Rail Travel Vouchers that won't scan

[Drsatan]

In December I received an RTV for £15 from ATW as compensation for being delayed by over three hours - the cause of the delay was due to a fallen tree. Yesterday I attempted to use the RTV was part-payment for a ticket at my local station, which is an FGW station. The booking clerk attempted to scan it, and stated he couldn't accept it because the barcode reader attached to the computer wouldn't recognise the barcode on the voucher. He then stated there was no way to add RTVs manually, and that he'd had problems with scanning ATW and Virgin RTVs in the past.

I sent a tweet to FGW about this who replied that the clerk should have been able to add the RTV manually as part-payment. However, the clerk who sold me the ticket is a very helpful member of staff, so I'm inclined to believe that it was more of a hardware fault than him being unhelpful. I also tweeted ATW about this who offered to send me a replacement voucher.

I'd like to know who's in the wrong here. Either ATW for issuing RTVs that have reliability issues, or FGW for lack of staff training.

 

[island]

I have never once had an RTV with a barcode that successfully scanned at the station. The clerk can key the details manually, and this is what should have been done on this occasion.

 

[DelayRepay]

I've had the same problem with an East Coast voucher at a Southeastern station (Cannon Street) - but another Southeastern station (London Bridge) were able to manually apply the voucher.

My FCC vouchers seem to scan without a problem.

 

[bb21]

Sometimes it is due to bar code not printing correctly, sometimes hardware fault probably, and other times the system was probably not set up correctly. Any of these could be true, as well as other possibilities.

I have had EMT-issued ones not scanning at EMT stations, and FGW-issued ones not scanning at FGW stations, so it is hardly a surprise.