It appears all TVMs on SWR are broken.

[ccityplanner12]

Tomorrow, I intend to start early to get an unusual working (a new addition to the timetable, due to the snow & strikes last week this is the first time it'll actually run!), so tonight I cycled to my local station to purchase a travelcard ahead of time.

I found both Scheidt & Bachmann TicketXPress TVMs displaying the following message.

Sorry, this machine has a temporary fault that we are working to resolve. Please use alternative ticket machines, the ticket office or the SWR app. Where facilities are unavailable, buy a ticket at the next opportunity. If you need further assistance, please use a help point.

So I cycled to the next station along the line, & again, all ticket machines displaying the same error message.
Whoever is running the @SW_Help Twitter account seems oblivious to the scope of what is going on.

 

[TEW]

Were they stations with no service today? If so, they would have deliberately been taken out of service.

 

[BenS123]

At the top-left of the TVM screen it says it is at Barnes - and Barnes had no service today, neither did Barnes Bridge, Mortlake or Putney (the next stations along the line)

I'm assuming SWR took them out of service due to the lack of service?

 

[800001]

Were they stations with no service today? If so, they would have deliberately been taken out of service.

Why would you deliberately take machines out of action? People still need to buy tickets, collect tickets etc.

Most likely there is a system fault which has taken them offline.

 

[Kite159]

The machine at Grateley was showing a similar message this morning (07:30) and that is a station which had a service today (but not Friday/Saturday).

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Why would you deliberately take machines out of action? People still need to buy tickets, collect tickets etc.

Most likely there is a system fault which has taken them offline.

Possibly to stop people buying a ticket, taking a taxi to where the limited service is running, and later claiming the money back for a taxi. This practice, I believe, is perfectly reasonable in the circumstances.

 

[800001]

Possibly to stop people buying a ticket, taking a taxi to where the limited service is running, and later claiming the money back for a taxi. This practice, I believe, is perfectly reasonable in the circumstances.

If they can have a message saying there is a ‘fault’ surely it is not behind being possible to have a message saying that there are no services from that station?

Be honest with the customers.

 

[Hophead]

Is it not possible to set the machines up to prohibit tickets for travel today? Or from 'this station'? Or for collection only?

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

If they can have a message saying there is a ‘fault’ surely it is not behind being possible to have a message saying that there are no services from that station?

Be honest with the customers.

The communication of TOCs has been many times condemned for their lack of communication during this mess. There is very little advertisement of service suspension on SWR due to the overtime ban, therefore misleading people who believe days that aren't official strike days to have a full service.

Days with ridiculously slashed timetables need to be advertised as strike days too, else people are going to get completely misled.

 

[Benjwri]

Is it not possible to set the machines up to prohibit tickets for travel today? Or from 'this station'? Or for collection only?

TVMs tend to offer very limited tickets for future travel, most GWR ones will only sell them for the next day, sometimes not even that.
I agree they should still allow collection.

 

[TEW]

Why would you deliberately take machines out of action? People still need to buy tickets, collect tickets etc.

Most likely there is a system fault which has taken them offline.

This is definitely being done by SWR.

 

[800001]

This is definitely being done by SWR.

Well it’s ridiculous and taking the mick out of customers. As i said, be honest, set out the reason why they can’t buy tickets or make it only possible to but advance purchase tickets.

 

[Sheridan]

Days with ridiculously slashed timetables need to be advertised as strike days too, else people are going to get completely misled.

I agree it should be communicated clearly; advertising them as strike days when they are not would be just as misleading.

 

[MrB]

The railway is not helping itself at this point.

 

[davews]

This is standard practice at SWR, ours at Martins Heron has been doing it every strike day. Makes it impossible to collect tickets you have bought on line for the following day. The platform PIS screens yesterday didn't even have the strike message, just a blank display and not even the platform announcements said anything about there being no trains.

 

[43066]

Days with ridiculously slashed timetables need to be advertised as strike days too, else people are going to get completely misled.

But those aren’t strike days, so stating that they are would be a lie.

More honest (and accurate!) would be to say: “services are subject to short notice cancellations and alterations due to a shortage of train crew”, or similar.

 

[Jim the Jim]

Possibly to stop people buying a ticket, taking a taxi to where the limited service is running, and later claiming the money back for a taxi. This practice, I believe, is perfectly reasonable in the circumstances.

I doubt people who may have gone out of their way to collect tickets for a future date would consider it "perfectly reasonable".

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

I doubt people who may have gone out of their way to collect tickets for a future date would consider it "perfectly reasonable".

Sorry I should be more clear - I mean claiming the money back is reasonable

 

[RPI]

A lot of GWR ones at stations with no strike service were also put out of service, so people don't inadvertently buy a ticket when there's no trains.

Its a bit of a "damned if you, damned if you dont" situation really, though in some of these locations the booking offices were actually open where the staff were either TSSA or not striking for whatever reason.

 

[Kite159]

If the messaging was something like "this TVM has been temporarily disabled due to no trains running from this station today" it might be better than a "temporary fault" message. Be more honest.

The switching off at Grateley lost one elderly passenger yesterday morning as they were unable to pay for parking and clearly didn't want to mess around with the pay by phone. Probably drove to where he wanted to head to instead of using the train

 

[Bletchleyite]

If the messaging was something like "this TVM has been temporarily disabled due to no trains running from this station today" it might be better than a "temporary fault" message. Be more honest.

I assume the TVMs aren't capable of doing that, though sending a couple of managers around the place in their cars sticking printed A4 notices explaining this would at least be helpful.

 

[infobleep]

If the messaging was something like "this TVM has been temporarily disabled due to no trains running from this station today" it might be better than a "temporary fault" message. Be more honest.

The switching off at Grateley lost one elderly passenger yesterday morning as they were unable to pay for parking and clearly didn't want to mess around with the pay by phone. Probably drove to where he wanted to head to instead of using the train

I wonder if they would have been fined for parking in such circumstances?

 

[Kite159]

I wonder if they would have been fined for parking in such circumstances?

I think you get '20 minutes' of free parking under the CCTV Gotcha cameras used by the parasite parking company.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think you get '20 minutes' of free parking under the CCTV Gotcha cameras used by the parasite parking company.

They only exist, remember, because people can't read and stick to basic rules.

 

[sheff1]

This is definitely being done by SWR.

So why do they claim they are working to resolve a temporary fault ?

It seems they are deliberately lying to people - displaying such a message if they have consciously taken the TVMs out of service cannot be passed off as incompetence, rather than deliberate, as some posters always like to claim.

 

[Bletchleyite]

So why do they claim they are working to resolve a temporary fault ?

It seems they are deliberately lying to people - displaying such a message if they have consciously taken the TVMs out of service cannot be passed off as incompetence, rather than deliberate, as some posters always like to claim.

Presumably that's what comes up if they turn them off remotely and there's no scope to show something else. The tech is getting pretty old now - the current set of Scheidt & Bachmann machines were installed in around 2010 I think.

 

[lookapigeon]

You would have thought it would have been programmed in some sort of no today ticket sales mode, but a large collect-only and future travel button(s) to enable such functions.

Something like:

There are currently no trains departing this station today, so buying tickets for today is unavailable.

You can:

[Collect pre booked tickets button]
[Buy tickets for a future date button]

A bit like when a cash machine runs out of money, or has no receipt available but has currency, the unavailable feature is disabled but other functions can be accessed.

Interestingly, if you look at the close up of the ticket machines in the above photo, the time seems frozen at the early hours, and different for each - but they're all after 0400hrs. Perhaps it was done manually for each or via a script?

It's just poor user experience to just say there is a fault where there isn't one.

 

[infobleep]

You would have thought it would have been programmed in some sort of no today ticket sales mode, but a large collect-only and future travel button(s) to enable such functions.

Something like:

There are currently no trains departing this station today, so buying tickets for today is unavailable.

You can:

[Collect pre booked tickets button]
[Buy tickets for a future date button]

A bit like when a cash machine runs out of money, or has no receipt available but has currency, the unavailable feature is disabled but other functions can be accessed.

Interestingly, if you look at the close up of the ticket machines in the above photo, the time seems frozen at the early hours, and different for each - but they're all after 0400hrs. Perhaps it was done manually for each or via a script?

It's just poor user experience to just say there is a fault where there isn't one.

You'd like to think so but as someone who uses software designed for large organisations, I very much doubt such a thing was thought of and if it was, put in place.

Given how infrequently it might be needed, it would probably be deemed not worth the cost of development by the supplier.

 

[skyhigh]

I suppose this is one of the benefits of a journey-planner based TVM. You can't buy tickets if there's no trains, but you still can collect purchases for future travel.