Smaller RDG Agents - Errors

[185]

In our big privatised railway, every man and his dog appears to now be an accredited travel agent approved to vend RDG's tickets.

Recently, I'm noticing more and more minor operators issuing tickets with errors.

Mytrainticket.co.uk - (seems to a be a one-man-band in Staffordshire) sold a ticket from London to the north at 4pm, and when the passenger opens the app clicks on it, a PDF e-tickets opens showing only the morning southbound journey at 6am.
Seen three tickets with similar errors now, all from their app.

Omio - (a large German owned agent) repeatedly sold tickets which scan as NON-REVENUE TICKET NOT VALID FOR TRAVEL suggesting the issuer was in producing tickets in either a test or training mode.
Seen about 12 tickets in the last few weeks.

Checking passenger receipts suggest the passengers have all paid the full fare for the journey, but I wonder if RDG got any money from those transactions. Also, I wonder what checks RDG are making to oversee the non-toc vendors are compliant with the rules they set. Is anyone else seeing issues like these?

 

[Wallsendmag]

In our big privatised railway, every man and his dog appears to now be an accredited travel agent approved to vend RDG's tickets.

Recently, I'm noticing more and more minor operators issuing tickets with errors.

Mytrainticket.co.uk - (seems to a be a one-man-band in Staffordshire) sold a ticket from London to the north at 4pm, and when the passenger opens the app clicks on it, a PDF e-tickets opens showing only the morning southbound journey at 6am.
Seen three tickets with similar errors now, all from their app.

Omio - (a large German owned agent) repeatedly sold tickets which scan as NON-REVENUE TICKET NOT VALID FOR TRAVEL suggesting the issuer was in producing tickets in either a test or training mode.
Seen about 12 tickets in the last few weeks.

Checking passenger receipts suggest the passengers have all paid the full fare for the journey, but I wonder if RDG got any money from those transactions. Also, I wonder what checks RDG are making to oversee the non-toc vendors are compliant with the rules they set. Is anyone else seeing issues like these?

The Omnio bug was fixed last week I believe (also affects Uber) I think it was an encoding issue with the barcode.

 

[185]

Thanks. There were a few Omio ones seen today (Saturday), customers bought them Friday evening which perhaps suggests it's still ongoing.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Thanks. There were a few Omio ones seen today (Saturday), customers bought them Friday evening which perhaps suggests it's still ongoing.

@alistairlees FYI

 

[alistairlees]

@alistairlees FYI

Thanks @Wallsendmag

The bug was fixed about a month ago so far as I recall, but I will check on Monday. I used tickets bought on Saturday for travel on Saturday, to exit the Newcastle gateine, without any issues / error code. As that's an S&B gateline it had been showing the error previously (none of the Cubic gatelines flag this issue - it's been quite useful to the industry to identify a defiiciency in all Cubic gatelines which I understand is being remedied now).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Jul 2023 ==

In our big privatised railway, every man and his dog appears to now be an accredited travel agent approved to vend RDG's tickets.

There's a list here: https://www.raildeliverygroup.com/component/zoo/advanced-search/2.html?Itemid=473 - about 20 organisations for online, TVM, ticket office and handheld retailing. I don't think it's completely up to date though.

 

[185]

Much appreciated for this information. These were flagged up with TTK, the version was the most recent update. In all cases the customer was allowed to travel but I have heard of some passengers being charged - understandable as "not valid for travel" is a pretty clear message for staff not to accept the ticket.

 

[Adam Williams]

seems to a be a one-man-band in Staffordshire

It's not at all a one-man band, but it is a small outfit. It has gone through the same accreditation process that every other third-party retailer has been through, though - and it's using a tried and tested journey planner which during its lifetime has powered large retailers such as The Trainline and TrainSplit. They've not re-invented the wheel in this respect.

They're not a bad bunch at all, and the engineers responsible for both the backend and the iOS/Android apps do work hard to produce a good quality product.

sold a ticket from London to the north at 4pm, and when the passenger opens the app clicks on it, a PDF e-tickets opens showing only the morning southbound journey at 6am.
Seen three tickets with similar errors now, all from their app

What have you done to flag up this problem? Have you contacted the support team about this bug, or are you going straight to contacting TIS accreditation? If you haven't gotten anywhere, and want this highlighted internally, can you please DM me the booking ref or UTN for an example booking? It's not something that has been brought to my attention, and I sort of expect that it would have been if the support team understood the magnitude of the problem you're reporting here or if it had been flagged properly with accreditation.

Also, I wonder what checks RDG are making to oversee the non-toc vendors are compliant with the rules they set. Is anyone else seeing issues like these?

This is the entire point of the accreditation process, and there is continuous oversight in the way of front-line staff being able to flag issues with the accreditation team (via whatever process the TOC has in place) which then get raised as Jiras for third party-retailers and TIS suppliers to address as well as the re-accreditation cycle which ensures systems are re-checked for compliance regularly.

I would say the vast majority of issues raised by accred turn out to be data problems (which the TOCs are of course responsible for) rather than bugs in TIS supplier products, but things do occasionally slip through the net in the world of software.

 

[Wallsendmag]

It's not at all a one-man band, but it is a small outfit. It has gone through the same accreditation process that every other third-party retailer has been through, though - and it's using a tried and tested journey planner which during its lifetime has powered large retailers such as The Trainline and TrainSplit.

They're not a bad bunch at all, and the engineers responsible for both the backend and the iOS/Android apps do work hard to produce a good quality product.


What have you done to flag up this problem? Have you contacted the support team about this bug, or are you going straight to contacting TIS accreditation? If you haven't gotten anywhere, and want this highlighted internally, can you please DM me the booking ref or UTN for an example booking? It's not something that has been brought to my attention, and I sort of expect that it would have been if the support team understood the magnitude of the problem you're reporting here or if it had been flagged properly with accreditation.


This is the entire point of the accreditation process, and there is continuous oversight in the way of front-line staff being able to flag issues with the accreditation team (via whatever process the TOC has in place) which then get raised as Jiras for third party-retailers and TIS suppliers to address as well as the re-accreditation cycle which ensures systems are re-checked for compliance regularly.

I would say the vast majority of issues raised by accred turn out to be data problems (which the TOCs are of course responsible for) rather than bugs in TIS supplier products, but things do occasionally slip through the net in the world of software.

I was aware of the problem some time ago and flagged it with the supplier/retailer and RDG it has now been fixed. As one of only two operators of S&B gates on the National Network LNER are in a unique position to test that everything is working correctly

 

[Adam Williams]

I was aware of the problem some time ago and flagged it with the supplier/retailer and RDG it has now been fixed. As one of only two operators of S&B gates on the National Network LNER are in a unique position to test that everything is working correctly

It sounds to me like you're talking about Omio/Assertis's barcode encoding bug, which I don't really care about personally, though I'm glad to hear it has been resolved.

I was referring to:

Mytrainticket.co.uk - (seems to a be a one-man-band in Staffordshire) sold a ticket from London to the north at 4pm, and when the passenger opens the app clicks on it, a PDF e-tickets opens showing only the morning southbound journey at 6am.

Which I'm not sure LNER's use of S&B would help with detecting at all, vs any other gate manufacturer :P