Ticket not printed.

[robbeech]

I knew at some point in my life i would end up starting a thread in this part of the forum. I'm happy to say that it isn't (yet) a huge deal although i would like East Midlands Trains to be aware that i have the time and money to make it one if the needs arises.

So, I spoke to my mum today who wishes to travel to Nottingham from Whitwell tomorrow morning on the 0947. The area is recently a penalty fare area and machine have been installed at all the stations. As she has never used a ticket machine before and is not very technically minded (being of an age where she could if she so wished purchase a senior railcard) I said i would take her to the station to show her how to buy her ticket for tomorrow (which is possible on the machines).

After much faffing around having to put a time in for a day return we finally got to the payment part. The card part wasn't working, after all these machines are over 1 month old now so there is no wonder they're failing. But luckily between us we had £8.20.

The machine stated printing 1 of 2, then 2 of 2, but alas as seem fairly common only printed 2 of 2, the return portion.

Naturally my mum is now worried, i pressed the button on the help point (a first for me) and spoke to a polite lady at EMT who explained to me that it was very odd and that my mum shouldn't worry as she will pass a message on to the train crew on the 0947 (my mum WILL be travelling on that train but i did politely point out that the ticket is valid on any train) and they will let her travel.

Now, whilst none of this has gone horribly wrong yet, knowing the railway quite well, i do not for 1 single minute believe that the lady will pass on any such message to any such crew and even if she did i do not believe they will acknowledge any such call and i fully expect her to at LEAST have to purchase another ticket if not receive a penalty fare, either from the guard, or an RPI, or at the gateline at Nottingham.

I shall likely travel to the station with her in the morning and ask the Guard myself and ensure that she has his or her permission to travel.


I travel on the line fairly frequently and i recall last time i travelled to Nottingham (likely for onward journey to London for work) that only 3 of the new machines on the entire line were operational, and this was only on visual inspection from the train, today the machine worked (printing aside) but the card machine was not working, with an out of service message on the card reader.

I appreciate that faults can occur with equipment and this is nobodies fault, but i thought i would start this thread and see if anyone has recently had any EMT ticket printing issues and of course i shall write back to update on tomorrows outcome.
I just wish it were me travelling and not her as then all the worry would go away.

 

[miami]

Should have seen my advice in 'first time using a collection machine'

If you're paranoid you should film the dispensing of the ticket as they don't always completely print (in my experience about 1 in 30 fail).

I have no experience with EMT, however ATW have been fine when it's happened to me at Nantwich - although that's on collection of a ticket rather than printing it.

So the only thing you got out of the machine was the return portion of the ticket?

 

[robbeech]

Yes, no outward, no receipt (was a cash payment) it did state printing 1 of 2, then 2 of 2, but i didn't see if there was an error came up after 1 of 2 but just the return portion came out.

I considered buying another ticket from it to see if it would spit out the rest incase they had got stuck, but decided to use the information point instead. The lady was polite but i'm fairly convinced (and hope i am proved wrong) that she'll have hung up the phone and moved on and will not do anything.

 

[miami]

Given the likelihood of barriers or checks at the far end - if you get permission to travel from the guard, make sure you get it in writing, perhaps email EMT support now, or tweet them.

In any case you should not travel without a valid ticket or permission to travel, and realistically permission to travel means written permission. You should be refunded any extra ticket you have to buy because of the failure of the railway to deliver what you've paid for, but nothing is guarenteed in this business.

 

[robbeech]

This is my main concern, it is my mum who is travelling, not me. She doesn't know the first thing about tickets, she just used to get on the train and ask for a Nottingham return from the guard when he or she came round and all was well.
If i had the time and any need to go to Nottingham i'd go with her in the morning but then i've essentially just bought another ticket for nothing so i might aswell do that for her. I will certainly go with her to the train for 0947 though and check with the guard myself.
if it were me travelling i would have no issues with politely asking the right questions and stating the relevant facts to the right people but my mum doesn't know these things and would likely just give in and buy another ticket / pay a penalty fare / give her details for prosecution or whatever.

On another note, i appreciate that many pensioners are very clued up on technology and that is fantastic, however many of them (my mum included) are not and i feel that asking them to use a ticket machine suddenly is a little unfair.

There are instructions that are fairly clear but when she chose to buy a ticket for future travel (ie tomorrow) she had to select the date (fairly obvious) and then the time. Now she (understandably) said, i think it is 0947 (it is) and asked if she should check first because she didn't want to put 0947 in and then if it wasn't 0947 get told she had the wrong ticket. Of course this is an Off Peak Day Return, on a Saturday, with no seat reservations but how is she supposed to understand this? She found Nottingham off peak day return £8.20 with my help, it was on the first screen of "popular journeys" but a Nottingham Single was higher up the list and she nearly chose that at first. If she had had a senior railcard then there's another load of faff to add that to it before you get to the point of trying to pay and finding out the card part isn't working (Paying by card is considered modern high tech stuff to her), luckily we both had a few quid on us which made the £8.20.
And what then?
What if she had been on her own and had only got the bit she got? She knows enough to realise she normally gets 2 tickets, but she doesn't know that buying it from a machine could be any different, how would she know who to call, or who to ask?

I'm sure in many cases, if its obvious that the person isn't that clued up on buying a ticket from a machine then a guard should be fairly lenient and let them buy onboard but there will be occasions (and the rules will state) that this wont happen.

 

[MichaelAMW]

This is my main concern, it is my mum who is travelling, not me. She doesn't know the first thing about tickets, she just used to get on the train and ask for a Nottingham return from the guard when he or she came round and all was well.
If i had the time and any need to go to Nottingham i'd go with her in the morning but then i've essentially just bought another ticket for nothing so i might aswell do that for her. I will certainly go with her to the train for 0947 though and check with the guard myself.
if it were me travelling i would have no issues with politely asking the right questions and stating the relevant facts to the right people but my mum doesn't know these things and would likely just give in and buy another ticket / pay a penalty fare / give her details for prosecution or whatever.

On another note, i appreciate that many pensioners are very clued up on technology and that is fantastic, however many of them (my mum included) are not and i feel that asking them to use a ticket machine suddenly is a little unfair.

There are instructions that are fairly clear but when she chose to buy a ticket for future travel (ie tomorrow) she had to select the date (fairly obvious) and then the time. Now she (understandably) said, i think it is 0947 (it is) and asked if she should check first because she didn't want to put 0947 in and then if it wasn't 0947 get told she had the wrong ticket. Of course this is an Off Peak Day Return, on a Saturday, with no seat reservations but how is she supposed to understand this? She found Nottingham off peak day return £8.20 with my help, it was on the first screen of "popular journeys" but a Nottingham Single was higher up the list and she nearly chose that at first. If she had had a senior railcard then there's another load of faff to add that to it before you get to the point of trying to pay and finding out the card part isn't working (Paying by card is considered modern high tech stuff to her), luckily we both had a few quid on us which made the £8.20.
And what then?
What if she had been on her own and had only got the bit she got? She knows enough to realise she normally gets 2 tickets, but she doesn't know that buying it from a machine could be any different, how would she know who to call, or who to ask?

I'm sure in many cases, if its obvious that the person isn't that clued up on buying a ticket from a machine then a guard should be fairly lenient and let them buy onboard but there will be occasions (and the rules will state) that this wont happen.

Given some of what the guards on that line have to put up with - youtube is your friend for the evidence - then if your Mum is both pleasant and vaguely of a mind to pay her way then I imagine she will have little to worry about.

 

[robbeech]

I contacted them on twitter this morning and it appears everyone is aware. So it looks like EMT have done a good job at sorting this so well done to them. Previous experiences made me somewhat skeptical I must say. I'm not sure how well this would have gone had the train not been an EMT train going between 2 EMT stations.

 

[30907]

. Now, whilst none of this has gone horribly wrong yet, knowing the railway quite well..

Delighted that nothing went horribly wrong, and that the members of staff you contacted did their jobs professionally.

 

[robbeech]

Well, my mum is home.

Train was a little late so on the advice from Twitter i told her to board to save time hassling the guard at the station. No ticket check was performed the whole way, the barriers were open at Nottingham and No ticket check was performed on the way back either this afternoon. There was at least one group of people went from Mansfield with no ticket as they were apparently overheard talking about the broken machine.

 

[Pinza-C55]

I would imagine that the conversation you had with the lady on the help point would be recorded ? If that's so they could hardly deny knowledge of the incident.

 

[LowLevel]

If I had seen this earlier I could have provided a bit of reassurance but yes, there is a known issue with this ticket vending machine not dispensing tickets. I was up there the other day and the controller rang me to ask me to write a passenger a letter to Northern to pass them to Sheffield and back as a consequence (as it happens I'd already seen them and as I know there's an issue done just that). I'm not sure why the machine hasn't been taken out of service for investigation to be honest but the inspectors on the route (guards and revenue protection) should be aware of the problem both at Whitwell and Creswell as well for that matter.

 

[causton]

I'm not sure why the machine hasn't been taken out of service for investigation

Because then they would have to do something about it, if they keep a machine "working" even when it plainly isn't it makes the numbers look better!

Which type of machine is this, do you know? We have a Shere one at my station which frequently gets tickets jammed in the chute and after over two years at least it has not been resolved, our advice being to tell customers to bang on the side of the machine/the collection flap until all tickets come out. Brilliant

 

[LowLevel]

It's the newest type of Scheidt and Bachmann.

 

[robbeech]

Is this a known problem with this TYPE of machine, or just the one at Whitwell (and perhaps Creswell). The machine at Whitwell ought to prove really really useful for me for collection purposes as i often travel from there (it being where i live) if my return journey is within the times of that service (else i park at Worksop) but my place of work (when i'm not out on the road) is Mansfield and to collect tickets from here was no use after the station closed as the machine is inside so i had to go past my house to Worksop to collect for the following day etc,
However, if these machines are proving to be unreliable at spitting tickets out then i might hold off on using it. It's one thing with a WWL to NOT day return but most of my tickets are London Terminals / Edinburgh / Aberdeen so a failed print on a collection becomes a lot more hassle.

Edit to add : This is the first time i used the machine at WWL. I did use the one at Langwith to get a Harrogate return a few weeks back, it worked perfectly well, and i paid by card without issues. However as i already mentioned, i have traveled along the line and seen lots of out of order messages already and they've only been in since the start of the year.

 

[LowLevel]

At the moment as far as I know only Whitwell and the up side machine at Creswell have reported issues dispensing tickets. The other machines have various issues that range from poor internet connections causing card services to drop out to people who are incapable of reading large font stating 'Banknotes' forcing their bank cards into the note receiver and breaking it.

Mansfield does have an outside machine now on the Nottingham bound platform in the waiting shelter if that's any use to you.

Apparently they're rather different from the older S&B machines and it's proving a steep learning curve to keep them working.

Personally I hate working the route anyway but since the penalty fares and TVMs have come in it's worse than I've ever known it.

 

[robbeech]

Handy to know the new machine at Mansfield, although Whitwell it easier (as and when it becomes reliable.
They look fairly comprehensive, being able to buy tickets for the future, and tickets from other origins is a good thing, not getting the ticket you've paid for is less useful.

And i am lucky enough to USUALLY be on that route when it is fairly quiet, or if it is busy its normally passengers into Nottingham in the morning, and as i'm only the 1st stop after Worksop i am guaranteed a seat. I understand these trains can get a bit horrible on a Friday and Saturday evening, i do hope few of the trouble makers are from Whitwell.

 

[LowLevel]

Few passengers of any description are from Whitwell unfortunately, it's one of the quietest stations on the route!

 

[robbeech]

(Whilst you can say the same about Shirebrook, and Sutton parkway is completely different again) The station is a fair walk from a lot of the village and the 77 bus between Worksop and Chesterfield is 2BPH For the majority of the day. We are also only a 5 minute drive from the M1, meaning we are 25 minutes from Meadowhall, 35 minutes from Phoenix park for the tram into Nottingham, 40-45 minutes from Derby in the car, and yo can't get to Sheffield on the train in any sensible time due to the poor connection time at Worksop. There will be some Mansfield passengers from Whitwell as the direct bus service between Worksop and Mansfield that used to call through the village no longer does so a bus to Mansfield (which my mum uses as its free for her) takes 2 hours now with a change at Clowne. I must admit, at least 50% of the time i drive and park at Worksop as i can leave home almost an hour later if i'm going that way.

 

[Bungle965]

Handy to know the new machine at Mansfield, although Whitwell it easier (as and when it becomes reliable.
They look fairly comprehensive, being able to buy tickets for the future, and tickets from other origins is a good thing, not getting the ticket you've paid for is less useful.

And i am lucky enough to USUALLY be on that route when it is fairly quiet, or if it is busy its normally passengers into Nottingham in the morning, and as i'm only the 1st stop after Worksop i am guaranteed a seat. I understand these trains can get a bit horrible on a Friday and Saturday evening, i do hope few of the trouble makers are from Whitwell.

If it is the ones which I am thinking about are they the same as the new ScotRail S&B ones?
They seem to have come with a bunch of new features, such as contactless payment, ticket from another station /date etc. The one thing I did not understand was what the barcode scanner was for.
Furthermore unlike the new VTEC Parkeon machines they cannot sell advance tickets.
Sam

 

[robbeech]

It surprises me they can't do advances. Buying a ticket for a future date required a very specific date and time to be entered, surely if it can't do advances (and it isn't planned to do them at a later date) this is somewhat unnecessary as it doesn't give you a list of train times. Furthermore once you've entered the date and a time in hrs and mins you essentially go back to the home screen (only with a small indication at the top that you're purchasing for the date you entered). Maybe something in the planning stage? Maybe get them printing properly first.
I'm off to Scotland tomorrow, I'm certainly not using that machine to buy my tickets, I will buy on board and if they try to penalty fare me i will politely explain my distrust although it seems the staff are aware and used to it. And they're all lovely too so I can't see there being an issue.