Hi,

Wondering if anyone has experienced trouble with an Annual Travelcard
purchased from a NR station.

My wife recently bought an annual zone 1-3 travelcard from Blackheath
(Connex) station but discovered it did not work in LU gates, only NR
ones (e.g. at Charing X). She took it back to Blackheath where the
ticket guy said something about "dodgy stock" and issued a replacement.
Which fails in the same way - won't work any LU gate.

The Connex ticket person at Blackheath suggested she get it replaced
at an Underground station - but all LU stations she has asked at, have
refused to replace it because it was not issued by them but by Connex.
They say it must be replaced by the NR station it was purchased from!

So we are stuck in this circle of buck-passing. Has anyone come across
this or know how to resolve it? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

thanks & regards

Graham

Dave wrote:
Graham Hick writes

Wondering if anyone has experienced trouble with an Annual Travelcard
purchased from a NR station.
[...]
So we are stuck in this circle of buck-passing. Has anyone come
across this or know how to resolve it? Any suggestions would be
much appreciated.

Such things seem to happen from time-to-time. Weekend Travelcards
(when they were first introduced) never seemed to work LU gates.

Get your wife to have a look at the LU gate when it gets rejected. On
the screen (or on the side of the screen) there will be a two-digit
number display. This is the error code explaining why the gate has
rejected the ticket. Post the number here and I'm sure someone will
be able to tell you what the error is.

There is a list of error codes for UTS gates in this group's FAQ at
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/uk/transpor...section-6.html

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

On 12 Aug 2003 06:47:24 -0700 Graham Hick
said...

The Connex ticket person at Blackheath suggested she get it replaced
at an Underground station - but all LU stations she has asked at, have
refused to replace it because it was not issued by them but by Connex.
They say it must be replaced by the NR station it was purchased from!

Probably down to the fact that the issuing station keeps the record card
with history of renewals, duplicates and renewals.

I have the opposite problem with my Zone 1 & 2 season issued by LUL.
Works fine without a hitch for the full 12 months on the tube. However
when it comes to NR, it works the gates fine at NR London Bridge, but
recently not Victoria (Connex platforms) for some strange reason.

--
Phil Richards
London, N4

Steve Naïve writes
I could understand most of them, but what's "54 - Possible Dumbbell"?

When only Z1 stations had automatic barriers; someone might buy just a
Z1 Travelcard to enter/exit the station even though their journey took
them to, say, a Z6 station. At the Z6 station they would hope not to be
challenged, or just pay the odd penalty fare. A Z1 ticket plus the odd
penalty fare is a lot cheaper than a Z1-6 Travelcard.

If a ticket is used to enter a Z1 station without a corresponding exit
from a Z1 station, the that code is displayed. The gates can be set to
reject such tickets, thus meaning the holder has to approach the SA to
get in/out. If the SA notices the same person with the same error code
then they can alert the RPIs. RPIs could then follow the suspect to
establish their travel pattern, arrange a station block at the Z6
station (again to establish a pattern) and then prosecute for each noted
offence of fare evasion.

Nowadays with more stations being gated, it means that the person might
need separate Z1 & Z6 tickets in order to achieve the scam. That just
means that the gates at either end of the journey can highlight the
possible dumbbell.

Been discussed here many times before.

--
Dave

In message , Graham
Hick writes
Hi,

Wondering if anyone has experienced trouble with an Annual Travelcard
purchased from a NR station.

My wife recently bought an annual zone 1-3 travelcard from Blackheath
(Connex) station but discovered it did not work in LU gates, only NR
ones (e.g. at Charing X). She took it back to Blackheath where the
ticket guy said something about "dodgy stock" and issued a replacement.
Which fails in the same way - won't work any LU gate.

The Connex ticket person at Blackheath suggested she get it replaced
at an Underground station - but all LU stations she has asked at, have
refused to replace it because it was not issued by them but by Connex.
They say it must be replaced by the NR station it was purchased from!

So we are stuck in this circle of buck-passing. Has anyone come across
this or know how to resolve it? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

thanks & regards

Graham
Working at Richmond, we have had loads of these problems. It seem to get
worse since the TOC gates had the Oyster readers enabled, as the gate
now writes to the ticket as well as reading them. When the TOCs first
got gates they only 'read' the ticket (ie. No information was written to
the ticket to show where it was used) The problem also appears to be
worse on 'Replacement' issued tickets, are the original has failed to
work.

What I have been suggesting to passengers who have had problems, is to
first use their ticket through a gate at a LUL station before using it
through a TOC station. This appears to work, but why I have no idea!

Hope that helps
--
Martin Summerfield

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 23:02:55 +0100, Barry Salter
wrote:



The suggested 'workaround' is as follows:

First time you *enter* an Underground station after getting a new
Travelcard, ask to be let through the Manual Gate. When you exit, use an
Automatic Gate.

This is supposed to "fix" the encoding so that the ticket works.


I tried that when I had a wrongly-encoded ticket lat year. The man at
Waterloo underground even showed me the instructions they had been
given to that effect - it even listed which gate numbers to use. It
didn't work, though :-)

After about three goes I finally got the ticket office (Waterloo
mainline) to encode the ticket properly (put todays date as the start
date rather than the original start date) They even have revised
instructions behind the counters at Waterloo but they still sometimes
get it wrong :-(