Ticket Machines "overcharging" ... or rather not selling the lowest cost option

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Yesterday's Mirror

Railways rip-off as self-service ticket machines overcharge passengers by hundreds of pounds

A Sunday People investigation found one machine selling two tickets to the same destination with a ^326 price difference ^ with the cheaper option buried

Britain^s railway users are being overcharged when they buy tickets at station self-service ^machines ^ sometimes by ^hundreds of pounds.

Almost a quarter of tickets are sold at the machines and a Sunday People probe reveals huge price variations. We found one machine selling two tickets to the same destination with a ^326 price difference ^ the cheaper one buried on a different menu.

Yards away, ticket office staff offered cheaper rates which weren^t available on the machine. And in most cases, we were able to buy peak tickets for the next working day for less than half-price by shopping online.

[continues]

[plymothian]

Blah blah blah.  This isn't new news.
You can't get Rangers/Rovers from a TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine)
You can't get Advance tickets from a TVM
You can't get off peak tickets between 00.00 - the end of peak.

[6 OF 2 redundant adjunct of unimatrix 01]

Actually you can now get Devon day rangers from gwr tvm's in Devon :-)

[plymothian]

Well it's a step forward - but no one's told anybody!

[TeaStew]

Antepenultimate photo (B&W one) might win a caption competition though.

Progress: Fair ticketing shouldn't be Rocket science

[grahame]

Blah blah blah.  This isn't new news.
You can't get Rangers/Rovers from a TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine)
You can't get Advance tickets from a TVM
You can't get off peak tickets between 00.00 - the end of peak.

Oh I know it's a repeat of stories that we all know very well here ... but perhaps the "man in the street" doesn't - or the papers think he doesn't.

To be a pedant - you can get just about any ticket from a TVM - sit beside it with your laptop, order on line, and collect  ... not sure what the stated lag time is- used to be two hours but I've collected a few minutes later at times. 

[ChrisB]

some TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) (virgin for example) now say 15mins.....

[Surrey 455]

To be a pedant - you can get just about any ticket from a TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) - sit beside it with your laptop, order on line, and collect  ... not sure what the stated lag time is- used to be two hours but I've collected a few minutes later at times. 

Same here. Some machines, especially at Gatwick Airport, have horrendous queues. It's quicker to use the app to buy your ticket then walk over to one of the machines that are collection only. No queue for them!

[TaplowGreen]

To be a pedant - you can get just about any ticket from a TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) - sit beside it with your laptop, order on line, and collect  ... not sure what the stated lag time is- used to be two hours but I've collected a few minutes later at times. 

Same here. Some machines, especially at Gatwick Airport, have horrendous queues. It's quicker to use the app to buy your ticket then walk over to one of the machines that are collection only. No queue for them!

If you can order it from a website, why can't the TVM replicate that so that the full range of tickets are available?

[ChrisB]

coz it can't display train times?

[chrisr_75]

Any fairly basic computer querying a database over the internet can display train times, so why shouldn't a TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) be able to do so, after all a TVM is pretty much just a basic computer and touch screen, displaying fare information over some kind of network connection... 

[ChrisB]

software issues - so basic I doubt it has Java etc built in - also, they would ALL need a connection to the reservation database & the database holding number of tickets available for each trip.

[Richard Fairhurst]

Blah blah blah.  This isn't new news.

It's not new news, no, but it's still pretty scandalous that the ticket machine at Charlbury, for example, will overcharge you for a return to London at most times of day, and a return to Oxford in the evening, unless you know exactly what you're doing. None of this stuff should be hard for TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) to fix and I hope the media continues to hold their feet to the fire until they do fix it.

(For Paddington, Super Off-Peak Return isn't one of the default options on the TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine), so unless you know that this fare exists and to page through the screens to find it, you'll go for the default, significantly more expensive Off-Peak ticket. For Oxford, the cheapest ticket in the evening is an Oxford Evening Out, which the machine won't sell you at all: you have to know it exists and to buy it from the guard, in contravention of the stern posters telling you to buy before you board. You and I know better, but most travellers won't.)

[chrisr_75]

software issues - so basic I doubt it has Java etc built in - also, they would ALL need a connection to the reservation database & the database holding number of tickets available for each trip.

Maybe it's about time they caught up with the modern world then - if you can stand next to a TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) with a smart phone and access the bookings databases successfully, then surely it isn't unreasonable to expect to do be able to do that directly through the TVM?

[ChrisB]

If you're willing to pay for this enormous upgrade through fares, I agree.

Otherwise it needs pricing into franchises. You're talking ^millions