Issues like me being able to prove I have a ticket even when my phone is dead, so they can't fine me? (I have only had one journey in the last year where my phone actually died, but that's not the point)
If you're worried about your battery life you're free to print a copy of an e-ticket, send a screenshot to a friend's phone as a backup if they're travelling with you or a number of other things. You could also carry a power bank with you.
You can do that now with an e-ticket by printing it (you can also show it on any device); just be sure to avoid the dreaded m-tickets!
If you already have access to a printer, the marginal cost of printing an e-ticket is going to be miniscule.
There was never any reason to dislike e-tickets in my opinion; you may have been thinking of m-tickets?
It's a shame our machines don't do that; if they did, I think they could use it as justification to ditch the old TOD system much earlier, but that's for another thread
That comes down to checking what you’re going to print, and making sure you restrict to what’s necessary.
That is true in the environment of an office, educational institution or whatever. Home printers, on the other hand, are a pain in the proverbial to deal with and work out very expensive indeed per page, especially if you only use them occasionally.
Why can't retailers of electronic tickets make sure they restrict what they distribute in the first place to what is actually necessary?
This is the number one reason why I dislike any phone based system closely followed by:
Having to stand aside just before the barrier, get out the phone from a safe pocket in my coat or bag, get the correct screen up, enter before the screen turns off, stand aside again and put the phone safely away all while ensuring neither the luggage or the phone is snatched. When making a transfer across-London or e.g. Birmingham New Street long distance to local platforms potentially the difference between just making a connection if the incoming train is late and not.
Well, I wouldn’t print an eTicket anyway but I’m not aware that it’s a problem for the railway, whereas generally I would agree.
Off topic, but Ryanair are notorious for this when attempting to get a receipt for a booking. Obviously done on purpose knowing O'Leary.
When I buy railway eTickets, the PDF I get invariably puts only one ticket on each page even if multiple would fit, so more pages than necessary are being distributed. This means that unless the customer is of the mind to open a Word document and copy screenshots of the ticket in there to fit them all onto one page - rather than just hitting print on the PDF, which is what most people will do - more pages are being printed than necessary.
Why not just print the e-ticket PDF itself? No need to print anything else.
I object to the idea of having to load a ticket onto a smartcard instead of simply having a PDF. Feel free to create a new thread with your proposal though as we need to keep this thread to the topic concerned.
You could set your printer to default to mono; this is how our printers are set up at work. It then only prints colour if you specifically request it.
Open the PDF in Adobe Reader and instruct it to print multiple pages per sheet:
I know I can do that. What I am saying is that 90% of people who want to print an eTicket will just open the PDF, hit print and accept the defaults.
Most train journeys are not in any way comparable to flights. For a start, flights from airports in this country aren't generally competing with the convenience of just jumping in a car and driving, while short to medium distance train journeys most definitely are. Also, Ryanair is an ultra-low-cost service, and the railway isn't (in fact in some cases taking the train is more expensive than driving).
And you point is? If you book in advance you’ll most likely gat an eTicket turn up at a station to buy your ticket and you can have PRT or eTicket from the ticket office and CCST from a TVM. The point I’m trying to make is that in nearly every other situation apart from Rail you get what you are given.
That's why I provided a screenshot to demonstrate, but it's not that difficult.Says a techie whizz!
My point is that every extra bit of hassle you add to the process - such as having to print a ticket - is an extra incentive for someone to abandon the idea of rail travel altogether and just get in their car. On the other hand, for airlines, that isn't generally the case, as they cover distances which are generally too long to reasonably drive, and in the case of Ryanair are much cheaper than the alternatives, so people will go to the inconvenience.
I would say that rail needs to be moving away from that sort of attitude if it wants to attract passengers. It might not have that attitude regarding ticketing fulfilment formats at the moment, but it certainly has it in other areas, such as arrangements in the case of delay/cancellation; seat reservations (inability to select a seat - what is this, the 90s?); and the behaviour of some staff.
Hardly likely as Ryanair wouldn’t make money from it!
You don’t have to print it!
I find paper tickets and TOD to be an extra hassle, which is avoided by e-tickets.
So do I. I'm not suggesting that etickets are fundamentally a bad idea, I am simply stating that there are still enough people uncertain about using them that an alternative needs to be in place. Thus, returning to the opening post of this thread, I don't think that just deleting the ToD option from the website is really the appropriate course of action.
You do if you don't have a suitable smart device
