Irish Rail electronic tickets - couldn't get any entry/exit gate reader to accept them

coylemj

Last week I travelled from Dublin Heuston to Cork using an electronic ticket. Or at least, I tried to use an electronic ticket. The ticket was a one-page PDF file with a tiny QR code in the upper right corner. None of the readers at the gates in Heuston or Cork stations could read my ticket, even when I magnified the QR code to fill most of the screen. And I followed the instructions and was not using a screengrab, I had the actual PDF file open on my (Samsung A13) phone.

I wasn't the only person having this problem, there was mayhem when I arrived back in Heuston on Saturday afternoon with multiple people at the turnstiles who were held up by passengers like me who couldn't get the machine to read their tickets. Eventually I saw an IR staffie on the concourse and when I went over to him to complain, he just motioned to an open turnstile and told me to pass through.

bk

Yes, I had the same experience two weeks ago.

IR Staff just had the gates open (by the ticket checker booth in the middle) and were just waving people through without looking at the tickets.

Clearly it isn't working for the moment.

BTW I also mentioned in another thread that if you are travelling with a few people (like a family) the order of the tickets in the PDF doesn't make sense and you end up having to scroll all over a big PDF looking for the right ticket.

Covidhaveago

I had this occur at Heuston outbound and was let through by IE staff.

On the return journey as I wasn’t in a hurry, I took some time to fiddle with the PDF on my phone against the reader and got it to scan. I think the trick is to either have it a certain angle and/or have it in place against the reader for x seconds.

Certainly not intuitive or easy to use in my limited experience.

coylemj

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121881522#Comment_121881522

Did you expand the QRCode to fill most of the screen or did you just show the full PDF page to the scanner?

Jamie2k9

In my expierance Irish Rail don't advise people to have the brightness up high and I think this is possibly part of the problem.

Most Points Cards/Boarding Passes auto control brightness.

Irish Rail need the apple wallet function working asap but that could be a long time off.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122027793#Comment_122027793

It doesn't mention anything about brightness in the email to ticket.

Though it would be counter intuitive, I've had other tickets, like I think Ticketmaster tell you to set the phone to full brightness. I've found holding the phone directly over the reader actually touching the screen did the trick the last time on Irish Rail!

I agree they really need the wallet based tickets and ideally nfc ones.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Same experience in Heuston this week. Codes weren't being recognised by the barriers. Frustrating.

Even worse in Cork where you have to have a ticket to exit and they don't even have QR code scanners at the exit barriers!!

goingnowhere

All barriers at Cork Kent have QR code readers on both entry and exit at the main concourse

coylemj

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122086185#Comment_122086185

None of them worked for me the last time I was in Kent.

On the ticket, it says the following…..

Hold the code at the top of this ticket in front of the scanners and wait for the gate to open.

Which suggests that you should expand the QRCode but I think they should simplify the layout of the page and make the QRCode bigger so that you don't have to do that.