On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 13:18:23 GMT, Rupert Goodwins
wrote:

Late on Saturday night, I had to get back from Gatwick Airport to
London. I bought my ticket from the machine in the station concourse
by credit card: it gave me the option of various travelcard discounts
(but not LT Gold Card, the one I have), so I chose Network Card as the
nearest equivalent and carried on.

The ticket issued showed Network Card and Gatwick Express.

On the train, the inspector took the ticket and said "You can't use
Network Card on this service, sir", showing me the Network Card bit on
the ticket but covering up the Gatwick Express bit with his thumb. I
pointed out that if he moved his thumb, it clearly said I could. (He
didn't seem to care that I was showing him the Gold Card at the time,
so I guess that bit was all right).

AFAIK, he's right. The Network Railcard area map at
http://www.railcard.co.uk/network/network_map1.pdf clearly shows that
the Gatwick Express is not included in the discount.

Also at http://www.gatwickexpress.co.uk/ it says: "Railcards
Discounts are also available with Senior railcards, Young Persons
railcard, Family railcards and Disabled Persons railcards." Note the
lack of a mention about Network Railcards.

"The machine shouldn't have issued that" he said, very grumpily and
scribbling all over the thing with his biro. "Can I keep this to show
my manager?"

Other Gatwick services are Network Railcard discounted, just not the
Gatwick Express. Looks like the machine was doing odd things.

So, what's going on there? If he hadn't tried to cover up the Gatwick
Express bit with his thumb, I'dve believed that he was surprised by
the thing, but clearly he's seen this plenty of times before and is
used to bluffing it out.

Maybe he's tired of the ticket machine errors, which means passengers
get an erroneous ticket that contradicts his correct information?

I don't think the pre May 2003 (or whenever it was) old condition
Network Railcards allowed discounts on the Gatwick Express, but *if*
they did, the problem might have been the OLD cards included the
discount, but current ones don't?


Cheers,

Jason.