In message , at 11:30:06 on Sat, 28
Jun 2014, tim..... remarked:

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?

I didn't think we'd even established that there is an (operational) purse.

ITSO cards are supposed to have purses, and although it's a while since
I tried I think there was evidence of a dormant purse when using EMT's
early ITSO-equipped TVMs

I have a Centro "Swift" card (for buses) which has a purse - I had to
pay £10 for the card because it comes pre-loaded with some funds. At tht
point it's remarkably similar to using an PAYG Oyster on a bus.

But if there is, taking the money from the purse and replacing it with
a ticket valid for X, within the "to be collected" database, doesn't
seem too technically difficult.

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.

Once again I don't think the system level design is too difficult here.

Not sure how your single ticket option will work if someone wants to
make a lunchtime journey that they didn't anticipate when they left
home for work. TBH this seems to be the only "difficult" thing that
they have to consider ATM.

More difficult is if you have trips to different destinations loaded as
vouchers. Say you live in Grays and have vouchers for both Southend and
London, because you anticipate visiting both soon (and not necessarily
knowing in which order). Which voucher should it swap for a ticket?

Perhaps this is why they have trials. The geeks in the office don't
even bother to come up with a set of scenarios that don't work and
postulate solutions, before implementation of a trial. They just wait
to see what breaks and fix it later (no doubt to the immense
inconvenience of the first customer who tries it)

It's a bit more pre-planned than that, although I agree there have been
some major hiccups that should have been anticipated. For example my EMT
card would only allow me to buy Child tickets, because the card knows
your age and the simplest explanations is that they'd coded the DOB
field on the card with its issue date.

--
Roland Perry