In message , at 21:22:02 on Fri, 27 Jun
2014, tim..... remarked:
"c2c's ITSO-compliant Smartcard can now be loaded with Anytime
Weekday and Off-Peak Returns, plus weekly, monthly and annual season
tickets and used at sfor (sic) stations between Shoeburyness/Southend
and Tilbury Town/West Horndon"

Also for trips to London (not just between Southend and Tilbury?)

Is that a question or a statement?

----------------------- question mark ---------------------------^

(I think the answer is No)

So they are chickening out of getting too involved in London, at the
moment.

London travelcards are part of phase II from October

So still well into vapourware.

http://www.c2c-online.co.uk/tickets-...art-card/index

http://www.itso.org.uk/

It doesn't say how you actually pay for the tickets that you load
onto the card, so I guess that is by putting some form of payment
into the ticket machine at time of purchase. Nor does it say if the
purchased tickets are a store of open tickets or only for a designated date.

My only experience is now somewhat out of date (EMT's ITSO pilot). I
think they didn't activate the purse, and so payment was by
traditional means (including CCs at machine and online).

As purchases at machines are (in almost all cases) famously for
"today only", I haven't tried an online purchase of an ITSO day
return for a day in the future. Anyone compiling a chart of all of
this should certainly have that as one of the tickable possibilities.

You can definitely buy tickets "online" for "tomorrow". the engine
seemed exactly the same as the SET one and that sells tickets into the
future.

This was about using the ITSO purse to *pay* - how does that work
online?

But my query was "can I buy a ticket that I would like to use for one
day next week but I'm not sure which day?" - to be dated the day that I
pick it up (if that is a necessary simplicity).

One way of doing that would be to have a "prepaid voucher" loaded onto
the ITSO card that gets turned into a day-ticket when you touch in. I
wouldn't want to be designing a system that allowed more than one
voucher at a time to be active.

So the only "biggie" here is that you can buy (and presumably pay)
online and pick up your ticket at the gate (or not),

That's the future for ITSO, but doesn't explain what happens if you
have multiple tickets awaiting collection. Reverting to a scheme
where tickets dated "today" are only valid "today" would help, but
last time they tried that for Anytime tickets they rapidly changed it
back to "today plus three days" for the outbound leg.

I think we're back to the discussion that we had before about this
being nothing more than an electronic "paper ticket" (with online
purchase option)

That's all it is. With the added problem that if you have several
un-used tickets in your pocket, which one will the barrier decide you
want to use?

all c2c tickets seem to be "day" validity only, so that problem doesn't
apply here

They could be, but the idea is that one day ITSO will be used across the
country on routes that do have period returns. So actually it's not a
very representative pilot if the C2C line doesn't have those.
--
Roland Perry