Great Western Coffee Shop

Ok, so last night I booked my ticket home without actually having my card (I have the numbers written down).

At ANY station near where I used to live, or near where I live now, there has been no issue collecting the tickets with some form of ID and the booking reference.

Discovered Paddington insist on you phoning web support to get *authorisation* added to your ticket to collect with identification.  So thats what I did to collect the ticket yesterday morning.

Now, I thought, I'll phone up to get authorisation to collect tonights home and tomorrow back with my passport - at which point I will be reunited with card and no issue.

I thought I'd be honest and say I had left it at home - no they can't give me authorisation to collect the tickets if I have forgotten it - but can if lost or stolen.  So luckily we had not got as far as my booking reference so I guess I have to wait half an hour and phone back and tell them its lost!

This is ridiculous when all the other stations just hand them out!

Also, in the past ive booked tickets for friends/family and they've just gone with the references to collect.

How in the name of god can you book a ticket for someone else and have them collect it under this stupid system

You can't.

You pick it up & mail it to them.

Called fraud prevention. Blame the crooks.

Just phoned back - authorisation granted

Except I've done it in an emergency for one of my friends who was stuck in the sort of situation I could have bee stuck in on sunday - stranded with not enough cash or cards and no access to any.  Booked it online - an hour or so later, collected with the reference and her drivers licence

'Emergency' weas the magic word. Normally you can't.

And I repeat, I had had them handed out at almost every other station, including temple meads, parkway, yatton and wos, hereford etc etc

First time I knew you even had to do the phone thing was a couple of fridays ago travelling home with my mate (genuine lost card then) and had to go through the rigmarole of phoning with 20 minutes before the booked train!

Yes, *you* can pick them up without your card, friend's *can't*, except in an 'Emergency' situation....

A lot of fraud so the whole collecting without card issue is really being clamped down on now.

No station should issue it without the payment card unless the original seller has put otherwise.

Trainline/RailEasy etc.. do not intend to be used for third part transactions*

Telesales can do third party for you.

*except Trainline business.

But does that explain why they can do it for lost/stolen but not - forgotten card!

Stupid

Sounds like trainline being awkward, I've not known them to reject it before.

Rail Easy however tell people to buy new tickets in my experience.

Was the FGW website help line - is that train line?  Think it was because I *forgot it* so my fault as opposed to lost/stolen which was not my fault


and I could not buy a new ticket as my fricking debit card was AWOL from me and without it and my drivers licence I could not cash a cheque - but if I could not get home with a ticket I had bought I could not solve the issue!

I had enough cash to get me a cuppa on the way home until I was reunited......

Sounds like you need to get thee a credit card and keep it in a different place from the debit card. I get airmiles and everything with mine... Plus I lucked out inexplicably at Christmas and got upgraded to Club World flying back to Blighty - bonus! The credit card was also my saviour a few years ago when an ATM ate my debit card without reason one Friday afternoon at about 1531 (probably wasn't 1531, but it was certainly very soon after the bank having closed at 1530) and they couldn't re-issue the debit card for a week or so.

It IS a stupid system.  Once again the TOCs are allowing the actions of a few crooks to degrade the userbility for other customers.

I have discovered though that my wife and i who each have credit cards on the same account, can use our cards to pick up each other's tickets from the machines because they have the same card numbers on them.

Hint - *Any* card that identifies you can pick up your tickets with the reference number - try it!

I thought this "problem" was fixed years ago?

oh, maybe. It last worked for me (can't remember which TOC though) about three months ago....

Oh, and try something else. Insert your card into a TVM *without* choosing a ticet first. Interesting.....and possibly against the Data Protection Act too.