Vexed
Member
Hopefully this doesn't come off as much of a rant but I thought I'd share my poor success rate with ticket barriers today.
After figuring out that the magnet in my earbuds case was demagnetising my paper tickets I hoped for a high success rate, now that I stored them in different pockets. Nope.
Travelling on the return portion of a Super Off Peak Return, here goes.
Started at St Albans City with barrier code 115, indicating my ticket has expired. Not true as it's valid for one journey within a month.
Then exiting at West Hampstead Thameslink I got 105 indicating an invalid TOC type ticket. My ticket has no TOC restrictions.
Entering West Hampstead Underground, I headed for the wide gate (I have a suitcase with me) which detected my paper ticket and started making motor noises but it just wouldn't go in. I tried a normal gate and... success! The third ticket barrier of my journey was the first to work.
Waterloo Underground ticket barriers also worked without any issues.
Waterloo's mainline barriers also didn't work with code 135, which is TOC special rules.
Southampton Airport Parkway doesn't have ticket barriers so the random rejection number generator won't be running when I arrive!
At no barrier was I asked for my railcard. However the gateline staff did check the ticket in each case, unlike some past experiences where they accept anything orange.
I'm used to the barriers not working due to GTR's great policy of rejecting advance tickets (which an attendant at Blackfriars didn't seem to know was a blanket policy but I might be misremembering and that one might have been corrupted by my earbuds. Regardless my opener of "I have an advance ticket" resulted in him thinking it should work). But what got me is that the barriers (even on the same TOC) couldn't all decide on the same reason to reject my ticket.
Anyway... This is what we get from Cubic having a monopoly.
After figuring out that the magnet in my earbuds case was demagnetising my paper tickets I hoped for a high success rate, now that I stored them in different pockets. Nope.
Travelling on the return portion of a Super Off Peak Return, here goes.
Started at St Albans City with barrier code 115, indicating my ticket has expired. Not true as it's valid for one journey within a month.
Then exiting at West Hampstead Thameslink I got 105 indicating an invalid TOC type ticket. My ticket has no TOC restrictions.
Entering West Hampstead Underground, I headed for the wide gate (I have a suitcase with me) which detected my paper ticket and started making motor noises but it just wouldn't go in. I tried a normal gate and... success! The third ticket barrier of my journey was the first to work.
Waterloo Underground ticket barriers also worked without any issues.
Waterloo's mainline barriers also didn't work with code 135, which is TOC special rules.
Southampton Airport Parkway doesn't have ticket barriers so the random rejection number generator won't be running when I arrive!
At no barrier was I asked for my railcard. However the gateline staff did check the ticket in each case, unlike some past experiences where they accept anything orange.
I'm used to the barriers not working due to GTR's great policy of rejecting advance tickets (which an attendant at Blackfriars didn't seem to know was a blanket policy but I might be misremembering and that one might have been corrupted by my earbuds. Regardless my opener of "I have an advance ticket" resulted in him thinking it should work). But what got me is that the barriers (even on the same TOC) couldn't all decide on the same reason to reject my ticket.
Anyway... This is what we get from Cubic having a monopoly.