On 16 Sep, 18:13, MIG wrote:

On Sep 16, 6:06 pm, Mizter T wrote:

On 16 Sep, 17:23, "Michael R N Dolbear" wrote:

(snip)

Would a NR automatic ticket barrier reject an attempt to use a
post-dated ticket ?

Yes, as would an LU one.

But can you still get travelcards from shops that aren't dated till
they've been through a barrier? Presumably one could buy them any
time, but you'd need to come to an understanding about the date
stamped on it.


The point you're making isn't exactly clear to me.

Note that as ever I don't wish to provide a fare evaders guide, but
this stuff is hardly beyond the realm of most peoples capacity for
logical thought so I'm certainly not offering up anything that's
remotely secret here.

Several shops do sell Day Travelcards using the old fashioned method -
which involves the shopkeeper stamping the ticket themselves using a
manual date stamp. This obviously doesn't encode the magnetic strip,
so presumably that happens on first use when the ticket gets passed
through an LU gate (or indeed an NR gate, if they are so equipped). I
guess there may be some system by which the shopkeeper has several
different stocks of Day Travelcards, and picks one in particular that
will be valid that day - e.g. there is a ticket stock for Thirsday
which will only work on a Thursday - however I think the opportunity
for things to get muddled up would be too great for that.

This is how local shops (Pass Agents, Ticket Stops, call them what you
will) always used to sell one-day Travelcards in the days of yore -
however the majority of shops were upgraded to having ticket vending
machines that printed and (presumably) encoded the tickets. I *think*
this was all part of the Prestige ticketing project (which also
brought you Oyster), as these started appearing in the mid to late
90's (the PFI contract being signed in 1995) - these new machines were
certainly capable of being upgraded so as to handle Oyster (and thus
have Oyster pads fitted).

Interestingly I've noticed that a number of shops that previously had
this equipment have now had it replaced with simpler Oyster-only kit -
i.e. there's no printer, it only does Oyster (pay-as-you-go topups and
weekly, monthly or annual Travelcards and bus passes). I have also
seen some shops that are new to selling tickets get this kit. However
they continue to sell Day Travelcards, but they have reverted to using
the manual date stamp method to date the ticket stock. I think that
some of these shops only stock some of the Day Travelcard range - from
the off-peak range, one near me sells z1&2, z1-4 and z1-6 but not z2-6
- I don't know about what Anytime Day Travelcards they stock are (N.B.
the Peak Day Travelcard has now been renamed the Anytime Day
Travelcard to fit in with the NR fares 'simplification').

I can see why this may have happened - the logic being that Oyster is
now the predominant medium for selling 'ticketing products' (most
shops now only sell weekly or longer Travelcards and bus passes on
Oyster), so why maintain a far more complex machine that has moving
parts in it (i.e. the printer) when on the whole it goes unused.
Still, it's a bit annoying as (a) it takes far longer and is more of a
faff for the shopkeeper to issue a Day Travelcard, and (b) it would
seem that at least some shops don't stock the whole range - and
there's always the possibility that they'll be out of stock of the
relevant ticket.

One thing that certainly is annoying is that the new Oyster-only kit
doesn't have a customer facing LCD display - so you can't just pop
your Oyster card on the reader and instantly see how much credit
you've got left on it (I presume the shopkeeper can see this on their
screen however). I suppose some shopkeepers might welcome this as it
means that people don't just come in their shop to check their PAYG
balance - but I never really saw many people doing that and then
walking out, rather people who were buying other things (newspaper,
chewing gum etc) certainly do take the opportunity to check their
balance when at the till but if their PAYG balance was low they'll
often top it up there and then (earning the shopkeeper a commission in
the process).