Ticket office closed, picking up online tickets - Iarnrod Eireann?

Tragedy

Girlfriend booked online tickets on Friday for tralee - dublin for today, rang the booking helpline, said she could pick them up at the station.

Turned up today, ticket office was closed and she hopped on the train with a printed receipt from buying them online.

Anyone have any idea where she stands if a ticket inspector comes up to her, or when she gets off at heuston?

Sponge Bob

It works like cinema tickets if there is a Ticket Machine in the station

Basically you use a credit card or laser to buy the tickets online .

IF you stick that SAME card in the ticket machine in the station it will print the tickets immediately because it 'knows' what tickets are booked online for that day . No charge is incurred for this .

The website / ticket machines are evidently linked somehow .

The website does not make this very clear , in fairness .

Zoney

Only certain stations have the machines though. Incidentally through a feat of brilliance, IÉ have managed to end up with systems where the cards from the automatic machines aren't read by the new ticket barriers (only the ordinary tickets work in them).

L1011

Zoney wrote: »

Incidentally through a feat of brilliance, IÉ have managed to end up with systems where the cards from the automatic machines aren't read by the new ticket barriers (only the ordinary tickets work in them).

Erm. No.

I've not used a human ticket agent in many many years, the exit barriers are perfectly capable of reading properly written tickets from the automatic machines and have been since day 1 of being installed in Connolly.. I'd think the ones you've used; either issuing machine or exit barriers, are broken.

icdg

MYOB wrote: »

Erm. No.

I've not used a human ticket agent in many many years, the exit barriers are perfectly capable of reading properly written tickets from the automatic machines and have been since day 1 of being installed in Connolly.. I'd think the ones you've used; either issuing machine or exit barriers, are broken.

While they can read tickets issued by the automatic machines that sell tickets - ie the ones you put money into at the time of travel and get a ticket back - they cannot read InterCity tickets issued by the "Ticket Collection" machines that allow you to collect InterCity tickets that were pre-booked online.

I have no idea why this should be the case, but there is even signage in Heuston Station informing you of this fact.

L1011

icdg wrote: »

While they can read tickets issued by the automatic machines that sell tickets - ie the ones you put money into at the time of travel and get a ticket back - they cannot read InterCity tickets issued by the "Ticket Collection" machines that allow you to collect InterCity tickets that were pre-booked online.

I have no idea why this should be the case, but there is even signage in Heuston Station informing you of this fact.

Oh right.. are they not just the exact same brand of machine with their coin/cash mechanism removed? Would have thought they'd have identical magnetic writers inside them.

StephenM_smc

The online tickets that are printed have to be pealed off an A4 sheet, and as far as I remember don't have a magnetic strip on the back.

noelfirl

The pre-booked ticket I picked up at Heuston on Friday from the collection machines appeared to be on a similar paper as the normal ticket and the mag stripe on the back resembled the standard ticket, but alas, the ticket barrier didn't want to know. "Wrong side up. Wrong side up".

Online tickets sent out by post, or picked up at any station other then the big five aren't encoded at all apparently.

bk

I assume that the machines are capable of printing the gate readable tickets (and hopefully RFID tickets in future), just IR have been typically slow to get around to changing it over.

To the OP, if your girlfriend does get a fine from the inspector, she can probably prove to IR that she had a ticket for that train anyway from her online purchase.

Zoney

Yep - Limerick has one of the automatic machines for pre-booked tickets and the tickets have a magnetic strip, yet the newly installed ticket barriers at Heuston can't read the tickets.

It could even just be a piece of software nonsense - e.g. they forgot to include the pre-book tickets from machines in the specifications or something.

It's entirely unacceptable and a piece of nonsense though.

L1011

StephenM_smc wrote: »

The online tickets that are printed have to be pealed off an A4 sheet, and as far as I remember don't have a magnetic strip on the back.

They had a stripe the last time I booked the Enterprise (which was when Ireland were playing a home game in Ravenhill, so 2007 ish I think?).. might not have them anymore this being Irish Rail!

StephenM_smc

It could well be there. I stopped reserving a seat as I swapped to quieter trains or where the A coach was the closest to the gate. Its been a while!