Scotrail smartcard tap history

[Clachtoll]

Hello. I've lurked here a while, reading other threads with interest, but now posting in the hope of some advice - and hoping I've got this in the right section.

I have a Scotrail smartcard, with a 12-journey flexipass loaded. I've made 10 journeys on the pass. However, reading the smartcard through the Scotrail app shows 0 journeys remaining, not 2.

I phoned Scotrail's customer services today to ask for help figuring out what might have gone wrong. The advisor told me that Scotrail don't keep a tap history and have no way of verifying whether the number of journeys remaining is correct.

Does anyone know any other way of finding the tap history, e.g. any app I can use to inspect the card in case the information is on it? Or does anyone know whether what I was told is definitely true? I'm surprised the tap information isn't kept somewhere for auditing.

I've gone back through my own records and am absolutely sure that I've made only 10 journeys. There are some other details that might be relevant though:

• I bought the flexipass about 3 weeks ago, and since then I've had a weekly season for the same journey on the same smartcard (as it's cheaper for travel on 5 consecutive working days). I've done this before without issue.
• There was a day, during the weekly season validity, when i didn't tap out on my morning journey, because everyone arriving off the train at the gateline was directed not to tap through the barriers but instead directed through a single open gate where a member of staff was looking at tickets manually (a glance at the smartcard and they waved me through). Because I was using the weekly season at the time it didn't occur to me that this would be an issue, otherwise I would have found a yellow smartcard scanner and tapped out.

I should have checked the remaining journeys more often, but I've been using the smartcard flexipasses for 2 years and had no issues so far. If anyone has any advice on how to see the tap history and figure out where the journeys have been spent, I'd be really grateful.

 

[Starmill]

Try downloading the Ecebs smart ticket checker and see what info is written on the card.

 

[Bungle965]

I phoned Scotrail's customer services today to ask for help figuring out what might have gone wrong. The advisor told me that Scotrail don't keep a tap history and have no way of verifying whether the number of journeys remaining is correct.

I find this hard to believe….

 

[CyrusWuff]

I find this hard to believe….

Quite. I know ScotRail don't use the Rail Delivery Group back-office, but there logically should be an equivalent system to enable their Customer Services team to answer this sort of query.

That said, having both a Weekly season and a Flexipass for the same journey on the same card may have caused the issue, as the validator/gate wouldn't easily be able to determine which product to use.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Quite. I know ScotRail don't use the Rail Delivery Group back-office, but there logically should be an equivalent system to enable their Customer Services team to answer this sort of query.

You would hope

 

[davp]

I've always been cautious about Flexipass on SmartCard, especially if there are multiple products on it. I've had passes where I think I have either lost or gained the odd journey, but I don't keep good enough records to be sure. The app version of Flexipass is much easier for me, and you can always see what you have used and what is left.

 

[Clachtoll]

Try downloading the Ecebs smart ticket checker and see what info is written on the card.

Thank you for this suggestion. A review of the app on the Android store suggests that taps are viewable, but within the app it only shows the tickets stored on the card, so no more info that the Scotrail app. I've exported the card xml data through the Ecebs app though and will try viewing that later on my PC to see if it contains anything more.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Aug 2025 ==

That said, having both a Weekly season and a Flexipass for the same journey on the same card may have caused the issue, as the validator/gate wouldn't easily be able to determine which product to use.

I've always been cautious about Flexipass on SmartCard, especially if there are multiple products on it. I've had passes where I think I have either lost or gained the odd journey, but I don't keep good enough records to be sure. The app version of Flexipass is much easier for me, and you can always see what you have used and what is left.

Yeah, I know I should have been more cautious too, and checked the journey balance more frequently, but I've had the flexipass and weekly season simultaneously before and never had an issue, with the season always being prioritised over the flexipass properly.

The customer advisor did recommend I use the app flexi from now on, as it shows taps too, so I guess I'll do that from now on.

 

[davp]

Thank you for this suggestion. A review of the app on the Android store suggests that taps are viewable, but within the app it only shows the tickets stored on the card, so no more info that the Scotrail app. I've exported the card xml data through the Ecebs app though and will try viewing that later on my PC to see if it contains anything more.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Aug 2025 ==




Yeah, I know I should have been more cautious too, and checked the journey balance more frequently, but I've had the flexipass and weekly season simultaneously before and never had an issue, with the season always being prioritised over the flexipass properly.

The customer advisor did recommend I use the app flexi from now on, as it shows taps too, so I guess I'll do that from now on.

The app presents you with 12 individual tickets and you can activate each one as you need it - so you can see what is used and still to use. Doesn't require tapping out either which I suspect might confuse the Smartcard sometimes.