Great Western Coffee Shop

Question - if I book an advance ticket and find when I come to pick it up shortly before my train departs that the Ticket Vending Machine at the station I'm leaving from is not operational, how do I stand?

Can they not print it for you in the ticket office? I've had the same problem at Taplow but the legendary Ted has always managed to do it for me in the office!

yes, if there is one and it is open.

Otherwise I understand you can travel with card & print-out/email & collect at change station/destination. not your fault you can't collect....

This happened to me a couple of months ago on a trip from Pinhoe to Salisbury. The TM told me to jump off at Honiton and pick up the tickets there. Fortunately, he was keeping his eye on me and there wasn't a queue, so it didn't hold the train up - might have been tricky if the TVM had not been on the platform we arrived at.

If it's a manned station, they could ... alas I have a case coming up where they station's unstaffed and the TVM's not working.


That seems reasonable - perhaps I should ask @FGW to confirm and take a printout of the conversation?

oh yes....they should know when a TVM is out of action....

What happens if the TVM (possibly plural) is out of order and there is a 15 person queue that you know will make you miss the train even though you allowed 30mins to collect your prepaid ticket?

speak to the guard before boarding and check.....

That's interesting, Phil. Are you saying that, although you have to specify which station you are going to collect the tickets at, you can, in fact, get them from any station TVM?

In my experience yes any station - mine normally default to Reading (my departure station) but I've never had any problem picking them from machines at Taplow/Maidenhead.

Any machine....you learn everyday - I thought that was a very well known fact these days.

Done to ensure you know where (by having to specify at least one you can get to) you can pick them up.

At one time, there was a note that you had to wait two hours from ordering to picking up, because at least one TOC's machines weren't continually online - and I suspect that with those machines, pick up [was / is] limited to the machine(s) at the station chosen - otherwise a bit of quick footwork could have got multiple tickets.

More recently in FGW land, I have sat in a waiting area, ordered from my laptops tickets that weren't available via the front panel of a TVM, and collected them within a few minutes.   That after the local booking office refused to serve me because it was too late at night to sell anything except "tickets for today" ...

Once someone confirms (if they can) that all machines are now online / interchangeable, my advise to people    may sometimes become "sit at your own device, work out what you need from the more extensive menu it offers and without creating a queue, then walk over to a machine just to collect" - in fact, wouldn't that make sense as an official recommendation to get more throughput at the TVMs  :D

My understanding was that this was a fraud prevention measure, nothing to do with not being permanently online. Thus the two hours were deemed long enough for the card companies fraud mechanisms to work, prevent charge & notify the TOC to remove the ticket (non) purchase from their systems.

This has been tightened up by the card companies (in that they simply refuse any card transaction they don't like the look of straight away), and thus tickets are available sooner. Well, that's the explanation I got from two different TOCs.

Same in my experience too - have collected tickets literally 100's of miles from the collection point specified at the time of booking and from a different TOC's TVM's.

Going back to the original post, I've also seen on quite a few occasions people being let through the ticket barriers at Paddington with just a printout of the booking details (I'm sure the email displayed on a suitable device would also suffice), so I think there is a degree of flexibility as long as you pass the attitude test with platform & on-train staff and there is a genuine reason for not being able to convert your booking into paper tickets.

I heard the real purpose of the drop down list is just to prevent you arbitrarily deciding to pick up your tickets from a station not listed at all, i.e. one having no machine.  In other words it forces you to be aware that there is a list, reinforcing that there might be places you cannot do it.

Paul

Yes I was told that too.

If machine doesn't allow tickets to be collected then you should board the train and advise the conductor what has happened. At best they will allow you to travel to the end / interchange station to collect your tickets.

At worse they will be awkward and may write up an unpaid fares notice and take your details. This can be followed up with the TOC at a later date as a failed TVM / Closed Ticket Office is the fault of the railway industry.

If you stray into London Underground stations and are still unable to get your tickets then it gets alot more awkward. From bitter personal experience I would avoid this but nevertheless if you still could not collect your tickets then you still have "the upper hand" so to speak and you should be able to get a UFN if you stand your ground. Do expect to be treated like a criminal for 20 minutes though...

I have flown into Gatwick on several occasions and used the FGW app to buy and collect tickets. I tend not to buy in advance as I don't know when I'll clear immigration. Once through, I then decide which of the two possible routes I will take and then buy on the app. A short walk to the station, ignore  the extremely long queue for the ticket machines and go straight to the ticket collection machines where there will be no one (usually) in front of me. Then down the escalator and on to the train.

Additionally as Grahame has done I will also buy journeys on the app that aren't available on the machine.