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Reading a few disputes recently, I’ve noticed several disputers claim Trainline has pre selected a railcard and they’d failed to notice and the card they’d previously used was expired/ invalid.
Does Trainline actually do this?
Is it obvious when purchasing that it’s pre populated if it does?
From the small number coming here for advise I would think the problem might be a big one, basing on the small population size that some here for advise. Is it deliberately catching people off guard and creating travel irregularities
Reading a few disputes recently, I’ve noticed several disputers claim Trainline has pre selected a railcard and they’d failed to notice and the card they’d previously used was expired/ invalid.
I don't use Trainline, and most of my journeys are me by myself so my Two Together Card shouldn't affect the price of ticket even if selected.
But my impression is that TL doesn't populate the Railcard selection by itself: rather it retains the selection previously made, which is rather different.
So for the majority of customers who will want to buy a ticket with the same Railcard as their previous journey, this is a benefit - one less thing to worry about in buying a ticket. But for those who want to change their Railcard choice, they need to remember to do so - so they are disadvantaged.
Basically the default search view remembers the last railcard you have selected. So it doesn't choose a random one, and it isn't "deliberately catching people off guard". It's just trying to be useful. People would whinge if they didn't remember the railcard too and claim it was deliberately overcharging them.
They aren't actually stored in your profile however. It's really just the last selection, so it's trying to be useful
Which in my opinion is the best way to do that.
The continental Europe Trainline will actually have the rail cards in your profile, so there may be occasions where you just forget it's in your profile and get a discount you aren't entitled to anymore.
Just to make sure everyone is on the same page: The search page in the Trainline app remembers some information (origin, destination, single/return/etc, railcard), so if you make a search, or even just type in the information without making a search, then the next time you open the search page the same information is already there. So it doesn't change your request or add to it - it just offers up your last request and leaves you to modify it to what you actually want this time (which is very convenient for most of the time as you don't need to re-enter your railcard, but comes with the risk that you'll overlook the need to remove the railcard if you're aware that it's expired but not aware that it's still present in the search).
The attached screenshot shows what it looks like: On the search page the railcard is shown just above the continue button, and once you've selected the tickets you want the applied railcard is shown in a separate box and again just above the final price, showing how much money you saved by applying it.
If you purchased your railcard through Trainline, it will notify you it is about to expire & when it had expired. Obviously you can still select it, as you may have purchased a new one from elsewhere.
It doesn't choose anything, just has a simple tries to help by assuming you want to do same again, so the boxes (railcard, start and end station etc) get filled in with same selection.
Personally I think it is wrong to pre fill a railcard selection, because don't know if it still applies.
The fault if anything is the rail trade body that regulates rail ticket sellers, doesn't insist that a railcard validly check is made as part of the discounted ticket sale. In old days couldn't buy discounted ticket without showing a railcard
The fault if anything is the rail trade body that regulates rail ticket sellers, doesn't insist that a railcard validly check is made as part of the discounted ticket sale. In old days couldn't buy discounted ticket without showing a railcard
But this runs into problems with people now buying tickets in advance (which may or may not be Advance tickets - but that’s a whole separate thread). if you buy your ticket a month in advance, should you have a Railcard then - and so have it expire 11 months after you travel? Or should you have it when you travel, and so have (almost) 12 months’ further use?
It’s not just that things have changed since the first railcards came out - then, virtually everyone bought walkup tickets, face to face on the day of travel, while now many (most? virtually all?) buy online and in advance. It’s also that any system will be a best fit rather than exactly right.
At the risk of coming over all Dr Pangloss, what we have may be as good as it is going to get.
I prefer it to be pre-filled because I always maintain a Network Railcard valid and don't ever select any others because I don't buy tickets for other people (and if I did it'd be on the laptop, not on the app). An extra tap would be unnecessary faff.
The one thing I don't like is that it remembers a date selection from the last search, which means one has to remember to tap "today" to avoid a wrong date being used. It's likely the passenger wants the same Railcard but not the same date the next time they purchase.
All Trainline (and other bookings sites) need to do it add a Railcard expiry date field, and also store this if they insist on having this feature to "make customers' lives easier". It will then immediately say if the attempted journey will be valid or not .
It would solve 95% of these problems overnight at a stroke.
I very nearly ran into a problem with this, once. I only use Trainline infrequently, but bought a ticket for my son once using his railcard. About a month later, when I went to buy a ticket for myself, I felt that they had suddenly become better value and only noticed by luck, very late in the buying process...
All Trainline (and other bookings sites) need to do it add a Railcard expiry date field, and also store this if they insist on having this feature to "make customers' lives easier". It will then immediately say if the attempted journey will be valid or not .
It doesn’t need to be over engineered. All it needs is a box as part of the purchase that says “this ticket requires a railcard - please acknowledge you understand this” and a checkbox the user ticks.
Any “sorry guv I didn’t realise” defence disappears
Most regular travellers will know theirs off by heart, so this won't be a really big issue. And once it becomes a known habit, most will have the information ready before they get there.
And those with physical cards that don't have the Aztec barcodes on?
And before you say 'Add barcodes to them', bear in mind that some railcards can be purchased for 3 years, so it will take at LEAST that for the non-barcoded ones to come out of use.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
The attached screenshot shows what it looks like: On the search page the railcard is shown just above the continue button, and once you've selected the tickets you want the applied railcard is shown in a separate box and again just above the final price, showing how much money you saved by applying it.
If there is no matching valid railcard in the Trainline account, then put a BIG RED box on either the search (under the railcard selection, above the Find button) and/or that last page stating something along the lines of 'We have not detected a valid [insert railcard name here] railcard on your Trainline account, this is OK, as you may have one in another app or a physical card. You MUST be able to show this railcard on-demand, otherwise this ticket will not be valid, please check before completing your purchase". Maybe with a tick box saying 'I have verified I have a valid [railcard name here] railcard
If there is more than 1 railcard selected (before anyone says anything, the Disabled Persons Railcard and Network Railcard should only be selected once), then add: "Each person travelling on these tickets MUST have their own valid railcard"
That would solve a lot of the problems as the passenger would have been deemed to have been informed, if people ignore it and tick the box anyway, that's on them
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