Great Western Coffee Shop

I had to buy a Severn Solent Rover on the train recently, as the LM ticket office at WOS was closed.

Out of the three FGW guards on the journey, only one had heard of such a Rover (despite being in FGW publicity and on the website) and none of them were able to find it on the machine to sell to me, as they didn't know the code or something. I purchased it at the end of my journey at an open ticket office (no problems!). Although what would have happened if RPIs had been at my destination...? Of course I could have been dishonest and travelled for several days "trying" to buy the rover on the train!

But for the rest of the time I was travelling on the Rover none of the FGW (and SN/SWT) guards batted an eyelid at the Rover. I find it very hard to believe that on the first day I happened upon the only 2 guards not to have heard of the Rover! So surely an eyebrow should have been raised - the ticket just said "FOSS" (=Freedom of Severn & Solent) which could have easily been Scotland or the South, etc!

Only one guard (FGW) filled in the date box, meaning I could have many more days of free travel if I wanted!

At ticket barriers, again, no eyelid batted by staff (I decided not to risk putting it through the machine), it was the normal - yes he's got a orange piece of paper, I'll let him through - approach (even at quiet times).

So a little disappointing. Why have FGW (and SWT/SN etc.) not trained their staff about Rovers? Never had a problem with them in Scotland (where guards and barrier staff fill in the date boxes). Same in Wales, although I've had a guard who couldn't sell me a Rover - luckily a fellow passenger knew the code. I didn't realise I had to look up the codes for a ticket before I travelled!

Ok, this is very negative (sorry) so I would like to point out that I'm not moaning at the staff, they were all as helpful as possible and at no point tried to charge me for a single, but at the TOCs.

Er...  ??? I'm pretty sure that on a 4 from 8 (or whatever), YOU are supposed to fill in the date box yourself before you join the first train, but it's probably in the instructions they give you at the ticket office. It's on the website anyway:


In answer to why guards aren't familiar, I'd suggest it's just that the vast majority are actually sold in ticket offices.  Most of the SWT area isn't coveredby Rovers at all - except for the all line...

Paul

It's your responsibility to fill in the boxes. Technically it's invalid if they aren't filled in.

gotta be honest i have joined at wimple before and asked for a devon ranger and he 'couldn't' issue me one... its in a pf zone i was lucky as the self serve does not issue them

Whoops, I didn't know I had to, was not told to at the ticket office. I will do in future.

But why did only one guard notice my ticket was technically invalid?

It may be that 'guards' are not familiar with such relatively 'unusual' (but perfectly valid!) tickets or passes?

I attended the 'Heart of Wessex' community rail partnership meeting in Yeovil, about a month ago - for which, I was provided with a FGW travel warrant, for my rail journey from Nailsea and back.

Before setting out, I dutifully scratched off the necessary silver coverings on the 'date of travel' section, filled in my personal details in the hand-written section, and sealed the clear plastic film down over the card, as instructed on the back of the warrant.

On my journey to Yeovil Pen Mill, my 'ticket' was checked three times:

On the journey from NLS to BRI, the train manager looked surprised, when presented with my 'ticket', saying that he'd "never seen one of those before" - but he thanked me for scratching off the dates of travel, as instructed.

On the journey between BRI and Westbury, another train manager inspected my ticket in detail - in fact, he studiously read all of the front page, and all of the back page of instructions, as he'd "not seen one of those before"!

The third time my ticket was checked was between Westbury and Yeovil - but by that time, a group of four of us had met up, and upon all four of us producing our similar 'tickets', the train manager merely grinned an acknowledgement - and moved on down the carriage.

CfN.  ;D

I've had two of those 'scratchcard' tickets in the past. Complementary 1st Class ones.

I dutifully did what was requested to validate the ticket, but I still got quizzical looks from onboard staff. One Customer Host even asked the group sat in 'Management Corner'* whether I was entitled to complementary refreshments with these tickets. I had to point out that I'd been sent them by the Customer Service Director (James Burt at the time) following a complaint about a 1st Class journey.

The group of managers were noticeably quieter with their work talk after they heard me mention where I'd got the ticket from!

Back to the OP; whilst on-train sales of Rovers and Rangers may be rare I do think staff should be trained in how to issue them and not leave the passenger to go out of their way to obtain one. The potential for problems should an RPI be encountered is also a very real concern.

*Bay of 4 nearest the buffet, coach F.

Similar experience with 'Cornwall day ranger' & 'Ride Cornwall'.

I bought them regularly and noted down their codes as nobody could ever find them on Avantix.
I also found out how to get 'Ride Cornwall' issued on a First bus (F3 menu).

The Day ranger can be rail carded too.

If the guard doesn't know how to issue a rover, they should be instructed to choose "Rover Enquiry" from the main menu.  They then need to type in part of the name and select the correct rover.  Sale then goes through as normal, with railcard discounts applied on the next screen.  Can't see how a guard would not know how to do this?  Surely it is part of their training?

I think you are being a little unfair on the guards it's the TOCs' through ATOC fault for allowing the fares system to get in such a mess.

It seems to me totally unreasonable to expect ordinary rail staff to fully understand the National Fares Manual let alone the passengers.

Judging by the number of queries on Coffee Shop where even the experts disagree on what fare is valid for what journey shows what a mess we are in.

One thing that seesm to cause the problem to my mind is that the TOCs are trying airline demand management for trains. It doesn't work because.

Airlines usually only have one or two flights a day with basically fixed capacity (althought they do overbook). Depending on predicted overall demand for that route. They also drop routes or flights if they prove unprofitable.

Rail have many trains (3 an hour Manchester London) with much grrater capacity than their number of seats. They are also restricted in the trains they can drop from the timetable so most trains have to run.

Most people plan their flights several months ahead, rail journies are more spontaneous. Much demand Season Tickets, business travel is inelastic in the time they wish to travel (peak). Off peak travel is much more elastic.

With a plane you can therectically issue a ticket if there's a seat up to closeure of the boarding gate. This would be very difficult to do on rail if you wanted to guarentee a seat reservation. Which is why anytime fares an anomaly, you pay the highest fare for the flexibilty of travelling on any train but forego a seat which you could have reserved for probably a third or less of the price with an advanced ticket for a specific train.

Any thoughts of a suitable model for train fare pricing which is simple has minimum restrictions and is easy to understand for staff and passengers.

 

It is part of the training, but just because something is called "Freedom of abc rover" does not mean it's entered into the Avantix system as that... e.g. "FOABC" instead.  Perhaps a list of known rover codes for the FGW area would be a good idea.

The guards I encountered could only find Freedom of Scotland, Wales, South Wales, A, AB and ABC. What the last three are I do not know (and neither did they!).

I'm sure if you type Freedom into Avantix it lists those you've mentioned, but there is a Freedom of SW or similar and I was sat in the messroom at BRI listening to guard trying to find it after being asked for it, and he could only find it under "FOSW" or something similar.  Trust me, some guards do their best to find out after the right answers after, even if it doesn't help you at the time.

I'm not sure if it's still as bad ... but at one time, the National Rail website rover page was arranged alphabetically by tickets so ...
"Freedom of Devon" would have been on the "F" page
"West Country Rover" would have been on the "W" page
"Devon Ranger" would have been on the "D" page
and so on.

If the staff have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the official names of all the tickets (and their abbreviations too!) , then I have every sympathy with them.

Surely the swanky new ticket machines could be easily programmed to make finding the rovers reasonably easy for even the most inexpereinced staff? 

Again, eveidence that on-train staff are poorly managed.

Are they? The TOC's don't seem to like Rovers and the Bigger the area it covers the more they dislike them.

When did you last see an all line Rover leaflet in a booking hall?

I suspect that the answer to your question is "yes", but if you look at what's in there already...

If you enter "*" into the station field in Avantix, then you get the full list of stations, which includes a lot of things which aren't 'real' stations. But the codes / spellings / abbreviations are utterly inconsistent. The list that follows contains just some of the oddities from the F part of the list. Some are obvious, but some are almost impenetrable.

Note the many different ways in which "Freedom of" has been abbreviated (and then take pity on the users).

They're using the 16-character versions of the station names. Given current memory capacity, something longer would be possible (and desirable).

My interpretations/comments are in square brackets. Anyway, treat this as a variant on the 'where is this?' game...

FAIRFORD RIAT
FAMILY DAYROVER    [but for where?]
FARN 2008 ENTRY
FARN TRADE BUS
FAULDHOUSE 2    [Fauldhouse isn't very big, but perhaps this is platform 2?]
FCC E SUSSEX S1
FCC SUSSXDWNS S1
FCM TRAVEL
FCM TRAVEL JS
FCM TRAVEL SOLU
FDM OF SCOT 4-8    [Freedom of Scotland]
FDM OF SCOT 8-15
FESTIVAL OF SEA
FFEST ROUNDROBIN
FFOS LAS SHUTTLE
FGW STAFF PROMO
FINCHLEY ROAD A6
FIRSTBUSRAILCARD
FIRSTBUSRCARD
FIVE SHAKES PROP    [5 Shakespeare properties?]
FIVE WAYS GATES
FLEXI 15DY IN 1M (and several similar)
FLEXPAS 2DIN1MTH
FNCHLY RD A6 20% (and 50% and ST)
FODC ROVER 3IN7 (and ROVER8IN15)    [Devon and Cornwall?]
FONE 7 DAY RVR    [North East?]
FONE FLEXI RVR
FONW 4IN8DAY RVR    [North West?]
FONW 7 DAY RVR
FORWARD TVL MGMT
FOSCL FLEXI RVR
FOSS ROVER 3 IN7 (and 8IN15)
FOSW ROVER 3IN7 (same)
FOUR WK ALLZONE (and several similar)
FRANKFURT MAIN
FRASER EAGLE
FRDM TVLPASS A (and AB and ABC)    [where?]
FREEDOM 3MONTH    [where?]
FRM OF BRIT 7DY (and 14DY)
FTPL IBE  [a special prize for this one!]
FYLDECOASTDAYRGR

and a couple of Gs...

GALILEO INTL  [I though Galileo was a satellite]
GATE PASS

and more confusion in the Hs...

HOWCIRC DAY RGR    [Heart of Wales]
HT ENG RVR 3IN7
HT OF ENGLAND 7D
HT OF WSX RANGER

And a note to the moderators - might be worth moving this list! Or adding a new section to the acronyms list.

FRASER EAGLE is an interesting one on that list. Why on earth would anyone need a ticket specific to the former operator and organiser of rail-replacement buses?

Also they went to the wall in early 2009, a victim of the rail network's improved ability to find alternate route workarounds for engineering possessions. They also lost the business from Virgin on the WCML which finally started to run as intended.

I want to buy a ticket to FRANKFURT MAIN from a guard!

Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof surely though?

CfN has one of these :P

cough ... splutter ... CfN looks suitably sheepish!  :o :-[

Frankfurt am Main so as to distinguish it from Frankfurt an der Oder. And you've only got 16 characters.

Thanks for the info on the "Fs".  It is a mess and my sympathy for guards is increased. 

Surely the software could do something better than this!  I thought that the Advantix machines had decent screens so searching for a Rover ought to be a question of selecting "Rovers -> England ->South West ->  Devon and Cornwall -> 3-day Freedom of Devon and Cornwall Rover (select here for full details of restrictions)" with option for going straight to the 16 character stuff only for advanced users or common tickets.

I'll have a go with interpreting a few of these!  :)

FAIRFORD RIAT - presumably Fairford Royal International Air Tattoo

FARN must be Farnborough?

FFEST ROUNDROBIN - Ffestiniog Roundrobin?

FFOS LAS is a racecourse near Llanelli

FINCHLEY ROAD A6 - National Express A6 coach to Stansted calls there

FORWARD TVL MGMT - "Forward Travel Management is the business travel division of Midlands Co-operative Society"

FOSCL FLEXI RVR - Freedom of Settle and Carlisle Line?

FTPL IBE - Something to do with First TransPennine Ltd?

GALILEO INTL - A global ticketing system which can be used to book Eurostar tickets from abroad - but why have it as a destination?

FTPL = Freedom of [transpennine?] Line?  for International Business Executives

West Yorkshire PTE area, I think?

I've just done a bit of Googling and I've discovered that Raileasy (the online rail ticket service) is owned by a company called Ferries Trains Planes Limited (FTPL). A search of IBE as an acronym brings up Internet Booking Engine. So if that's what FTPL IBE refers to, why issue a ticket with the destination being a website!  :D

i think there is confusion. avantix doesnt just show destinations. It will show i think anything with an NLC. Useful for when checking who printed the ticket.

The ex wessex rovers are the only ones that have problems in the system as they are in there as FOSS, FOSW and FODC.

My sympathy for the guards has gone up as well. What an utter mess. One of the guards who attempted to sell me the FOSS did say they were going to get to the bottom of it, and find out how.

And yes - the NR website still lists Rovers alphabetically. So trying to find a South Coast Rover last year proved difficult. I think it was someone on hear that suggested the SN Daysaver ticket.

Btw - I would strongly recommend the FOSS Rover - it covers a good area, and perhaps if we keep buying them, the guards will know how to sell them!