Brighton to London Terminals valid via Lewes?

[starglazer777]

Hi All,

Long time reader first time poster!

I have held an Brighton to London Terminals season ticket for the past 2 years and have on odd occasion used it to go to Falmer from Brighton.

Obviously not knowing if this route was valid the first time I did it, I approached the conductor before boarding at Brighton to check. She stated that it was fine as far as Lewes which would make sense because it was then possible to change for trains to London from there.

However I recently swapped from having a paper ticket to the southerns smartcard The Key and found myself having problems with the card at Falmer. Exiting the station it refused it but the gateline staff waved me through. However on the return journey it still refused to open the gates and I was made to buy a single back to Brighton.

I've attempted to try and make some sense of the routing guide from ATOC and had no luck. I do note that fares to London from Brighton via Lewes are all the same price, so is this route valid or not?

 

[yorkie]

It's valid, but you'll get less hassle if you buy future Season tickets from Falmer.

(See Brighton - Victoria - Lewes or Brighton)
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... I was made to buy a single back to Brighton.

Get a refund.

You could try asking for a date by which adequate training will be provided to staff (though they never will, because it would cost far too much to do so, so they'll duck the question, but would be interesting to hear their answer anyway)

Unfortunately Southern's training is poor, and customer services are poor. If they do not give you a full refund, and adequate promises of addressing the issue, your next step would be Passenger Focus.

Even if it's only a few quid, it's the principle that matters.

In most industries, you cannot get away with treating customers like that.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Long time reader first time poster!

Welcome
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
One more thing: if you look on Twitter and see who is on, if it's not Huw, don't bother. If it is Huw, you could try asking him for assistance.

 

[starglazer777]

Thanks Yorkie! Nice to know that I'm not a fare dodger after all haha. Apologies about forgetting about the search function.

The fare was only £2.25 (16/25 Railcard discount) but its very annoying given that this is smart ticketing involved that they can't even program the routes correctly.

I actually am already in discussions with the Key team regarding the incident, but I thought I'd double check before they potentially handed it to the prosecutions team to deal with...

So far they have asked me for the gate code that was given. Given that this was 5 days ago I'm hardly going to remember but we'll see if I can get some changes made.

 

[talldave]

They should be paying you for debugging their useless Key that they don't seem particularly committed to!

That said, even when you do report an issue to southern and give them the solution, they still take months to do anything.

 

[Skimpot flyer]

Will the smartcard give him access to / from intermediate stations? Will the dastardly Southern Railway update their staff and software?

This has all the (ahem) Key elements of a paperback thriller. I even have the title:

Gate Expectations
by
starglazer777

 

[yorkie]

It's not about the £2.25, but the principle. If in doubt, remember this: Train Companies prosecute people over 10p. In fact, some threaten to prosecute over £0. Make sure you get a refund and assurances of future correct ticket acceptance. Even if you switch to the Falmer ticket (gaining no extra validity; just less hassle), others will get grief and may even be threatened with Penalty Fares or prosecution for having a valid ticket (it's happened before, and it'll happen again).

Let us know what they say.

 

[starglazer777]

So Southern have just got back to me with the following:

'I can confirm that a Brighton to London terminals Season Ticket will not allow you to travel from Lewes as your ticket origin station is Brighton, in order for this to be looked into and consider for change so that Key customers like yourself can make this journey I will need to escalate to our key escalations to further investigate.'

They then invited me to send in the tickets I bought to cover the journey for a refund, despite the fact I told them already the extra ticket was bought on the smartcard.

I can't tell if the person in question thinks the route is invalid or is merely acknowledging its not possible for me to make this journey currently on the key? Why would they offer a refund if they thought it was invalid?

 

[Hadders]

This looks like a 'benefit' of smartcards. I can see the potential to start and finish short and to break journey being lost.

Smartcards should be treated with extreme caution until we can be certain that passenger rights will not be eroded.

 

[starglazer777]

Just a quick update, Southern eventually offered a refund of the ticket and a little extra top for the nuisance caused.

They've given me confirmation that the ticket works via email so I can show staff the next time I try to go through Falmer. In regards to getting it fixed they said if I could make a note of the gate code error number they would look into it further.

Thanks all for the help, especially Yorkie

 

[talldave]

It'd be even nicer if they trained their own staff rather than asking you to do it! And if they really cared they'd get off their backside and go try the barrier themselves?