LNER ticket machines

[Bletchleyite]

Why aren't Advances online-only anyway? That would make a lot of sense to me. Many other businesses charge less for less flexibile bookings made online (e.g. cinemas, hotels etc)

I must admit I have wondered that - the railway would save money by not having to provide in-person sales channels (TVM and ticket office) and so "it'll be cheaper if you book in advance on your device even same-day" would be a powerful marking tool.

However, that's for them to decide, all I'm after is an "expert button". Sounds like this was actually present before but was removed temporarily while compulsory reservations apply, which is probably fair enough, though a bit of a nuisance if you're using a TOC that isn't doing that e.g. Northern/TPE.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Hypothetical question - if I buy a return ticket from a Northern machine for a journey wholly on Northern trains, the TVM forces me through the journey planning process and I have to select specific trains. The outward one will very nearly always be the one I get, but the return one may well be different. If the return train is delayed and I do a delay repay claim, am I likely to have aggro because they’ll tell me I didn’t get the train I’m claiming for?

 

[Haywain]

Hypothetical question - if I buy a return ticket from a Northern machine for a journey wholly on Northern trains, the TVM forces me through the journey planning process and I have to select specific trains. The outward one will very nearly always be the one I get, but the return one may well be different. If the return train is delayed and I do a delay repay claim, am I likely to have aggro because they’ll tell me I didn’t get the train I’m claiming for?

Not unless you’ve bought tickets that are restricted to specific trains.

 

[CyrusWuff]

It's worth pointing out that even when you do have to use the journey planner interface on the Flowbird (formerly Parkeon) machines, if you're buying a walk up ticket and don't require reservations you can just select the appropriate fare from the results page. There's no need to select a specific train as well.

One irritating feature, however, is that where a train departs after midnight you have to change the date for it to show up, even if it's the next train at the time you're buying the ticket.

 

[Haywain]

It's worth pointing out that even when you do have to use the journey planner interface on the Flowbird (formerly Parkeon) machines, if you're buying a walk up ticket and don't require reservations you can just select the appropriate fare from the results page. There's no need to select a specific train as well.

One irritating feature, however, is that where a train departs after midnight you have to change the date for it to show up, even if it's the next train at the time you're buying the ticket.

That’s an interesting problem, and something we won’t have seen in testing because we tend not to test at that sort of time!

 

[CyrusWuff]

That’s an interesting problem, and something we won’t have seen in testing because we tend not to test at that sort of time!

It comes up with "No fares found" (or words to that effect) if you don't change the date. It also has the advantage of showing Advance fares, where they're available, for those early morning trains (assuming you're buying your ticket before the cutoff time), which a member of Ticket Office staff may not think to look for.

 

[alistairlees]

It's worth pointing out that even when you do have to use the journey planner interface on the Flowbird (formerly Parkeon) machines, if you're buying a walk up ticket and don't require reservations you can just select the appropriate fare from the results page. There's no need to select a specific train as well.

One irritating feature, however, is that where a train departs after midnight you have to change the date for it to show up, even if it's the next train at the time you're buying the ticket.

Flowbird: unaware that there are trains after midnight.

 

[py_megapixel]

It comes up with "No fares found" (or words to that effect) if you don't change the date. It also has the advantage of showing Advance fares, where they're available, for those early morning trains (assuming you're buying your ticket before the cutoff time), which a member of Ticket Office staff may not think to look for.

That's actually a rather underrated feature of these new journey planner TVMs - much as I hate them, they do undeniably have their advantages.
It seems the vast majority of ticket office staff don't actually search for Advances unless you ask specifically for them. With a TVM you see ALL the tickets - even if it's cumbersome to find them.

 

[CyrusWuff]

That's actually a rather underrated feature of these new journey planner TVMs - much as I hate them, they do undeniably have their advantages.
It seems the vast majority of ticket office staff don't actually search for Advances unless you ask specifically for them. With a TVM you see ALL the tickets - even if it's cumbersome to find them.

Advance Purchase on the Day is still a relatively new concept, and not every TOC offers it. Similarly, the deadline for Advance tickets was traditionally 1800 the day before travel (1400 for some early departures) for years, so it takes a while to unlearn that when it's been ingrained as part of your retail training.

Also different Ticket Issuing Systems handle advance purchase sales in different ways. Cubic FasTIS, for example, was horribly inefficient, to the point that clerks would use a TOC website to undertake an availability check rather than doing so through FasTIS, and then choose the appropriate ticket. Searching for tickets from Kings Cross to Edinburgh, for example, would cause it to timeout during the search because it took so long.

Personally, I liked the old RJIS/Journey Planner interface, but only a handful of people at my TOC used to use it so they cancelled the licenses as it was costing a small fortune. It also didn't help that our TIS can't handle importing a reservation from RJIS, so it would have been useless once everything moved over to Common Stock anyway.