Group travel!

jbuchanangb

Recent experience. Seven of us arrived at St. Margarets (Herts) station with 3 minutes to the next train. Booking office closed. Wanted to buy Group Save day single tickets to Cheshunt.
Ticket machine allowed us to increase the number of passengers to seven, but no way to request GS. It should have applied it automatically in my opinion.

Cancelled transaction. Four travellers eligible for Senior discount, starting purchasing tickets. Train came, train went. Three travellers not eligible for discount purchased tickets, £1.50 extra compared to GS.

Waited 25 minutes for next train. Immediately pounced on by Revenue Protection Officers. All tickets valid and correct. Asked RPO about the difficulty and received two pieces of advice.
1. If refund required (3 x £1.50) the affected passengers could apply at the booking office at Cheshunt.
2. In future, if ticket machine is incapable of issuing the required tickets, board the train without ticket, then purchase ticket from RPO or at the destination station.

In the end the affected passengers decided not to bother with the refund.

Interesting.

geerex

Not sure what the point you're trying to make is.

A couple of observations:

Arriving 3 minutes into a station before your train arrives is pushing it. Nrcoc states 5 mins minimum. Not entirely sure why you mentioned this though.

Why should the tvm automatically apply a group discount? What if you travel back separately? Also, Groupsave restrictions apply at certain times (holidays, events etc), it's too difficult/costly to programme all tvms, particularly when dates can be blacked out at the last minute.


As for the revenue protection officer - if the station is unmanned and the ticket you require is not available from the machine, then you should either purchase the next most appropriate ticket, or as he said, find the guard and buy one ASAP. Don't just let the guard come to you, as most likely he will just charge you standard singles or returns.

I'm sure someone else will be along soon to add to/correct this.