Avanti shop closures when approaching Preston

[AlterEgo]

only works where you have mobile phone reception

Not necessarily. How do you think it works on Ryanair?

 

[Acathater]

Not necessarily. How do you think it works on Ryanair?

through the airlines own satphone link I presume

 

[AlterEgo]

through the airlines own satphone link I presume

No, they just authorise offline with floor limits and bake the risk into their retail model.

 

[tfw756rider]

No, they just authorise offline with floor limits and bake the risk into their retail model.

Would there be any way that the railway could do something similar?

 

[DelW]

Would there be any way that the railway could do something similar?

A major difference is that airlines have full details of all their passengers' (verified) names and contact details, and almost certainly their bank details from the ticket payment (I doubt if it's even possible to buy an air ticket with cash these days). Hard to get away with non-payment on an aircraft.

 

[AlterEgo]

A major difference is that airlines have full details of all their passengers' (verified) names and contact details, and almost certainly their bank details from the ticket payment (I doubt if it's even possible to buy an air ticket with cash these days). Hard to get away with non-payment on an aircraft.

Airlines are not invoicing people £5 for their coffee if the bank declines the payment. It's simply baked into the cost of doing business and the risk of occasional non payment is part and parcel of accepting transactions offline.

Would there be any way that the railway could do something similar?

Well, yes, they could decide to process offline authorisations as do many businesses which operate outside of WiFi or mobile range or with intermittent service. The railway already copes with this problem when it sells tickets on board.

 

[DelW]

Airlines are not invoicing people £5 for their coffee if the bank declines the payment. It's simply baked into the cost of doing business and the risk of occasional non payment is part and parcel of accepting transactions offline.

I wouldn't be surprised if Ryanair would , especially if someone did it for multiple items. Couldn't the airline simply charge the cost to the card they already have details for? The passenger could hardly complain if their onboard payment had failed.

 

[tfw756rider]

Well, yes, they could decide to process offline authorisations as do many businesses which operate outside of WiFi or mobile range or with intermittent service. The railway already copes with this problem when it sells tickets on board.

Really? Must only be on some operators/lines.

 

[sh24]

Processing payments when not connected is not a uniquely railway problem - offline payment limits, requiring PIN codes, red list cards all help manage this for other businesses.

 

[MontyP]

I wouldn't be surprised if Ryanair would , especially if someone did it for multiple items. Couldn't the airline simply charge the cost to the card they already have details for? The passenger could hardly complain if their onboard payment had failed.

They don't record the seat number against the transaction so how would they know? What if the ticket had been bought by a different person to the traveller, is the ticket purchaser liable? I don't think so. They just take the risk.

 

[AlterEgo]

Really? Must only be on some operators/lines.

It's how contactless works on TfL for example. The authorisations are batched offline and processed in job lots every 10 minutes or so. The risk for non payment is again, baked into the system. Cards can be blocked by the system for repeated non payment, but again, that is retrospective.

 

[DelW]

They don't record the seat number against the transaction so how would they know? What if the ticket had been bought by a different person to the traveller, is the ticket purchaser liable? I don't think so. They just take the risk.

I'd have thought the sales terminal might record seat number, but you're probably right. I'd always assumed that the airline might chase you up for a failed payment, but it's probably not worth their time. I can't remember ever having an onboard payment fail to go through.

 

[mmh]

I'd have thought the sales terminal might record seat number, but you're probably right. I'd always assumed that the airline might chase you up for a failed payment, but it's probably not worth their time. I can't remember ever having an onboard payment fail to go through.

You show your boarding pass to buy duty-free, although I don't know if anything's recorded or not.

The seat number someone's sat in wouldn't be useful as people change seats.

 

[KNN]

They could blacklist your card and probably your name, so stop you flying if you don't pay. The railways don't have as much leeway, but there must be a process for recovering significant losses.

 

[Harratt4]

As is so often the case the railway is massively over complicating things because of how it needed to be done 60 years ago. Stop, take a step back.

I doubt the float and cash takings on a Euston to Glasgow run equates to more than £70, even if the shop operative dived out at Glasgow and did a runner with the entire cash draw one in a while it would still cost less than counting its contents every 12 minutes!

 

[Stan_Butler]

As is so often the case the railway is massively over complicating things because of how it needed to be done 60 years ago. Stop, take a step back.

I doubt the float and cash takings on a Euston to Glasgow run equates to more than £70, even if the shop operative dived out at Glasgow and did a runner with the entire cash draw one in a while it would still cost less than counting its contents every 12 minutes!

I’m sure it would cost less than counting it every 12 minutes, but seeing as they don’t do that it’s a bit of a false comparison.

 

[cats_five]

As is so often the case the railway is massively over complicating things because of how it needed to be done 60 years ago. Stop, take a step back.

I doubt the float and cash takings on a Euston to Glasgow run equates to more than £70, even if the shop operative dived out at Glasgow and did a runner with the entire cash draw one in a while it would still cost less than counting its contents every 12 minutes!

I used to run a very small bar at a sports club almost 10 years ago. We didn't take cards back then, and I had to have at least £80 float as it's quite possible for the first 4 customers to each present a £20 notes.

 

[BazingaTribe]

You show your boarding pass to buy duty-free, although I don't know if anything's recorded or not.

The seat number someone's sat in wouldn't be useful as people change seats.

That's to ensure you're entitled to the price you're paying, not anything related to payment.

 

[styles]

Airlines are not invoicing people £5 for their coffee if the bank declines the payment. It's simply baked into the cost of doing business and the risk of occasional non payment is part and parcel of accepting transactions offline.


Well, yes, they could decide to process offline authorisations as do many businesses which operate outside of WiFi or mobile range or with intermittent service. The railway already copes with this problem when it sells tickets on board.

It is worth noting that the card schemes or 'networks' (Mastercard, VISA, Amex, etc) are quite strict on offline authorisations for obvious reasons. The TfL network had a quite significant project with Mastercard to get the rules right, deal with 'catching up' authorisation messages, blocking cards when the catch up messages decline, etc. For TfL it was critical to their contactless rollout because if every tap-in/tap-out required an online authorisation message it would significantly slow down people getting through barriers, possibly even to a dangerous level at rush hour at some stations.

Some schemes and many issuers have rules about offline authorisations which the airlines have no control over. Otherwise allowing any and all offline authorisations becomes an avenue for fraud from stolen cards. SCA from token devices (like Google Pay, Apply Pay, etc) helps mitigate this.

I've certainly been on trains in the UK where the buffet car hasn't been able to sell me a sandwich and a cup of tea because they've gone card-only and their payment device has lost signal, so I believe a lot of rail transactions are still restricted to online authorisation messages only. If the card schemes find too many failed payments from the same merchant (or too many complaints from issuers about the same merchant really), they'll intervene, and if necessary, blacklist the merchant.

It doesn't help that the UK, like much of Europe, remains on a dual-messaging system for payments (authorisation, then presentment some time in the future), rather than a single-message payment system, but like many things it's a result of us being ahead of our time.

I expect rail operators to be given less leeway as time goes on as, unlike airlines, there's little excuse for using offline authorisations. Northern Scotland may be a prime example of where an exception is needed, but even there ScotRail is trialling Starlink on its more remote/less-connected services.

 

[Dave W]

Airlines are not invoicing people £5 for their coffee if the bank declines the payment. It's simply baked into the cost of doing business and the risk of occasional non payment is part and parcel of accepting transactions offline.

I noted this just after you posted it - ironically on the taxi into the gate after landing - as I had used the wrong card on the flight. The account was due to receive some cash on the Monday but TUI tried taking the payment each day until yesterday when I had funds to fulfil my debt. I wonder how long they'd have kept trying for.

 

[Krokodil]

Oh I know the feeling, I won't be surprised if someone's along shortly to tell me my year or two is actually ten

Split the difference. It was a covid-induced change.

Am I the only one that can’t believe we are even discussing this let alone that it’s so elongated?

I can believe it.

Really? Must only be on some operators/lines.

TfW's ticket machine card readers will authorise up to £20 offline.

 

[sabanda]

A major difference is that airlines have full details of all their passengers' (verified) names and contact details, and almost certainly their bank details from the ticket payment (I doubt if it's even possible to buy an air ticket with cash these days). Hard to get away with non-payment on an aircraft.

That’s not necessarily correct. I accidentally used the wrong card for a 10€ transaction on Ryanair a couple of years ago and contacted them when the payment declined a day or so after the flight. The response was that there was nothing they could do about it, and that I wasn’t to worry - in the end they reattempted payment and it went through, but the impression was that I would’ve been let off even if this hadn’t happened. I suppose they could take a different approach towards serial offenders?

 

[mmh]

A major difference is that airlines have full details of all their passengers' (verified) names and contact details, and almost certainly their bank details from the ticket payment (I doubt if it's even possible to buy an air ticket with cash these days). Hard to get away with non-payment on an aircraft.

At best they'll have payment details for single passengers who booked direct. They won't have passengers on group bookings, travel agents, package holiday companies or any other third party seller like corporate travel agencies.