TOCs requesting fulfilment method changes from Trainline

[dgl]

OT but I was under the impression that no email client should automatically open attachments due to the potential risk of viruses, also it's common for email clients to not even show pictures without you allowing it to.

 

[Hadders]

OT but I was under the impression that no email client should automatically open attachments due to the potential risk of viruses, also it's common for email clients to not even show pictures without you allowing it to.

I've no idea, but the email app on my iphone shows the eticket as part of the body of the email without me having to specifically click on the attachment to open it. When I viewthe same email on my laptop I have to click on the attachment to open it.

 

[Haywain]

I've no idea, but the email app on my iphone shows the eticket as part of the body of the email without me having to specifically click on the attachment to open it.

Neither of the email apps on my phone do that. One gives a preview of the attachment which shows the top 2/3 of the barcode. Either way it's necessary to download the file to use it.

 

[AdamWW]

OT but I was under the impression that no email client should automatically open attachments due to the potential risk of viruses,

No but they can download the attachments along with the email to local storage.

Now, going back to my Mr X scenario. Mr X gets sees the confirmation email drop into his inbox, job done. He simply opens it when he needs to and the e-ticket it there.
Then, one day the train company decides to withdraw e-tickets from his route and so he gets the ToD version of the email. When you're used to the e-ticket being 'there' you can hardly blame Mr X when he sees the email drop into his inbox as normal only to find the ticket isn't attached.

Quite.

I would make sure that I could display a bar code before getting on a train, but that's because i know what the consequences might be if I can't.

It's not unreasonable in my view for someone to assume that the railway would let them off so long as they could show that they had actually bought a ticket.

Even if our Mr X took in the various posters he might have seen about the penalties for travelling without a ticket, they don't usually point out that there is a strict offence of not being able to show a ticket even if you have bought one so he may not know that.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Just checked and basically as long as the pdf is attached to the email directly, then the Gmail app on android phones does try to load a preview of the pdf as part of the email.

Depending on how the pdf is made up, that may or may not be enough to show the barcode.

Not sure about other email clients and other phones though. And it doesnt do it if it's like the trainline where you need to click a link in the email to get the pdf.

And yes, people should check before they try to board but if you've been buying the same ticket for years then why would you even consider it suddenly changing to not allowing etickets?

 

[akm]

Spot the difference. I recently made two journeys:

1. Welwyn Garden City to Kings Cross fulfilled by e-ticket
2. Stevenage to Kings Cross fulfilled by ToD

Attached are anonymised versions of the confirmation emails. Both tickets were purchased from LNER.

So, when the email for journey two says "You're all ready to go", it actually means "...in the sense that you're not actually all ready to go, you MUST take another action before you can go" ?

 

[Adam Williams]

So, when the email for journey two says "You're all ready to go", it actually means "...in the sense that you're not actually all ready to go, you MUST take another action before you can go" ?

It's a pretty poor ToD confirmation email. RDG stipulate a bunch of required fields and text for these emails (i.e. "This is not a travel ticket" which is supposed to be prominent - e.g. in bold or in a colourful block), however LNER/Vix appear to have taken it upon themselves to deviate from those requirements.

I suspect that part of this will be down to LNER only really caring about selling tickets for their own services which are overwhelmingly E-Ticketable.

 

[Hadders]

Just checked and basically as long as the pdf is attached to the email directly, then the Gmail app on android phones does try to load a preview of the pdf as part of the email.

Depending on how the pdf is made up, that may or may not be enough to show the barcode.

Not sure about other email clients and other phones though. And it doesnt do it if it's like the trainline where you need to click a link in the email to get the pdf.

And yes, people should check before they try to board but if you've been buying the same ticket for years then why would you even consider it suddenly changing to not allowing etickets?

This is what happens on my iPhone and I’ve been able to scan the barcode.

 

[AdamWW]

I suspect that part of this will be down to LNER only really caring about selling tickets for their own services which are overwhelmingly E-Ticketable.

Like the way they can't even be bothered to customise text based on the operator and just say something like "If this is an LNER service then..." even though the information is already there that it isn't.

RDG stipulate a bunch of required fields and text for these emails (i.e. "This is not a travel ticket" which is supposed to be prominent - e.g. in bold or in a colourful block)

I was wondering why that was missing.

Could be worse - some years ago a former colleague got a long email from KLM giving detailed information on the flights he'd just booked.
Then, right at the end and not in any prominent way it added that actually the transaction had failed to go through and if he didn't get in touch to pay they'd cancel it.

He found out when he tried to check in....

 

[Ziggiesden]

No, they like M-Tickets are actively used to defraud, meaning less money for Social Care and Hospitals. We removed them for short distance journeys, TOD only so we can check eligibility e.g. SRY - YNG etc. We have caught hundreds committing fraud since we did it, I had three yesterday in three hours. We regulalry, also, put checks on the Gateline for Child and RailCard when we can - it's hard to do at the Peak. We catch thousands when we do that.

Fraud is now at epidemic levels, just like ASB.

 

[Haywain]

they like M-Tickets are actively used to defraud,

Most of us don't like m-tickets but I think it's a bit strong to suggest that were intended to defraud.

 

[Sleepy]

Guardless areas such as C2C and Thameslink must be fraudulent travel hotspots as the chances of a human checking your ticket are minimal ??

 

[Sonic1234]

Guardless areas such as C2C and Thameslink must be fraudulent travel hotspots as the chances of a human checking your ticket are minimal

Both of those TOCs love gates, which reduce ticketless travel at least (but do allow other tricks)

I expect Thameslink would prefer a few people (most will do the right thing) to claim a Railcard discount they're not entitled to and not have to fully staff their trains.

 

[LickeyIncliner]

Like the way they can't even be bothered to customise text based on the operator and just say something like "If this is an LNER service then..." even though the information is already there that it isn't.



I was wondering why that was missing.

Could be worse - some years ago a former colleague got a long email from KLM giving detailed information on the flights he'd just booked.
Then, right at the end and not in any prominent way it added that actually the transaction had failed to go through and if he didn't get in touch to pay they'd cancel it.

He found out when he tried to check in....

It's not quite as serious but the LNER seat reservation system does the same kind of thing - the website says you've got a reservation, details in the email; the email subject says you've got a reservation; the email test says you've got a reservation, until you look at where the coach and seat number should be and it says "No seat available".

 

[infobleep]

Perhaps if you go and speak nicely to all the fare Dodgers you'll be able to convince them to buy the correct ticket instead of inconveniencing the small minority of people travelling on a 20+ e-ticket split.


That's kind of the problem though. People travelling from station A to station Y, but only buying a ticket from X to Y (perhaps A to B as well depending on the origin station).


A person manually scanning a ticket (in addition to scanning through the barriers too?) and then "quickly" checking the scan history still takes longer and is more inconvenient than just scanning through the barriers and exiting the station. And if you're doing that for everyone, you're inconveniencing far more people than the amount of people being inconvenienced by the removal of e-tickets for the specific situations in question.

Perhaps e-tickets need to be scrapped fully if this is so bad. What do you think?

Someone expecting an eTicket and suddenly finding out they are no longer issued, might lead to someone not picking up a ticket and then being penalty fared. That will of course bring in additional revenue to the industry in the short term.

Now I know people should check things every time but not everyone is so perfect. Some neurodiverse people might not for example.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Nov 2024 ==

No, they like M-Tickets are actively used to defraud, meaning less money for Social Care and Hospitals. We removed them for short distance journeys, TOD only so we can check eligibility e.g. SRY - YNG etc. We have caught hundreds committing fraud since we did it, I had three yesterday in three hours. We regulalry, also, put checks on the Gateline for Child and RailCard when we can - it's hard to do at the Peak. We catch thousands when we do that.

Fraud is now at epidemic levels, just like ASB.

Looks like paper tickets won't ever be going away then due to fraud.

Which will be good news for those who only like paper ticket they haven't printed.

 

[BazingaTribe]

Please don't use neurodivergence as an excuse for properly checking you hold the right tickets (and, by extension short-faring, which isn't one of those things that is generally a mistake). As autistic, I've always made sure I had the right tickets and even when buying replacements ensured I paid for my whole journey. Mistakes happen, but consequences also happen, and particularly when it happens when you can least afford it and have to be bailed out by an incredibly generous stranger like I was once a long long time ago, they tend to strengthen resolve rather than allow us to make an excuse based on our cognitive facilities.

As is said a lot on the Disputes section, anxiety issues after the event might have been better channeled into ensuring you have the right ticket. My anxiety works to cover my bases regarding the correct fare and the correct time of travel, and ensure I don't drop paper tickets out of my pocket. It's a mechanism by which the body expresses the need to pay attention to your surrounding in a physical dimension. It can trigger unnecessarily and that's when it becomes a disorder that many neurodivergent people also suffer from, but at its core it helps make sure problems don't start arising from your own actions. If the railways are establishing safeguards to prevent a certain thing that they know happens a lot stop happening, those of us who do pay their correct fare can be relieved of some of the anxiety involved by paying attention to it before the fact rather than afterwards.

Many of us in the neurodivergence community struggle to be taken seriously when we disclose our disability. We're often perfectly capable adults underneath the public perception of our issues, and the idea that neurodivergence can be a 'get out of jail free' card undermines that. (The Downs Syndrome community has adopted an 'assume we can until we can't' stance on things like this, and that's a condition which in many respects does incapacitate a lot of people with it and have a spectrum similar to that of neurological issues.) About twenty years ago when I was first diagnosed I went from a university graduate who was struggling with certain aspects of being an adult to being regarded as a woman-child, and I fought it a lot before people actually started trying to empower me again rather than put me under some kind of conservatorship.

We sometimes do need extra assistance and support in buying tickets and accessible stations (my neurodivergence had an impact on my physical body and I'm now lame because of hypermobility in my joints being a feature of neurological make-up or at least correlating strongly with neurodivergence). I don't qualify for a disabled Railcard and anyway most of my current travel is paid for by my work (I have a fulfilling, if low-stress job and ironically my autism gives me the 'superpower' of attention to detail, so I'm employed in the field of catching patterns in usage of various things that others may miss and implementing solutions to shore up processes that have become lax over a period where there wasn't someone with my fresh eyes to see them; so if I were to get a job with the railways I'd probably be the neurodivergent person running the numbers and suggesting where there needs to be more of a gatekeeper).

We do NOT need exemptions from having to buy the right ticket, and given what the net has already taken in in terms of short faring, it seems like it's working to ensure the railways pay for themselves for everyone else to enjoy.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Nov 2024 ==

Just checked and basically as long as the pdf is attached to the email directly, then the Gmail app on android phones does try to load a preview of the pdf as part of the email.

Depending on how the pdf is made up, that may or may not be enough to show the barcode.

Not sure about other email clients and other phones though. And it doesnt do it if it's like the trainline where you need to click a link in the email to get the pdf.

And yes, people should check before they try to board but if you've been buying the same ticket for years then why would you even consider it suddenly changing to not allowing etickets?

This is why I check I have things all together before I leave the house. It saves frustrating £20 in the hole moments like realising I didn't buy a ticket home from Slough the other week when I booked everything else of an admittedly quite complicated itinerary but forgot the final leg! But I was approaching Slough station from the side of the massive Tesco's next door to it and getting my ticket ready so I could get in and onto a train quickly. It's like the other £20 mistake I made when there were two very similar trains sat at Plymouth station and I got on the wrong one for my advance ticket. I panicked at having been so stupid as I saw the wrong train leave at the right time, so I sought out the guard and she simply excessed the fare for me. So I'm not perfect and I make mistakes, but then again I carry the can for them (and I've been really lucky to have been bailed out on that one I talked about in the previous segment to this post). They're mistakes I made, not someone else's.

I also used to buy a lot of PlusBus tickets for a while which have to be picked up at the station, so I'm used to having to buy online but collect, and I also have to actively choose the e-ticket option on my work travel site to avoid having to do that at the station because my bus times often cut it fine with the train I catch when I'm going that way. The passenger needs to have their own wits about them before they travel. Granted I'm autistic, so everything moves at half the speed it may do for neurotypical people (IDK, I've never been neurotypical) and so hyper-awareness of my surroundings is a handy thing to have when you're dealing with the railway charging system.

At work, I'm actually acting as a fact-finder in the same capacity where we seem to have not billed a set of customers for a lot of money for a service we provide. My time is cheap compared to the several hundred grand we stand to get back by reorganising our billing systems. I'm in the NHS as well so it's not private sector money-grubbing; it's public money that's being handled here. Ironically the trip to Slough was in the course of these duties...

But the people they're catching here are deliberately defrauding the railway; they're not generally making mistakes. And unlike the equation where they decided it was more expensive to staff trains than try to catch the handful of people who travel on expired railcards, they've run the cost-benefit analysis that it's better to spend the money to get more of the fares they're entitled to and they can make enough back to help fund what they need to.