Two Together Railcard for £27

ailey

Just in case anyone missed Martin's story on here in March about the Two Together railcard as I had done. I heard it only once on the radio so investigated yesterday as we will be travelling by train soon. Anyway if you are over 16, two people can travel together on this one card and it will have both your photos on it and lasts for one year. Probably best value if you travel at least twice a year together. It gives one third off your travel cost. You cannot use it to travel on your own and must start and end your journey together. The following link will open on the FAQs page.

http://www.twotogether-railcard.co.uk/help/faqs/

There is a code which was in the message and it gets you a further 10% of the £30 which reduced it to £27. Such a wonderful offer!

Now comes the problem! I tried to upload both photos, after resizing them to under 2 Kb (as they state) and then got a message back to say that the photos were rejected because: 'resolution too low or pixelated'. It would be so much easier if they allowed people to upload passport sized photos (which my photos are) and their system did the resizing as not everyone can manage this task. I can use a resizing website, scan and upload but I really tied myself in knots last night as I was getting so frustrated with the whole thing. My son had to visit today and do the resizing etc then I uploaded and they were refused.

Now it won't let me resubmit the new resized photos and is giving me an error message so I have emailed them. Got the following reply

I’m sorry to hear of the issues you encountered using our website. In order to investigate the matter for you can I ask that you get back in touch confirming the nature of the issue, including any error messages, along with the internet browser type and version number that you are using?

In addition if you could supply a screenshot (by pressing printscreen and paste) showing the issue it would be much appreciated.

I've hopefully sent everything they requested and am awaiting a reply. Not exactly a 'user-friendly' website. Maybe I'm just being dim but I've found this a bit difficult and I'm sure many others will. Maybe they will change this to make it much easier once it is up and running a while longer.

Has anyone else had this problem?

Snap-ant

No

My photos uploaded very easily.

I now have a Two Together card with said photos on the right hand side.
I had within 48 hours

redfox

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ailey

Snap-ant wrote: »

No

My photos uploaded very easily.

I now have a Two Together card with said photos on the right hand side.
I had within 48 hours

That was good. I've had such a problem trying to understand all these pixels and Kbs. I used a website to resize and the photos still come in grainy. I changed from Firefox to Internet Explorer as it said eventually that my system was too slow which I've never experienced as everything happens quickly on it so I don't know why they would think that on the upload. I had tried doing my application again with a different email address and got so far on IE with that and hit another problem. I can't remember now what that was as I'm getting so frustrated with it lol. I changed back to Firefox, logged in again and resumed my upload. I know it will be refused as the second photo was hazy. I resized them to under the 2 Kb as they requested (1872 bytes and 1912 bytes) but don't know if I'm fully understanding this byte thing but I think that is under 2 Kb which I think is 2000 bytes. Would that be right?

Anyway eventually got the job done but I know they will be refused again. I'm just hoping that the payment will not be taken from my credit card twice as I think they would only take payment once the card is made up. Next step is to phone them up or just go to my nearest station. I'm hoping if I go to the station that they can make the card up while I wait and it doesn't have to go to another office to be made up. Does anyone know the answer to that as it doesn't make that clear on their FAQs? I hate to admit defeat but I think I'm going to have to lol.

UPDATE: Had to eventually phone the number they gave and the lady I spoke to was so articulate and professional (and friendly) so she went into my file and gave me my ID numbers from both applications and said to include these with my email and to upload the 2 passport sized photos without resizing. Fingers crossed it goes through okay this time. She did say that they are getting a lot of phone calls about people having problems resizing the photos to their requirements. Hopefully they change the system to allow passport sized photos to be uploaded without resizing and they can do that part at their end.

garfield33

Sorry to hijack a thread but seeing as it's here...
I was part of the West Mids trial back in 2011-2012 so I already have the photocard - does anyone know if I can use this again or will I have to get a new one?
Thanks

wealdroam

garfield33 wrote: »

Sorry to hijack a thread but seeing as it's here...
I was part of the West Mids trial back in 2011-2012 so I already have the photocard - does anyone know if I can use this again or will I have to get a new one?
Thanks

No idea, but you might get a good answer from their Contact Us webpage.

garfield33

Thanks wealdrom, I should have said - I have emailed them but I was impatient and thought I'd try the MSE collective wisdom (trying to avoid an unnecessary trip into town too!)

Billy-no-Money

A quick way to resize a picture is to use email - works in most versions of Windows, as long as you use an email client (e.g. Outlook, Windows Mail).

This works in Windows 8:

Find the photo you want to resize
Right click, and select Send To --> Mail Recipient
An 'Attach Files' box will give you a range of sizes to choose from - select one, and click Attach. Any size should be OK apart from 'Original'.

A blank new email should then open up with the photo attached - just 'Save As...' the attachment, and Bob's your Uncle.

HTH

(PS Photos for Two Together need to be 2 MB - i.e. two Megabytes. That's about 1000 times bigger than the 2KB (Kilobyte) files the OP has been creating - no wonder it's grainy!)

veryintrigued

Went for this a month or so ago and the pics got rejected at first.

Uploaded the same ones again and a hour or so later they were accepted.

The card was received only 2 days later and able to use straight away.

Impressed so far

Sharon87

I was about to say the problem is it's not 2KB, it'll be 2MB! 2KB will be teeny and grainy! Maybe your mistook it for KB or the website accidently put it at 2KB instead of MB

ailey

Billy-no-Money wrote: »

(PS Photos for Two Together need to be 2 MB - i.e. two Megabytes. That's about 1000 times bigger than the 2KB (Kilobyte) files the OP has been creating - no wonder it's grainy!)

Sharon87 wrote: »

I was about to say the problem is it's not 2KB, it'll be 2MB! 2KB will be teeny and grainy! Maybe your mistook it for KB or the website accidently put it at 2KB instead of MB

Thank you both for the information. When I sent the email to the railcard people, even they didn't pick up on where I state 2 Kb as per part of my email "I wanted to check the wording regarding how many Kb are allowed. I can't remember whether it is 'more than 2 Kb' or 'has to be less than 2 Kb'. From memory, I thought it was 'has to be less than 2 Kb'. My son reduced the photos to 1.65 Kb but they were refused. I've mentioned it 5 times in that paragraph too. I did say to them in my email that this resizing is not easy for everyone to do and it would be best if customers could upload passport sized photos and they do the resizing at their end. Apparently they have had a lot of phone calls with people having problems with the photo resizing.

That must have been the problem right enough. If someone had pointed out that it was Mb, between my son and myself we might have managed the job fine. I did go back to check when I was having the problem uploading the photos and still read it as 2 Kb so whether it was wrong or I just read it wrong, I'm not sure. It's not everyone who fully understands Mb and Kb unless they have worked with it or have taught themselves but I've never needed to know that with anything I've worked on over the years on computers. When I tried to resize, it was giving me pixels or percentage and nothing to do with Kb or Mb so I was truly bamboozled lol.

Anyway I eventually phoned then was advised to email, explain the problem and attached the normal sized passport photos which was so much easier and I got an email first thing the following morning to say that the card was despatched. Unfortunately they despatched two cards with myself and husband on both and 2 different railcard numbers so I had to email them and was told to return one and they would refund me minus a £5 admin fee. I had also paid £6.50 for Special Delivery as I intended to use the card this weekend and first class may not have reached us on time. That meant I was out of pocket by £11.50. I phoned and the person, who was very nice, explained that I was not to sign the second card and to return it with a letter explaining the problem and another department would decide if they or I was to blame. I did say that as I only sent one email and had explained within that email that I had 2 failed attempts and gave them both Customer ID numbers, as requested, so couldn't understand why they had made up and charged me for 2 cards. The first phone call I made, the girl said she would also put a note on my file so I think someone who was making up the cards did not read the note or the email properly. Fingers crossed that I only have to pay for one card plus the £6.50.

I'm putting this here to inform others who may have problems in case the same thing happens to them in regard to having problems uploading the photos.

Thanks again for your help with this and I hope your information is also of use to others. So many people are always there to help.