent but is not a good reason not to use actual e-tickets.

I find it ironic that some heritage railways let you book their version of e-tickets online. Maybe we should be forced to queue at the ticket office for the full heritage experience

We got the full experience at the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire; two queues to go to windows where the seller was separated from the customer by a glass (or maybe plastic) wall, the seller speaking quietly, one of the customers struggling to hear the seller and telling the person next to them to shut up. Delightful. Unfortunately for them, the person they were aiming it at didn't hear them and I did, but that's another story.

 

[PeterC]

I don't know if SWR issues advances as e-tickets but the website gave the impression that installing their app was necessary. I really couldn't be bothered to start digging to check this and didn't fancy trying to navigate the Warerloo barriers in the rush hour using a format that was new to me.

The CCSTs slipped into my Oyster wallet together with my railcard. I barely needed to beak step going through the barriers at either end.

I'll happily use e-tickets at unbarriered provincial stations but will sti k to CCST for busy London termini when I can't use Oyster or contactless.

 

[Dai Corner]

We got the full experience at the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire; two queues to go to windows where the seller was separated from the customer by a glass (or maybe plastic) wall, the seller speaking quietly, one of the customers struggling to hear the seller and telling the person next to them to shut up. Delightful. Unfortunately for them, the person they were aiming it at didn't hear them and I did, but that's another story.

As an aside, the Pontypool and Blaenavon railway which I visited recently offered the following slightly surreal experience.

Online booking is required to obtain a discount. I was emailed a barcode which the booking office scanned before issuing me with an Edmondson style ticket. Sadly it was not checked or clipped on board. Perhaps the volunteer guard wasn't commercially trained or equipped.

 

[Bletchleyite]

As an aside, the Pontypool and Blaenavon railway which I visited recently offered the following slightly surreal experience.

Online booking is required to obtain a discount. I was emailed a barcode which the booking office scanned before issuing me with an Edmondson style ticket. Sadly it was not checked or clipped on board. Perhaps the volunteer guard wasn't commercially trained or equipped.

Ticketing on preserved railways is less about revenue protection (most people wouldn't fare-dodge on a preserved line; fare dodging is "in the culture" for travelling on the mainline but not so much for experience days out) and more about the experience of visitors and volunteers, so this isn't massively surprising.

 

[Dai Corner]

Ticketing on preserved railways is less about revenue protection (most people wouldn't fare-dodge on a preserved line; fare dodging is "in the culture" for travelling on the mainline but not so much for experience days out) and more about the experience of visitors and volunteers, so this isn't massively surprising.

I meant ticket checks as part of the experience rather than for revenue protection. It's also a good learning experience for small children and might discourage them from evading fares when they start using the 'big railway'.

 

[Wallsendmag]

I don’t find a phone difficult to work. I just find that using a phone is much more faff than a carrying a simple CCST when it comes to a rail travel, especially (as I explained above) in the context of barrier operations and ticket checks.

Paper tickets should be worth keeping while ever there are passengers who prefer them or need them - but as usual with the railway I suspect such is well down the list of priorities.

Do you also still use your local bank branch , phone the speaking clock, post letters , make phone calls with landlines. Pay with a physical credit/debit card etc etc etc?

I also guess nobody has stood at a gate line watch people struggling and trying to get through the gates with their reservation coupons, with an eTicket it’s fairly obvious what you need to scan.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Do you also still use your local bank branch , phone the speaking clock, post letters , make phone calls with landlines. Pay with a physical credit/debit card etc etc etc?

With the exemption of the speaking clock I do all those things! Ultimately it's far more satisfying to interact with other people in the real world rather than spend every waking minute staring at a phone screen!

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Do you also still use your local bank branch , phone the speaking clock, post letters , make phone calls with landlines. Pay with a physical credit/debit card etc etc etc?

Whilst the question was asked of another website member, I do use my bank branch at two differing outlets, post letters and greeting cards, make phone calls on my landline, pay regularly with a debit card (I do not use credit cards). However, I must confess never to have followed your query regarding the telephoning of the speaking clock.

I do not subscribe to internet banking nor do I have either a smart phone or a mobile phone. I am 77 years of age. Yet I still live a reasonable lifestyle.

 

[Wallsendmag]

It feels that we have a new thread about this every few weeks! I'm in my 30s and very tech savvy and I do not use e-Tickets for a few reasons which I've mentioned in similar threads:

1. Buying tickets for others is more fiddly - you can't just hand the tickets over to someone else in your household. Yes you can or even email them directly from the retailers sit

1. I don't trust phones not to have a flat battery or no signal etc, which is much more likely to happen when I'm on a train and bored so playing with my phone, or on a train going through an area with no signal, so I would need to print them anyway.
   
   You don’t need a signal to show a ticket in your wallet and all our trains have power at every seat

1. If you print them, you end up with a massive piece of paper which doesn't fit in your wallet. Worse, a split ticket or a return will have multiple pieces of paper instead of an option to have them all next to each other on one sheet

have you tried the LNER app split tickets appear as one ticket .

1. Getting them to scan the gates is fiddly and slow - you have to have the phone unlocked at just the right time, line the barcode up and as the scanner is face up you can't see what you're doing.

you also have to have a CCST (the correct coupon) I’m your hand at just the right time.Held the right way up.

1. They aren't enabled for flows with cross-London transfers, which most of my non-PAYG journeys have

were working very hard on that one

1. They're more difficult or impossible to get excess fares on

This has changed recently with new instructions being issued. Non problem

1. Break of journey is more difficult with them

this was a problem with a certain kind of Gate but is now fixed, otherwise the condti9ns are the same as CCST

1. TOCs bungled the rollout with the confusing distinction between m-Tickets, eTickets and print@Home. Even now, I have no idea which TOCs' apps give you a PDF or pkpass file and which require you to display the ticket in an awful app. I seem to recall that FirstGroup are or were the offenders here, and even used the term "eTicket" to describe the app-locked ones at one point in time? Either way, because no standard naming and implementation was mandated across all TOCs, its totally undermined my trust in the whole system. I have no idea what I'll get.

I’ll give you this one although Print at Home is being discontinued shortly, there is another format just launched though.

1. If I accidentally get stuck with an mTicket by mistake, I have no confidence in the app to not break and refuse to show the ticket

dont buy from a retailer that offers mTickets, I can recommend one.

1. The extra tracking allows TOCs such as Greater Anglia to challenge Delay Repay claims more easily (legit or otherwise)

it also allows messaging telling you what platform your train is on and one click delay repay as well as train running info, again I can recommend a retailer that does all of this

1. The scanning app that staff use is a black box, and if it does not like my route for whatever reason then it will be much harder to argue that it is valid, as it could be a case of "computer says no"

Thats down to training and system set up, nothing is ever perfect but this also applies to a visual check of a CCST

Also, I find it a bit insulting that those of use who are not in favour of the current eticket implementation are labelled as luddites on this thread. It's precisely because I'm a heavy tech user that I know of the downsides to these tickets!

But isn’t that the true meaning of the word , a group of people failing to chang with everyone else?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I’ll give you this one although Print at Home is being discontinued shortly, there is another format just launched though.

Is this the mythical S-ticket you were talking about? If it's now been launched, where can details of it be found?

 

[PeterC]

Do you also still use your local bank branch , phone the speaking clock, post letters , make phone calls with landlines. Pay with a physical credit/debit card etc etc etc?

I also guess nobody has stood at a gate line watch people struggling and trying to get through the gates with their reservation coupons, with an eTicket it’s fairly obvious what you need to scan.

It also pretty obvious which is the ticket. The sort of person who tries to get through the gate with the reservation will probably make a dogs breakfast of using a phone.

I'll have to have a close look at a barriered station on a quiet day and see how you actually use an e-ticket. The Oyster pad and slot for CCST were all I noticed at Waterloo but then with CCST you don't even stop walking as you go through the gate so there isn't much time to contemplate the technology..

 

[Bletchleyite]

It also pretty obvious which is the ticket. The sort of person who tries to get through the gate with the reservation will probably make a dogs breakfast of using a phone.

I'll have to have a close look at a barriered station on a quiet day and see how you actually use an e-ticket. The Oyster pad and slot for CCST were all I noticed at Waterloo but then with CCST you don't even stop walking as you go through the gate so there isn't much time to contemplate the technology..

A barcode scanner is mounted on the gate, typically on the end facing you but sometimes on top.

 

[Haywain]

The sort of person who tries to get through the gate with the reservation will probably make a dogs breakfast of using a phone.

So the reverse must also apply? That the person who knows which is the ticket will have no difficulty using a phone.

 

[Skymonster]

I also guess nobody has stood at a gate line watch people struggling and trying to get through the gates with their reservation coupons, with an eTicket it’s fairly obvious what you need to scan.

I guess you’ve never stood in a queue at a gateline, waiting while people activate their mobile phones, fumbling to find the right app or pull up the relevant barcode - while at the same time those with a CCST to hand just quickly and quietly put them in the slot and move on. (Same at checkouts in supermarkets too, those using mobile phones to pay are almost invariably slower, fumbling around getting the right app open, than folks who just use a contactless card or even chip and pin - I always groan inwardly when the person ahead of me is using a mobile as I know it’s almost certain to slow things down).

 

[Bletchleyite]

I guess you’ve never stood in a queue at a gateline, waiting while people activate their mobile phones, fumbling to find the right app or pull up the relevant barcode - while at the same time those with a CCST to hand just quickly and quietly put them in the slot and move on. (Same at checkouts in supermarkets too, those using mobile phones to pay are almost invariably slower, fumbling around getting the right app open, than folks who just use a contactless card or even chip and pin - I always groan inwardly when the person ahead of me is using a mobile as I know it’s almost certain to slow things down).

Eh? To pay on an iPhone you double tap the button on the right and look at the phone to unlock, then present it like a debit card at the machine. I'm sure Android is broadly similar. Because there's no need to take it out of your wallet it's quicker and easier to prepare than a card.

These will just be the same people who are taken by surprise that they have to pay and go searching through their handbag for a loose debit card only after the total has been rung up.