But that's the point. It's possible to both be wrong about something, but also be 110% confident that you are right.
That's true, but generally you would only be
legitimate in holding that 110% confidence if, for example, you had looked it up fairly recently and saw it was not valid. Of course, you could always get unlucky and find that the rules have changed since you looked it up, but in that case you should be open to looking it up again
Misplaced confidence, based on an assumption about whether or not a ticket is likely valid, is dangerous. It's all about starting with the positive attitude of "the customer is probably right" rather than treating members of the public as chancers until proven innocent.
Unfortunately there are far too many frontline staff whose attitudes get increasingly cynical over time, forgetting the fact that the vast majority of (memorable) interactions will, by definition, be in cases where someone is in the wrong. You don't remember the vast majority of people who have perfectly valid tickets and so a positive attitude is necessary.
Agreed, if you know you are unsure though.
Unless you
know you are right, you cannot be 100% sure.
My point is that some people expect all staff members to have 100% accurate, encyclopedic knowledge of all ticketing terms and conditions. That's almost impossible.
Please can you quote where somebody has stated this is their expectation? Or could it be that you are exaggerating...
So whilst a customer may think "I know the conditions of this ticket, so why don't they", it's not an entirely reasonable expectation, unfortunately.
It's an entirely reasonable expectation that when you buy a ticket, it is accepted. How the company goes about that is up to them, but a large part of it should be technological at the first instance (e.g. ensuring barriers/machines are correctly configured to accept valid tickets). Only a minority of circumstances should then require human intervention, and staff should be trained to have an open mindset as to a ticket's potential validity rather than jumping to conclusions.
That wasn't my question. Do you think it would be entirely unreasonable for a member of staff at Milton Keynes Central to be confident that an East Midlands Rover isn't valid at MKC? Yes, it would be incorrect, but it wouldn't necessarily be unreasonable.
Yes, it would be unreasonable - it would imply they have never looked up its validity map. So how could they possibly be confident it
isn't valid? They can't be. They are just making a blind assumption.
Again, there is a very significant difference between being confidently wrong and being in doubt.
That is true, but see above.
A route is either valid or it's not.
If only it were so simple. In quite a lot of cases there is ambiguity, because the valid routes depend on how you interpret the Routeing Guide (for example, how you resolve apparent contradictions or omissions in the instructions).
A ranger or rover is either in area, or it's not.
This is usually more straightforward, but with the abolition of official validity maps for most products on NRE, you are left relying on unofficial (or outdated official) maps which could be inaccurate, or purely working out which intermediate routes are intended to be valid based on the list of included stations. And just because you are in the correct area, there are still TOC and time restrictions to consider.
The point is that people are happy for staff to have leaky knowledge when it suits them.
If you're happy for someone to use a ticket via a route that is not permitted in the basis that staff will probably confidently allow it because they don't know otherwise, then you should be equally willing to accept that someone may confidently refuse another ticket because it seems implausible for it to be valid.
This is a false equivalence. The damage done by someone travelling via a reasonable, but strictly speaking not permitted, route is negligible to a TOC. At worst you could argue they should have bought an appropriate combination of split tickets, which may have cost more (or in some cases less). It is often just an administrative oversight that means a reasonable route is not permitted; consider engineering work diversions without appropriate easements, for instance.
Meanwhile if someone's valid ticket is refused, they will experience varying degrees of frustration and inconvenience, and potentially out-of-pocket financial loss if they are wrongly forced to buy a new ticket (which it may be tricky to get reimbursed). In relative terms, the 'damage done' is much more significant. The TOC also
makes the rules, so they have no excuse for not being able to follow them. The same cannot be said for passengers, who face a bewildering array of confusing and often conflicting rules to discover and abide by.
Consumer law recognises this fundamental imbalance between companies and individuals. You seem to think that both are on an even playing field, but that is far from being the case.
