On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:56:39 -0000, "Paul Scott"
wrote:


"Clive Page" wrote in message
...
Today I travelled to London on a super off-peak London One-day Travelcard
purchased from FCC at Luton Airport Parkway. I know from past experiences
that these tickets operate the gates at all TfL stations that I've used,
but consistently fail at those of South Eastern Trains (e.g. Charing Cross
and London Bridge). Today I also found both of our tickets were rejected
at London St.Pancras (upper level), which surprised me because EMT operate
direct trains to Luton Airport Parkway and ought to have their barriers
programmed correctly. I have no idea whether the fault is with FCC for
not encoding the tickets correctly (as the EMT barrier man said) or with
the other train companies failing to recognise this fairly new type of
ticket. The rejection code, I think, is 105.

I've had the occasional NR ticket [especially if printed on a portable
machine] that wouldn't work any LU or NR barrier all day, the view of most
gate staff was that it just one of those glitches that happen. I'd be
surprised if the fact it was a 'super off peak' was relevant to the problem
really, SWT have been issuing them for nearly 3 years now, and I've been
using them around London nearly as long.

A couple of weeks ago I was accidentally sold a Super Offpeak Day travelcard
dated for 8 days later. That definitely wouldn't have worked, so I had it
reissued at another ticket office while changing trains. The guy in front of
me in the original queue had been making a timetable query for the following
week, I guess the clerk had moved the date forward?

I had an "FCC Only" travelcard the other day which kept giving "Seek
Assistance" messages at gates, both on the NR gates at Victoria and on
the LU gates at Victoria and St James's Park.

Presumably this is intended to stop people with an FCC only T/C using
the Southern trains beyond East Croydon.

In message , Clive Page
writes
Well I've had similar problems with *all* Super Off-peak 1-day
travelcards, which work at all TfL gatelines, but not at many other
"national rail" ones. The regular off-peak travelcards suffer
occasional failures at the odd gate, but work maybe 95% of the time,
and don't fail consistently anywhere.

I just got an admission from South Eastern Trains that they were wrong:
quote

Further to my colleague's email on 12 February, I have been contacted by
our Gateline Compliance Manager regarding the specific problem you've
experienced at our gatelines. You're correct - our gates should be
accepting your ticket and thanks to the further information you've
provided, we have tracked down the problem.

We have looked through the accepted ticket types on the gates at London
Bridge and this Super Off-Peak One Day Travelcard product is not
programmed to be accepted at present. I believe it is a relatively new
product introduced by a different train operator (First Capital Connect)
which has never been picked up for updating our ticket gates.

Our Fares and Ticketing department have now asked that this ticket is
loaded onto all gates within the Travelcard area. This should be
completed in the next 28 days so you will hopefully notice an
improvement on your next journey.
/quote

They are a bit slow off the mark, it seems to me, as these off-peak
Travelcards have been on sale for many months, and now another month to
fix the problem. But it's a first for me to have a train company admit
that they were wrong.


--
Clive Page