Tickets retained by barriers before destination

[Hadders]

This is the response I got from Southern when I made a complaint about Advance tickets always being rejected. It seems it is a conscious decision from GTR rather than poor gateline programming - maybe they've set the gates to reject them by removing all Advances from the database rather than using special rules.

It's a poor customer experience and you don't even get the revenue protection benefits, because when the gates are set to reject so many tickets the assistants just wave anyone through who has a bit of orange paper and/or looks honest.

When I've asked the assistants why they are rejected, many don't seem to know the official line, usually get an answer like "the machines are old" or "the machines are stupid".

This is definitely the situation at Stevenage. All Advance and railcard discounted tickets seem to get rejected. The result is you just get waves through with anything that bears some sort of resemblance to a ticket. Very rare for a proper check to take place.

 

[OscarH]

When I've asked the assistants why they are rejected, many don't seem to know the official line, usually get an answer like "the machines are old" or "the machines are stupid".

Given they're cubic gates the machines arguably are stupid, even if that's not the reason for those specific rejections

It is very poor though, it caused hassle for the passenger, particularly if they're running late (yes people should leave earlier, but life happens sometimes), and as you say they basically never actually check it more than seeing a bit of orange, so it doesn't provide much

 

[Sonic1234]

Very rare for a proper check to take place.

Travel at a quiet time from one of the Sussex stations, they might check your ticket. Interestingly, the On Trak agency staff at these locations seem more interested in the ticket than GTR's own staff.

But at a busy station like Victoria - no chance.

I know of 3 GTR stations where Advances are accepted (and heard of one more through this forum), presumably because the block has never been set on the gates. One of which blocking them is pointless because the gates are controlled by the ticket office who can't see what you're holding without closing the office and coming out, not that this stops GTR blocking them elsewhere where this is the case.

 

[adelante_burns]

My PRIV rate off peak return tickets are often rejected by the barriers when trying to exit Walthamstow Central from the London Overground platforms.

On several occasions in recent months the barriers on platform 2 have been left unmanned but still closed. Staff weren’t on the platform either so had to go round and cross to platform 1 where last time the barriers were also closed and unmanned so I had to shout for a member of staff to abandon the ticket office and set me free!

Weirdly the barriers never reject when trying to enter the station for outbound journeys so I’m not sure how they have been programmed!