Great Western Coffee Shop

My partner often travels on the Marlow line and, if she doesn't have an opportunity to buy a ticket on the train to Maidenhead and the connection is tight, she has boarded a train to Reading and used the excess fares office to buy a ticket.  Ordinarily Reading staff have no problem selling a ticket with a railcard discount.  However, the other week, the person at the excess fares office said that a ticket must be purchased at Maidenhead before boarding a train to Reading, even if this would delay her journey by ~30 minutes or more.  He also refused to sell a ticket with a railcard discount.

Why do ticket staff not act consistently?  If these are the rules, why are they not often enforced?  Perhaps some staff feel that it makes no sense to punish passengers who have no intent to evade fares.  Having to allow an hour for a half hour journey just to buy a ticket at Maidenhead is, IMO, entirely unnecessary.

You have sussed the reason ion your second paragraph. I wouldn't wish that they enforced the rules as you suggest.

You shouldn't have to delay your journey to buy a ticket, although some staff seem to think you must.

You don't mention which station your partner is travelling from. If its Marlow then no problem as there are no ticket buying facilities at all. Bourne End has a ticket office open in the morning and a TVM available. These must be used prior to boarding if open/in working order. Not to do so leaves one liable to prosecution for ticketless travel.

Cookham and Furze Platt have ticket offices open in the morning. Again, these must be used when available.

I say 'must' as it is a legal requirement to purchase a ticket prior to boarding, where facilities exist and are open/in working order. That's regardless of whether or not tickets are sold on board.

Of course, if the origin station is Marlow then you can buy your ticket at the earliest opportunity. Be that on board, at an interchange, or at destination. If the connection time at Maidenhead is insufficient to purchase a ticket then that wouldn't constitute an opportunity.

If the journey in question was from Marlow, or from Cookham or Furze Platt when the ticket office was closed, and the connection time at Maidenhead was insufficient, then your partner absolutely should have been allowed to purchase the full range of tickets, including Railcard discount, on arrival at Reading. If that's what the journey in question entailed then you should complain to GWR about being overcharged.

But remember, if an opportunity to purchase was passed then an undiscounted fare being charged is probably a better outcome than being reported for prosecution.

That is your opinion, and you should note it as such. Convention is by using IMHO.

It is a grey, untested legal area and not yet proven either way. You leave yourself open to action if you don't take opportunity at Maidenhead and yes, unfortunately miss your connection. It would be helpful if GWR would issue some guidance, but I don't think they have.

Noted. You'll see I was careful to use the words 'should' or 'shouldn't' in relation to this particular point. As opposed to the 'must' regarding buying before boarding where facilities exist at the origin station. Agreed I should have added that it's my opinion regarding purchasing at an interchange.

You are correct that there is no clear guidance on what is a reasonable opportunity at an interchange station. With this particular case many of the connections at Maidenhead through the day off the Matlow branch and onto Reading bound services are just 4 minutes. I think it unlikely that GWR would consider that an opportunity. But then my personal recent experience of GWR staff enforcing ticketing rules leaves me somewhat cynical and I can perfectly understand someone at Reading insisting the OPs partner must purchase at Maidenhead in that 4 minute window, or delay their journey.

The OP's partner's actual journey would help us advise further.

Thanks for the replies.  Travel is from Furze Platt and we always purchase tickets from machines or ticket offices when they are available.  I guess we will have no option other than to risk missing connections or, when we can, buy tickets in advance (not possible from ticket machines I believe?)

It's sad that these rules exist, but I suppose they are deemed necessary for prevent/punishing fare evasion.  I agree that it's nice that some staff are prepared to sell [discounted] tickets at the end of a journey regardless of the rulebook, but I still think better guidelines and more consistency is needed.

An interesting discussion ...

It often feels that a queue takes longer to get through than it really does ... but I did note times when joining a queue on Saturday at a station not very far from home and it took 10 minutes from that point to getting to the counter.  Interesting with a minimum interchange time of 5 minutes at that station.  

Looking at the Marlow branch, do passengers from Marlow, buying tickets at the "first available opportunity" have to buy when they change trains (a.m. peaks) at Bourne End, where they have as little as three minutes?   How does that work?

Noting posts as I've been writing - the Marlow comment doesn't apply to this particular journey, but I still wonder!

With respect to how long it takes to buy a ticket, it depends whether you can buy one from the gateline staff or whether you have to queue at the ticket windows.  But there are often several people coming off the Marlow train who haven't had a chance to buy a ticket and queue at the gateline to do so.

As an aside, it would be helpful if *all* train guards did their best to sell tickets on the train.  Most are very good at doing so, but some guards seem to prefer to stay in their cab.

Hmm, not careful enough, IMHO.


My emphasis. That is a definite statement, not an indeffinite one.


Correct. But you can book online in advance or on apps & collect from machines, if that works.

If the OP decided to take this to the small claims court for the difference between the full fare and the railcard discounted one, I would bet it would be settled before it even got there (that's IMO for the sake of clarity).

Again, IMO, these grey areas suit the TOCs very nicely and they would not want to elaborate on the situation in court.

I think if the journey under discussion was from Furze Platt, the ticket office was closed, and the interchange was less than 5 minutes, then I'd strongly recommended complaining to GWR that only an undiscounted ticket was sold on arrival at Reading.

And ChrisB, I pointed out that you were correct that I should have couched my initial reply as opinion, on the point about purchasing at an interchange, when I responded to you calling me out on it. No need to pull out another part of the same post to repeat that calling out.

I generally wouldn't have done. It was only because you qualified your acknowledgement - and I wanted to explain that wasn't only what I was calling you on.

And we see how pedantically difficult this whole area is to specify.  IMHO, people arriving at stations at the start of their journey and allowing the minimum connections time there (or 5 minutes, whichever is least) should be allowed to travel without fear of penalty if the ticket selling system can't provide a ticket in that timeframe. Similarly, at interchange stations, if it's not possible to buy the ticket within the minimum connection time, onward travel should be allowed without fear of an increased price or worse.

But even starting off with that statement, questions abound.  What about people who arrive at the station well ahead, but ony just catch the train because they've been caught up in hunting for a parking space, and eventually found one at the extreme far end of the car park.  What about connections of 4 minutes, when the official time is 5 - should people really have to wait another 30 minutes because the rail industry hasn't provided them with an abiity to buy thus far?   And how can you monitor these things without leaving the system wide open to people trying it on to get free travel?

I'm interested in the "conductors who stay in the cab". We've queried that a number of times on our line - we want everyone on our line to buy tickets to help passenger numbers.  It turns out that the ticket machine being carried aren't always reliable, and more often that we want the conductor would like to sell tickts but can't. And we also have overcrowding issues where the conductor phyically can't get through the train, or if he can get somewhat through, he's only able to sell tickets to a proportion of those who want them due to lack of time / length of the sales process on some more awkward transactions.

The sad thing is, this probably wouldn't be such a problem if people were honest & didn't try to defraud the railway

.............so cynical for one so young!  :)

....but unfortunately true!

But isn't that the case with so many things in life?  You have to base things on the the lowest common denominator.

In an scenario where you have to miss a connection to buy a ticket, and then the next train isn't for say 1 hour, would you then be entitled to delay repay for being delayed?

As a % of total passenger numbers, how many customers are convicted of defrauding the railway, say in the most recent 12 month period available?

I think I'd be asking about the amount of ^ defrauded as a % of the total. But the problem is that if you make it easier, you could be encouraging it.

Did you specifically mean "defrauded" - or "fraud" and "evasion"?  I would be interested in both, and indeed also the amounts not collected because there was no opportunity to pay at any point?

From The Times (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/transport/article4428645.ece):





I suspect a lot of the problem is in quantifying something which is illegal / not likely to be admitted if travels are asked in surveys ...

And do you look at proposition of passengers, at proportion of journeys, or proportion of fares lost.

Well not really, because that wouldn't give you an indication of how many people were involved, your accusation alluded to people defrauding the railway, not an amount of money - you could have large amounts of money defrauded by a relatively small amount of customers, so you need an idea of the number of people involved to back up your assertion.

Don't get me wrong, I think fare evasion is despicable, but even if it's as high as 10% (which I very much doubt), today's figures which Grahame posted elsewhere shows that 20% of FGW's LTV services were late last month, which makes you wonder who's twirling who.

 This is not an isolated incident, perhaps it's time that GWR offered a 'print your own' ticket facility, like XC.
 
 
 

Excellent idea.....most airlines, and even National Express allow tickets to be downloaded onto smartphones, perhaps that could happen too.

Megabus is even better, you just need to know your reference. The driver then checks the reference against a passenger list to check its valid. You can have it wrote down anywhere, in your memory or printed email confirmation.
So its kind of "hi driver, my reference is 123456" and he then welcomes you aboard.

But zero option to upgrade/refund. I've been caught that way several times & you lose the lot

If the scenario described is that much of a problem could regular travellers not use carnet tickets? Or has making such tickets available required the application of far too much common sense by the GWR marketing & revenue protection teams (assuming they talk to one another)?

Carnets do indeed exist in a few locations - there's a Charlbury-Oxford carnet, and I believe in Cornwall and Devon too. It's a shame that GWR haven't extended their use (where barriers permit), and that of other ticketing initiatives such as the part-time season tickets also available in Devon and Cornwall.

Absolutely, true that the grey areas suit the TOCs (I will correct your suggestion that a small claims court decision would create a president, I would not).

This is just the sort of issue that cannot be left to the TOCs (or the courts)  What are the regulators doing about things like this, I ask?

Nowt to do with regulators - HM Government set the franchises

I have been through the railway byelaws here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/4202/railway-byelaws.pdf
and the NRCOC here:
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/static/documents/content/NRCOC.pdf

I cannot find references to "first available opportunity" or indeed the word "opportunity" anywhere in relation to obtaining a ticket en-route. To me it seems sanctions apply when you have failed to buy a ticket at the origin station and were able to do so.

I know, but there needs to be some kind of regulator able to act on behalf of the customer.  I know we have Passenger Focus, but IME they lack teeth and are too close to the TOCs and HMG (who in turn are too close to the TOCs).  You should see how those in the utility industries are scared of their regulators and I wish the transport industry was the same.  

Transport (formerly Passenger) Focus are indeed relatively toothless. They can advocate for the passenger, or mediate in disputes between passenger and TOC. However, unlike Ombudsmen in other industries, Transport Focus have no powers to compel TOCs to do certain things.

The rail industry needs an Ombudman that is backed by stronger legislation, as we have for other industries such as gas & electricity and telecommunications.

But that could go against the Government's franchises. I can't see them giving us that possibility frankly

One can but hope. A few more super complaints from the likes of Which? to the ORR/DfT and someone in Government might wake up and see how the rail industry treats its customers day in, day out.

I have travelled through Reading many times and have often used the excess fares tickets office to buy my ticket from Thatcham (start station) and Paddington (end location) in situations where the ticket office at Thatcham is closed and the TVM wpm't work correctly. I have had good experiences with most of the staff who man that office except for one who (IMHO) is not very helpful. It could be argued by members more knowledgeable than me that he is correct in his decisions about ticket purchase but as I often try and tell my kids it's not just what you say it's how you say it

Do you really think DfT would take any notice?  It might cost them money!  No all this government cares about is cutting expenditure so Minster can make their rich friends even richer!

I don't disagree, but having a strong regulator can be good for business.  Customers can be attracted if they know that they will be treated fairly.  Making profit is not all about cost minimisation and trying to catch customers out (ask Ryanair) .  Messing a customer about by needlessly lengthening their journey will discourage future travel.  As will stressing customers out by causing them worry.