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

[email protected] · February 28th 11, 11:38 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article , (Clive Page)
wrote:

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.

It can't possibly be FCC's fault. The ticket was NXEA only, issued by an
NXEA ticket machine at an NXEA station, Cambridge. However, the last time
I had the problem at Putney it was an FCC ticket, though similarly issued
by NXEA at Cambridge (might have been from the ticket office though).
Hence my question about where to pin the blame.

I was going to say that the ticket caused no problems elsewhere, including
at Vauxhall (SWT) but I think the barriers there were open.

--
Colin Rosenstiel