Scotrail smart card, help please

[Blindtraveler]

Hello all

I now live in the southeast of England and visit Scotland multiple times a year for family work and social purposes. I just thought I might make my life a bit easier by acquiring a smart card for Scott rail services, however, it's been nothing but hassle since I got it. Spent ages on Friday associating it with my account, website was not cooperating and then went into the app to buy a ticket. The journey is for next Friday and the app confidently proclaimed that I could load it to my smart card 5 minutes after purchase. This wouldn't work on Friday and so I left it but here we are now on Sunday morning and I'm still unable to load this ticket to my smart card. Is this normal? And if so, when am I likely to be able to upload it? I am using the latest version of the scottrail app on a fully up-to-date Google pixel 8. Anyone who works for Scott Rail in particular would be very welcome to respond here along with anyone with significant experience with what seems like a thoroughly bad product compared to the Southeastern key smart card which I also own and works really rather well most of the time. Cheers and thanks!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Jan 2025 ==

Ticket purchased, in case it's of any consequence is an first class single with dsb rail card from Inverness to Avimore valid on any train that day

 

[Carntyne]

It is normal unfortunately, it's a really terrible system.

 

[Blindtraveler]

That is both reassuring and depressing in equal measure. Yes, I'm certainly getting the overall impression that the system is terrible. When should I be able to load this ticket? Will it be doable on Thursday night? Or do I need to spend Friday morning when I meant to be working in a hotel messing about with it instead?

 

[Carntyne]

You should just be able to tap on a gate/reader at your departure station and it'll load the ticket, but it's been eleven years and even that still doesn't work reliably or logically.

Your best bet would be to call the customer relations team and ask them for help/reassurance.

 

[CyrusWuff]

Could the issue be related to ScotRail running their own Central Back Office instead of using the Rail Delivery Group one? Though it should still load through the ScotRail app, of course.

 

[Morayshire]

Personal experience is that the standalone readers will load the ticket onto the smartcard after a short delay.

Whether or not the machine the guard has is a) working and b) able to read the smartcard if it is working is another matter entirely.

Smartcard also has/had a separate help line number/team as well.

 

[Blindtraveler]

Thanks all for the replies. I'm just mystified as to why it won't load onto the card from the app as it's meant to do. This is most frustrating and could well be after all the bother of getting it and setting it up. The only time I bother to use it. I got it in the first place because I was thoroughly sick of the Mtickets and didn't realise that the smart card was in fact going to make life even more complicated

 

[kkong]

The loading via the app seems to have stopped working some time in the past few months.

Recently I tapped it onto the reader on a TVM at my local station and it loaded the ticket correctly (no interaction is required with the TVM).

 

[Blindtraveler]

Oh that is interesting. Might explain the somewhat defensive attitude of customer relations in an email into action with them. Not wanting to admit that the system is in fact terminally broken. Either way, I'm certainly reconsidering the value of it from a simplicity point of view, given that it's thus far proved far more hassle than a stupid m ticket.