It happened to me this evening that, after having started a train journey covered by my Annual Season (London Liverpool Street [LST] to Great Chesterford [GRC]), my plans changed and I needed to continue on the same train one stop beyond its validity, namely Whittlesford Parkway [WLF]. I duly bought a GRC-WLF Anytime Day Single using the Greater Anglia app, and, out of interest, decided to load it directly from my smartphone to my smartcard, which the app allows you to do. It might relevant to note that my Annual Season is on paper,* so I had presented that to the barriers at LST rather than the smartcard. When I got off at WLF, I tapped my smartcard on a free-standing reader - just to see what would happen really - and got an error message that the ticket was invalid/expired (can't remember the exact wording). This got me wondering: why?
I am confident that I bought the appropriate ticket (although I accept that I could be wrong or that I hadn't loaded it on the smartcard correctly). The explanation I could come up with was to guess something like this - that the smartcard ticket is not 'activated' until tapping in, so, given that I didn't tap in at GRC, the ticket hadn't been 'activated' by the time I tried to tap out at WLF. Is there anything in this, or am I barking up the wrong tree? And if I am right, where would it have left me if, say, I had decided to continue to Cambridge [CBG] (which I can easily imagine happening), rather than WLF? It didn't matter that the reader at WLF didn't like my smartcard, as there was nothing to stop me walking off railway premises anyway, but if it had been at CBG, presumably the barrier wouldn't have let me out, which would have left me with some explaining to do.
Of course, I see that I could have bought a mobile ticket within the app instead, which would presumably have been easier. But, given that I wanted to choose the smartcard fulfilment option, which I appear to be allowed to do, what should I have done - short of running for dear life over the footbridge twice at GRC to try to tap in before the train left? (The train called at platform 2 at GRC and the only readers are on platform 1.)
And what did one do in this situation before the days of buying a ticket on your phone? Bear in mind that this service was DOO, so I would have had no opportunity to speak to any staff or attempt to buy a new ticket until arriving at the new destination.
* This isn't relevant to this topic, but for the curious, my Season is a Flexitime, and I was advised that smartcard isn't given as a fulfilment option for it. Not sure why.
I am confident that I bought the appropriate ticket (although I accept that I could be wrong or that I hadn't loaded it on the smartcard correctly). The explanation I could come up with was to guess something like this - that the smartcard ticket is not 'activated' until tapping in, so, given that I didn't tap in at GRC, the ticket hadn't been 'activated' by the time I tried to tap out at WLF. Is there anything in this, or am I barking up the wrong tree? And if I am right, where would it have left me if, say, I had decided to continue to Cambridge [CBG] (which I can easily imagine happening), rather than WLF? It didn't matter that the reader at WLF didn't like my smartcard, as there was nothing to stop me walking off railway premises anyway, but if it had been at CBG, presumably the barrier wouldn't have let me out, which would have left me with some explaining to do.
Of course, I see that I could have bought a mobile ticket within the app instead, which would presumably have been easier. But, given that I wanted to choose the smartcard fulfilment option, which I appear to be allowed to do, what should I have done - short of running for dear life over the footbridge twice at GRC to try to tap in before the train left? (The train called at platform 2 at GRC and the only readers are on platform 1.)
And what did one do in this situation before the days of buying a ticket on your phone? Bear in mind that this service was DOO, so I would have had no opportunity to speak to any staff or attempt to buy a new ticket until arriving at the new destination.
* This isn't relevant to this topic, but for the curious, my Season is a Flexitime, and I was advised that smartcard isn't given as a fulfilment option for it. Not sure why.
Edit: it seems not, as Trainsplit only offers TOD for this ticket.
