Claiming for ticket machine failure

[whole diary]

[philips999]

Does anyone have experience of what FGW^▸ (First Great Western) do when faced with a claim resulting from a ticket machine failure?

The situation is simple and I'm sure fairly common - bought a ticket on line, tried to collect it from the station (a machine owned by London Midland) - it refused, citing printer failure.  There is no other machine at that station.  Long queue in the ticket office, so no chance to sort it out, got on train and bought another ticket for the journey.

Apart from the fact that FGW want me to send in the ticket I am making the claim for, which creates a certain logical problem, there is also a ^10 admin fee.  As it's not my fault the machine wasn't working, will they levy the admin fee?

And does the fact that it wasn't an FGW machine make any difference?

[didcotdean]

The only time that happened to me (although in this case all machines were out due to a communications fault) the ticket office wrote an explanation on the piece of paper with the reservation I had and said I was to collect my return ticket at my destination. Whether this was the correct thing to do or not I don't know, but as it happens I was never asked for a ticket enroute before I could collect it.

[JayMac]

You should claim against FGW^▸ (First Great Western) for the ticket you subsequently bought. It is that ticket (if still in your possession - but not a deal breaker if it has since been retained by a barrier etc) they should be refunding. They were the retailer and it is they you entered into a contractual arrangement with. Internal systems should be able to be checked to confirm the original ticket was not collected and/or the machine you attempted to use had a fault at the time in question.

They should not be charging you and Admin fee for something that was beyond your control.

Make the claim in writing, submit the ticket you subsequently bought (keep a copy), if you don't want the refund in Rail Travel Vouchers - say so. Let us know how you get on.

In the meantime, welcome to the forum, philips999. 

[The Tall Controller]

In that situation, the best thing to do would to find any member of staff. If the queue was indeed too long they could write out a little note explaining the situation for your journey or even inform the guard on your train about your issue. If you had a change in your journey you could collect your tickets from there as well.

As for now, if you write in for compensation, refer to the station, date and time and they should be able to verify if the machine was indeed out of order on that date. I agree that the ^10 admin fee should be deducted however if you left enough time to come and collect your tickets at machine then there 'should' have been enough time to queue to see a ticket clerk. That's the only reasonable explanation I can come up with.