Incorrect ticket issued - Free excess?

[sleepy_hollow]

Last month I took advantage of the new cross-town train service to go cycling in Somerset, buying a senior railcard ticket from the guard in the usual way, travelling out, unusually for me, in the morning peak. The guard read out the details of the ticket, he printed it and I folded it into my railcard holder to show the return half.

On the return journey the ticket examiner scanned the ticket, then asked to see it again and claimed that it was a child ticket and that he would have to sell me a new one, to which I replied: 'You mean, excess this one?'. This he did, for fifty five pence. After this transaction he returned briefly to the question of where I bought the ticket. Fortunately I was able to remember the departure time of the morning train, so he merely threw in the comment that I would have been in trouble had I got out at Temple Meads.

Should I have requested a free excess on the grounds that the contract of carriage for me had been formed at the original price, irrespective of any errors in the issued documents?

 

[Wallsendmag]

A) Child tickets shouldn't be X/S'd to Adult tickets. You should buy a new ticket and get a refund.
B) No you should pay the correct fare

 

[reb0118]

AFAIAA, on my current ticket issuing system (TIS) it is no longer possible to excess child ticket to an adult fare. Although it was never a permitted excess it was possible to do so with previous systems.

 

[Wallsendmag]

AFAIAA, on my current ticket issuing system (TIS) it is no longer possible to excess child ticket to an adult fare. Although it was never a permitted excess it was possible to do so with previous systems.

Our TC TIS is the same.

 

[sleepy_hollow]

AFAIAA, on my current ticket issuing system (TIS) it is no longer possible to excess child ticket to an adult fare. Although it was never a permitted excess it was possible to do so with previous systems.

TIS generation change may have something to do with it. The original ticket came from a fairly new machine with a mobile phone sized customer interface and was in a format I had not noticed before, where the type information is no longer in the upper right using codes like SNR or CHILD but is written in smaller print sentences towards bottom left. I was momentarily puzzled by the blank in the upper right but then concentrated on checking the destination, folding the long strip of paper up neatly and tidying everything into a zipped pocket. I did not notice whether the return Ticket Examiner was using a similar machine but the excess was in the more familiar form with SNR in large caps in the top right. The older format seems to have more information more clearly displayed.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Oct 2022 ==

Alternatively, the excess does not appear to be an excess of any type of ticket, just a ticket that says that it is only valid in conjunction with the original ticket number. As it happens, it is a return in the opposite direction to the original ticket. Perhaps this comes under a general TIS procedure for correcting railway company errors, with the original ticket being treated as a voucher for the price of the original fare.

GWR staff are always competent and helpful and know how to operate the system to optimise customer service and an instant on the spot refund into a new ticket seems to be the best solution, apart from a free excess.

 

[Wallsendmag]

GWR staff are always competent and helpful and know how to operate the system to optimise customer service and an instant on the spot refund into a new ticket seems to be the best solution, apart from a free excess.

Except in both cases here they were very less than competent, issuing an incorrect ticket and then ignoring the correct way to deal with the problem. On train staff refunding a ticket not bought from them, is that really a thing?????

 

[sleepy_hollow]

.... On train staff refunding a ticket not bought from them, is that really a thing?????

Any excess is a refund, so presumably it really is 'a thing'.

And the correct way to deal with a problem created by the railway company is the one that creates least inconvenience for the customer, although I expect someone will eventually quote chapter and verse of the rules that say the opposite.

 

[skyhigh]

Any excess is a refund, so presumably it really is 'a thing'.

I don't see how an excess can be considered a refund?

 

[Birmingham]

And the correct way to deal with a problem created by the railway company is the one that creates least inconvenience for the customer

Quite right and on this they clearly excelled, it’s rather amusing that some railway staff are unimpressed by this.

 

[AlterEgo]

Any excess is a refund, so presumably it really is 'a thing'.

And the correct way to deal with a problem created by the railway company is the one that creates least inconvenience for the customer, although I expect someone will eventually quote chapter and verse of the rules that say the opposite.

Well quite. The flip side of the coin is you end up posting here having ended up with a notice of prosecution. Excessing the fare was the path of least resistance and the correct thing to do, even if the rules don’t say so.

 

[Tetchytyke]

I don't see how an excess can be considered a refund?

You refund a £1 ticket and sell a new one for £1.50, or you charge a £0.50 excess from a £1 ticket to a £1.50 ticket. Swings and roundabouts really.

 

[Wallsendmag]

You refund a £1 ticket and sell a new one for £1.50, or you charge a £0.50 excess from a £1 ticket to a £1.50 ticket. Swings and roundabouts really.

But you don't refund, you take the amount paid into account and add to it to get the ticket needed. if it was a refund it wouldn't be an X/S it would just be starting again with a new ticket.

 

[L401CJF]

An excess is different to a refund though as an excess means keeping the original ticket, a new ticket is printed and you charge the difference.

Find original ticket in the system and enter the ticket number on original ticket eg 12334. Select what type of excess eg over distance, single to return, change of route. Find the new ticket on system, click calculate and it'll say how much is to be paid. The ticket printed then says X/S only valid with ticket 12345 or similar so you have to keep the original and the excess together.

I did check when I read this thread if it was possible to excess child to adult on our machines and I don't think it is.

I recently bought a ticket from Chester to Hooton after a night on the booze. Stupid me forgot I hadn't parked the car at Hooton as usual (it was at home because I had been drinking!) and needed to go to Overpool. Popped into the office at Hooton to ask for an over distance excess. I assumed it'd be a zero fare excess as the price is the same but instead they refunded my old tickets onto my bank card and sold me new ones for the same price. We don't have the option to refund onboard (unless I issued it myself).

 

[skyhigh]

You refund a £1 ticket and sell a new one for £1.50, or you charge a £0.50 excess from a £1 ticket to a £1.50 ticket. Swings and roundabouts really.

I get where you're coming from but a refund can take x number of days to filter through to actually having the money back in your account. So say a customer bought a £50 ticket and needed an excess up to a £60 ticket, they'd only need to have £10 available in their account to be able to pay for the excess. A refund and repurchase would need them to have £60 in their account (and be able to spare that additional £50 until the refund came through). Not everybody will have those funds available, particularly at the moment.

 

[sleepy_hollow]

...

Find original ticket in the system and enter the ticket number on original ticket eg 12334. Select what type of excess eg over distance, single to return, change of route. Find the new ticket on system, click calculate and it'll say how much is to be paid. The ticket printed then says X/S only valid with ticket 12345 or similar so you have to keep the original and the excess together.
...

That sounds surprisingly complicated for the time it took, even assuming that find original ticket means find ticket type, not using a web link to find the original purchase. I had assumed that he just set up a new ticket labelled as an excess, read the price of the original ticket and entered it as a credit, which might fit better with the fact that he set the return up the wrong way round and as an off-peak not a peak ticket.

 

[L401CJF]

That sounds surprisingly complicated for the time it took, even assuming that find original ticket means find ticket type, not using a web link to find the original purchase. I had assumed that he just set up a new ticket labelled as an excess, read the price of the original ticket and entered it as a credit, which might fit better with the fact that he set the return up the wrong way round and as an off-peak not a peak ticket.

Yes sorry I meant find the original ticket type rather than the actual transaction.

Example being if they had a single from A to B for £3.00, you would search for a single from A to B for the £3.00 on the machine. Then select the excess you want to issue, such as an over distance A to C single. It then figures out how much extra is owed and issues a ticket which us only valid when produced with the original ticket.

It takes some getting used to but doesn't take more than a minute.