On May 23, 11:33*pm, CJB wrote:
There is increasing concern that traincos serving London (and
eslewhere around the country) are refusing to accept cash as payment
for tickets from their automatic ticket machines.

Good. Perhaps the local ne'erdowells might then have less reason to
try to open them and thus destroy them for all sales.


This is causing massive disrupution to potential customers especially
those youngsters who do not have a credit card

Bank accounts with debit cards are available to everyone aged 11 and
over. Pre-pay debit cards have no lower age limit, and parents can
buy them for their children with no formalities.

or in London those
whose Oyster card has run out and cannot be topped up.

In order to be using a child Oyster card, children must have a Zip
card, which of itself grants them free travel on buses. They might
have to get a bus home. Moreover, Oyster cards don't just "run out",
and someone dim enough to travel without enough credit on their card
to get home is also dim enough to not carry sufficient money to top it
up, even were a machine to do so available. The vast majority of
people who travel daily have some form of season ticket, and those
that are travelling off-peak would have to manoeuvre their card
balance quite carefully to run out of credit before they hit the daily
cap.

This is concern trolling for "people who do not have debit cards for
reasons other than bloody-mindedness" who, for practical purposes, do
not exist.

This situation
also disadvantages thousands of tourists who expect to be able to
purchase train tickets from machines with cash.

Tourists without any form of payment other than cash? They don't
exist. They certainly don't exist in "thousands". It's essentially
impossible to book or check into a hotel without a credit card, it is
very difficult to get an AP train ticket without a credit card and
"people who drive cars but don't have a debit or credit card" again
don't exist.

There is a tiny number of obsessives who refuse to have debit cards
because they're obsessives. I don't care if they can't buy train
tickets, and nor does anyone else.

ian