To think that companies should acknowledge that sometimes machines cock up and act accordingly!

[Sharkirasharkira]

Had a hugely stressful weekend in terms of travelling.

Booked flight and train to connect from airport, traveling through London. Booked online/through a train app I use all the time.

Flight was delayed due to snow so I missed my initial train but my ticket was an open one that didn't specify a time so I just planned to get a later one. Ticket machine malfunctioned while I was using it and said the tickets couldn't be printed. I checked and definitely no tickets there at all. No one available to talk to as there were hundreds of people trying to get onward tickets due to weather and delays etc. Fortunately managed to get to my destination by just showing my booking code.

Trying to travel home today and, nope, can't collect tickets. System says they were already collected at the airport. Except they weren't, and NO ONE will listen or help me - I've tried the train app I booked through, the assistants at the station, the guards, everyone just keeps telling me to get new tickets and there's nothing they can do. It's very possible I may miss my flight and I can't afford another one, so I'll be stranded hundreds of miles from home and no one gives a shit.

Aibu to be pissed off at their refusal to accept that the machine/system malfunctioned?! I appreciate that they only have my word for it but it's just this blanket 'computer says no' attitude that gets my back up. No one was even attempting to help just basically saying 'we're really sorry, but tough!'.

YANBU

You are right OP.

But expecting rail companies to act properly?

[snigger]

Some hope. Spend a few minutes on the Transport Focus website. Even when they involved, the rail companies won't always back down from their ludicrous policies. I know some passengers swing the lead but the staff lack all empathy.

That's the thing, they just couldn't have cared less! I understand that the individual staff members have limited power but everyone was being SO rude and unhelpful, making and already difficult situation even worse. That, and they absolutely refused to believe that I could have been telling the truth and their machines were at fault. According the them there was absolutely no way the system could be wrong

Fastest solution:

File a chargeback with your card provider for the tickets and buy new ones for your journey home.

Otherwise you may have luck writing a letter to the company (that owns the ticket machine) head office with a clear timeline of events and see if they will offer a goodwill gesture - but this could take weeks.

If this happens in the future, film/take photographs of the machine error and immediately go and speak to staff. Station staff can reprint tickets or issue you a permit to travel (ie a zero fare new ticket) but obviously now that’s it’s been a while they aren’t prepared to show discretion. It’s also complicated as the system states that the tickets were collected even though there was an error which stopped the collection process.