Great Western Coffee Shop

When I asked for a cheap day return from Warminster to Salisbury this morning I was asked for ^5.90 (railcard prices), I then said "shouldn't that be ^3.85" ?  After a lot of button punching she agreed.  Not a good start.

When I got to Salisbury the barriers wouldn't let me out !
When I came back to the station the barriers wouldn't let me in ! The lady manning the barrier looked at my ticket and said  "Ah, a Warminster ticket, this doesn't like Warminster tickets " - she sounded serious.  Any ideas why (if !) this should be ? A batch of blank tickets with dodgy magnetic strips ?

Badly written mag stripe info at the issuing ticket machine. I've had similar issues with a travelcard issued on a portable machine by an SWT 'queuebusting' RPI at Fareham, it wouldn't operate any barriers at all in London. >:(

Paul

Possibly bought on by  a software change  in either or both the issuing machine,  (not writing the strip correctly) or the Salisbury gates (not reading  what Warminister has written).

I've had this with a Gold Card from Taplow which stopped opening LUL gates. Turned out LUL had altered the software and Taplow hadn't been given the amendment to change it's writing.

A very good chief programmer I worked with always asked the question what's changed, when something went wrong? Invariably it was the change that had caused the problem

Obviously a SWT thing. The Waterloo ticket barriers don't work either.

They did on Friday AND Saturday when I used them !

I had a valid ticket. I tried two barriers. Both did not open. Therefore both were not working. Perhaps I just picked two broken ones...

Anyway, when I started trying to force the barrier open, the staff just opened it with a smile, without looking at my ticket. They are clearly used to it.

When I went down into the Tube - hey presto - my valid ticket worked!