On Monday, 30 March 2015 16:30:40 UTC+1, Mizter T wrote:
On 30/03/2015 00:27, Neil Williams wrote:

On 2015-03-29 21:47:54 +0000, CJB said:

Not at Schipol or Amsterdam Central etc. - all the ticket machines
throughout the Nederlands refuse to 'speak' English.

You what? They have an English option. But even if they didn't, they
are not at all hard to navigate.

And now with the new chip-cards you have to pay a premium for personal
service at a ticket office window AND for the cost of the card.
Rip-off - worse than in the UK. CJB

I am in favour of fees to use the ticket office, it will keep it
available for those occasions when I want something the machine won't
do, and so there won't be a queue of half an hour of people buying a
simple outboundary Travelcard to London which they could easily have
done at the machine.


I've given this counter-example before, but at London area railway
stations it's not uncommon to find a queue for the TVM(s) and no queue
at the ticket window - the latter, in most cases (with some exceptions),
being unequipped to topup Oyster. I do wonder just how much retail
commission the various TOCs threw away by not installing the requisite kit.

SWT and London Midland have recently withdrawn Oyster at their ticket windows, so they can't value any commission that much.