ScotRail kids for a quid?

[Knitwit101]

Has anyone used this? I was travelling Glasgow to Edinburgh yesterday. The website says you can buy kids tickets either on board or at a ticket office. The queue at queen street ticket office was huge so I asked someone if I could buy an adult ticket then add the kids on board. He said that was fine since there was such a massive queue. So I did that,the the woman at the platform wouldn't let us on without everyone having a valid ticket.
I find buying train tickets stressful at the best of times, I always feel like I've been slightly ripped off because I haven't found the best deal. Why can't you buy the kids for £1 tickets at the machine? Is it just so they can get more money off of customers who are in a bit of a rush or haven't read 10 pages of terms and conditions?
We did get on after a bit of arguing but I overheard the conductor telling another parent who had paid £6 for each of her 3 kids that she should only have paid £1.
Does anyone else just find the whole thing annoying?

You can - but it is hidden away in the "other" options when you're buying. You need to know to look for it

iirc, there is an option when you are looking at the tickets to choose Off-Peak or "other" and you'll then find the Kids option.

It's not immediately obvious or intuitive.

Useful, thanks

We only found this out after a conductor told us off for paying for ds a few years ago (when he should've gone free ) - so next time I looked for it.

Even looking for it, it wasn't immediately obvious - but I did find it eventually (unless they've changed the ticket machines since then).

It's fairly new so I'm not sure the machines are up to date.

Scotrail have become so much worse lately. One particular gripe of mine is their insistence that you buy before you board. If you don't then all discounts (including things which shouldn't be discounted such as off peak) are denied.

If you fancy a read on twitter search for scotrail and you'll see what their commuters are moaning about.

Kids Go Free had been going for a long time apparently when we got caught out: Kids Go for £1 is the updated version, so they'd either have had to deliberately take the option off the ticket machines, or update them.

...and I think either I or dh complained on Twitter about the time that we had overpaid - and that was when we were told that it was our fault as it was there as an option

It just seems a bit cheeky and leaves me feeling slightly pissed off that there are so many deals and offers and fares you have to go through before getting the right price.

Maybe it's just because it's new and the machines will catch up but I don't remember the old kids go free tickets being particularly obvious either.

And as an aside, why don't the £1 tickets work in Lockerbie? Anyone know? Seems a bit weird.

If you are in Queen St. Station and the ticket machine queues are long I generally find that hardly anyone knows there are other machines in the low level.

Looked for this yesterday. No joy. Was charged half price.

ScotRail don’t run any services to or from Lockerbie.

(I used to work there and all the issues mentioned here with getting tickets etc were a nightmare then! So many systems that don’t all properly talk to each other and are less than intuitive for customers...)

Edinburgh to Lockerbie

www.buytickets.scotrail.co.uk/buytickets/combinedmatrix.aspx?Command=TimeTable

Those aren’t ScotRail trains though, they are Transpennine Express. You can buy tickets on the ScotRail website for any train company in the UK, and vice versa.

I usually board at an unmanned station and the machine won’t accept my bank card. I checked again last weekwhen travelling with the two children I nanny for. I was glad it hadn’t accepted my card when I paid £5 less on board due to the £1 kids fares. I wouldn’t have found the option on the machine.