London Banter - View Single Post - Super-Off Peak Day Travelcards from Cambridge

Clive Page[_4_] · February 28th 11, 08:45 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In message ,
writes
I bought an NXEA version today to go to Heathrow to meet my aged mother
returning from afar.

It worked fine on NR and on LU at Tottenham Hale and Heathrow T5. But at
Putney (SWT) it was rejected with code 122. I queried this with staff who
said "it's Super Off Peak", at which point I recalled a similar problem in
the past at Putney. As a result of the hassle I missed a train and was
over half an hour later home to Cambridge.

Before I complain to SWT for crap programming of their ticket gates whose
fault is this actually likely to be - theirs or NXEA's?

It's FCC's laziness. I've have submitted over the last year a series of
complaints to FCC over the fact that these randomly don't open ticket
gates at national rail stations (and sometimes London Overground),
though the non-super versions always do. They always seem to work on
tube gates, for some reason. I've followed up with complaints to London
TravelWatch, who as usual were pretty useless, but the more pressure one
can apply to the dozy idiots at FCC the better, I figure. It appears
that they have used a code on the magnetic stripe which they have failed
to circulate to the other train operating companies. The last I heard
from FCC was that they hope the problem will be sorted out very soon.
That was last July.

Please complain to them - if enough of us do it they may decide it's
cheaper to fix the problem than keep on replying to complaints. It's
about the only hope. FCC are in fact so dozy that their own tickets
sometimes don't open their own ticket gates a few yards from the ticket
office at Luton Airport Parkway where the tickets are sold.

--
Clive Page