Ticket Machine Question

[Parham Wood]

Yesterday I had a very pleasant trip from Westbury to Bournemouth return. Trains fairly well to time. Lots of wildlife - herons, deer, buzzards etc. seen. All staff very friendly. I had booked on-line a ticket and elected to pick it up from Westbury. Having not used one of these before it took a few seconds to find the prepaid tickets button on the screen as the machine opening interface is all about selecting a ticket to buy- bit confusing. What I do not understand is why besides inserting the payment card you have to type in a long reference number? This is not done at my local cinema. The only reason I could think of was if several tickets were booked on the same card, but then why would the holder not want to pick them all up at the same time? It just irked me a little as typing the long reference number means checking each digit as you go for a seemingly needless process. I like life to be simple.

Incidently due to road works on the station road bridge, despite leaving plenty of time so I thought to get to the station car park, I abandoned the car (legally parked) half a mile away and walked otherwise I would have missed my train. Nevermind saved £3.20 parking and got more exercise!

I will add one more observation. At Bournemouth south side there were two ticket barriers to exit and one to enter the station. On arrival had time to go to the Gents and still had to queue to get out! Lots of passengers with only a reference number on a piece of paper which the gate guy had to cross check (yes each one with a list) and then press the button to open the gates. Do these barriers often cause queues at peak times or was it bad luck?

 

[rebmcr]

It indeed used to be that you only had to enter the reference if there were multiple orders awaiting collection on that card (at least in Manchester, on both Virgin and Northern machines).

IIRC it changed about a year and a half ago — I have no idea why.

It's a right pain on the Virgin TVMs now, as the entry field is a light-grey to white gradient, with white text, making it very hard to see. Not only that but it's compounded by the poor on-screen keyboard that automatically ignores repeated characters — and the reference system generates repeated characters on a large majority of orders.

 

[Clip]

Did you ever think of fraud prevention with how they issue TOD?

 

[Parham Wood]

Thanks for the responses.

TOD - Tickets on demand?

Not sure how it helps as if the credit card is stolen and used as the fraudulent user will get sent the reference number when booking, but probably it is a fraud protection thing - just can't see how it would work.

 

[pinguini]

My observation with Virgin Trains TVMs is that it only requests a reference number if the value of tickets is greater than £10. But that was only with the card payment only machines, the ones accepting cash would always ask for the reference regardless of the value of the tickets.

 

[rebmcr]

My observation with Virgin Trains TVMs is that it only requests a reference number if the value of tickets is greater than £10. But that was only with the card payment only machines, the ones accepting cash would always ask for the reference regardless of the value of the tickets.

Good to know.

 

[jon0844]

A better security system would be a PIN/password set by the user, for that account. It still wouldn't stop someone using your stolen card and creating a new account, but as said above - you could do that now and get sent the reference number anyway.

What it would stop is someone finding your card and instead of going on a spending spree, going along to a station to see if you had tickets to somewhere on them (very likely!).

Once you insert your card and enter YOUR password, you just get a list of all the tickets and can print off the ones you want. Once printed, they'll be greyed out so you can't print them again.

 

[Clip]

Thanks for the responses.

TOD - Tickets on demand?

Not sure how it helps as if the credit card is stolen and used as the fraudulent user will get sent the reference number when booking, but probably it is a fraud protection thing - just can't see how it would work.

2 travel for 1. TVMS do not dial up your bank when you go pick up your tickets it simply reads the data on it. You can report the card lost and then asking for it at the ticket window whilst the card is being used to pick up the tickets at the same time.

This has happened in the past with one TOC I know and I dare say its probably not happened just once either.

 

[Mojo]

I often don't want to collect my tickets that far in advance due to the risk of them vanishing before the journey, getting lost when I only want to collect certain ones or myself having to spend ages sorting through the tickets at the machine, as I won't ever leave until I check all coupons have printed correctly.

 

[tsr]

Southern's TVMs seem to have gone back to the "only ask for the booking reference if there have been multiple bookings for the card's account" method, rather than always asking. This is very handy, as it means I do not have to consult the reference on my phone or on paper whenever I want to pick up a ticket and only that booking is active on my account. Previously, this was not the case - what's more, Virgin's TOD codes refused to work at some of the machines.

 

[telstarbox]

I will add one more observation. At Bournemouth south side there were two ticket barriers to exit and one to enter the station. On arrival had time to go to the Gents and still had to queue to get out! Lots of passengers with only a reference number on a piece of paper which the gate guy had to cross check (yes each one with a list) and then press the button to open the gates. Do these barriers often cause queues at peak times or was it bad luck?

That sounds like a Megatrain service was at Bournemouth at the time. Megatrain give passengers a printed reference number rather than ordinary tickets which open the barriers.

 

[CatfordCat]

That sounds like a Megatrain service was at Bournemouth at the time. Megatrain give passengers a printed reference number rather than ordinary tickets which open the barriers.

Sounds credible. The only time I travelled Megatrain (on the Midland Main Line) all the barrier staff at St P / person checking tickets on the train did was look at the e-mail I had printed out. Since it wasn't reserved seats, it did occur to me that had I been dishonest enough to give a copy of that e-mail to someone else, we would not have been caught.

It does seem somewhat crummy though if the process ends up inconveniencing everyone by creating huge queues at the barriers...