Barriers at one specific station don't read ticket

[moogal]

I regularly travel to Shepherd's Bush overground station using a paper Travelcard from my local station. Unless I bought it from the ticket office (those ones seem to work fine), the barriers always come up with "Seek Assistance" and I have to find a member of staff to let me through manually. The tickets work at all the other stations I use them at, including many Underground stations and the Euston 8-11 barriers.

What I was wondering was, is this more likely to be an issue with the ticket (or indeed, the TVM that encoded it), or with the barriers at that station - either some fault or because they're manually set up a particular way?

 

[DelW]

I don't know the answer, but I seem to get an increasing number of cases where mag-stripe tickets fail to work barriers both on TfL and NR, for reasons which aren't obvious. On one occasion last year I had to use a contactless bank card to enter West Brompton station when my paper travelcard wouldn't open the barrier which had been left unattended. After a couple of minutes calling out and waiting for someone to appear, I was at risk of missing a tight connection at Victoria.

On NR I usually assume it's gates set to reject railcard tickets, which is both annoying and pointless since the manual checker rarely looks closely even at the ticket let alone asks for the railcard.

 

[sk688]

On one occasion last year I had to use a contactless bank card to enter West Brompton station when my paper travelcard wouldn't open the barrier which had been left unattended. After a couple of minutes calling out and waiting for someone to appear, I was at risk of missing a tight connection at Victoria

Slightly of topic but why didn't you just go through the unbarriered overground entrance and do a cross platform chance to get into the district line

 

[boiledbeans2]

Slightly of topic but why didn't you just go through the unbarriered overground entrance and do a cross platform chance to get into the district line

I once had a situation at West Brompton. Main gateline closed with no staff. LO side gate closed. It was late at night and the last LO train of the day was arriving soon. So I just bumped the wide gate like everyone does...
Once inside, I realised the staff member was actually walking along the LO platform, shutting the gates connecting the LO and District line platforms, precisely because the last LO train was about to arrive.

Back to the OP's question. Yes, I always have issues with Travelcards at Shepherd's Bush LO too. So I knock on the office window, show my card, and they press a button from inside the office which opens the wide gate to let me through.

 

[DelW]

Slightly of topic but why didn't you just go through the unbarriered overground entrance and do a cross platform chance to get into the district line

Oops, brain fade on my part, it was West Kensington not West Brompton.