Mass cull of ticket offices

[rodent279]

52 minutes ago, DLT said:

"Only 12-percent of ticket sales"???  12 percent must represent a HUGE number of ticket sales!  If it was 1.2-percent then i could understand this.

The whole affair is looking more and more like a deliberate PR stunt, cooked up to try and make the Tories look good, look like "The Peoples Friend" when they are anything but!

12% of what?

By volume of sales, or by revenue?

[rodent279]

2 hours ago, melmerby said:

although I don't think all the public really believes that,

I'm not sure most of "the public" are bright enough or well informed enough to do anything other than read & believe the guff they see printed in their chosen daily rag, or broadcast on tv/radio.

[Phil Parker]

OK. I've done a quick clean up on this thread, which is about ticket office closures, not middle East wars or how much anyone hates the BBC. It would be appreciated if people could stick to the topic. Thanks. 

[The Border Reiver]

6 hours ago, melmerby said:

C'mon you mean the Daily Heil, surely?😄

We call it the Daily Tory 😁

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, rodent279 said:

12% of what?

By volume of sales, or by revenue?

A 12month season ticket from Brighton to London would cost an awful lot more than a off peak return between two close stations on a branch line.

Both count as one sale.

[eatus-maximus]

18 hours ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

Nice one. You make a claim, plant the seed of doubt, and then run away.

 

 

Nice, someone slates the entire BBC news team and you say nothing, I slate, potentially, one person in the entire BBC and you want proof or I'm 'running away'.

 

17 hours ago, whart57 said:

I can't help but think though that the government thought this was too unpopular a decision to implement in the year before the next election/

 

It is a potential for sure. Someone probably thought it would be a good idea to show 'they are better' than the TOCs (or Shapps), but as most people seem to know where the instructions came from, it really isn't the win they might think it is.

 

17 hours ago, Dagworth said:

A large part of me thinks that it was so obviously an impossible idea that it was only ever a distraction to keep attention away from other policies, which could then later be abandoned in a fanfare of claims of listening. 
 

Andi 

 

They could have done that in a much better way, saved face more easily, so I'm not sure about that, but there may be some truth in that.

 

13 hours ago, rodent279 said:

12% of what?

By volume of sales, or by revenue?

 

Usually it is whichever gives the best reason to do what they want to do, but in this case I think it is tickets issued as a percentage of all sales on the National Rail Network, that seems to be how it is being reported atleast. Naturally these figures will include sales from business, which often are booked through a third party provider online with no choice of using a ticket office, but will not count the numbers of people collecting those tickets, or asking for advice, at ticket offices (because they are not sales).

[whart57]

3 hours ago, eatus-maximus said:

They could have done that in a much better way, saved face more easily, so I'm not sure about that, but there may be some truth in that.

 

It would be hard to do it worse. But this is the Vote Leave campaign running the country, why is anyone surprised that they aren't any good at it.

[rodent279]

Was in the Netherlands recently. Car driven into the underground car park at the hotel and stayed there, all travelling done by train/bus/tram. We bought all our train tickets via the NS app, using it to scan the barcodes at the barriers, and we used the tap on/tap off system on all the buses & trams.

Despite all this, there were still fully staffed ticket offices manned by both NS & local transport operators, and small one person information booths on the concourses. Both were well used.

[SHMD]

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

Was in the Netherlands recently. Car driven into the underground car park at the hotel and stayed there, all travelling done by train/bus/tram. We bought all our train tickets via the NS app, using it to scan the barcodes at the barriers, and we used the tap on/tap off system on all the buses & trams.

Despite all this, there were still fully staffed ticket offices manned by both NS & local transport operators, and small one person information booths on the concourses. Both were well used.

 

I was in Amsterdam, a couple of months ago, and I did all my travel by Tram, Train and Taxi.

I could not buy tickets unless face-to-face.

 

When faced with machine (intelligence!!) problems - or tiny screens - I resort to taxis.

 

Next week I am in Berlin - I use day tickets from the m/c on the platform (Big screen).

The week after I am in Teltow - south of Berlin, so day tickets again.

Two weeks after that, Delft - Tram tickets bought in the Hotel reception.

 

 

Kev.

Who can't see very well and (nearly) everything on a phone is "out of sight"!

 

[jjb1970]

The MRT here has a customer assistance office at every station, they sell Ez-link cards (local equivalent of oyster) but the system is ticketless and you have to use either ez-link, mobile payment or a contactless credit/debit card. No cash, though some top up machines take cash. Stations are all staffed and so having a customer assistance office is a way to help people and provides a few jobs.

[jjb1970]

One problem I found with ticket offices in England was that they're only useful if they're open. When I commuted to/from Bletchley it was quite common for the ticket office to be closed, which in some ways is worse than having no ticket office as at least if it's an unstaffed station you know there won't be a booking office and so don't turn up with an expectation that you can go to a staffed counter.

[phil-b259]

40 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

One problem I found with ticket offices in England was that they're only useful if they're open. When I commuted to/from Bletchley it was quite common for the ticket office to be closed, which in some ways is worse than having no ticket office as at least if it's an unstaffed station you know there won't be a booking office and so don't turn up with an expectation that you can go to a staffed counter.

 

This is sadly a common occurrence due to staffing cuts and sweating the (human) assets over the years.

 

If a counter is single manned then anything from staff sickness / a family emergency through to annual leave or staff training will leave the office without anyone on duty. Naturally the obvious answer to this is to have a decent contingent of 'relief' staff who are on duty and can be dispatched to cover such absences - but that also means that when everyone is at work you have a surplus of staff......

 

And if you are an office based been counter (particularly one working in the DfT / HM Treasury) nothing irritates more than having 'too many staff' so the pressure is on to reduce numbers and simply hope you can persuade the staff you do have to work harder (i.e. do overtime).

 

Sometimes this works of course, but at other times when say a nasty strain of flu is doing the rounds or industrial relations are bad or said been counters also try and cap staffing costs by restricting overtime then positions will have to be left uncovered.

[whart57]

I was told thirty years ago by my manager, who to be fair was merely passing a message from the Chief Exec down to the minions, that our job was not service to the customer but it was to increase shareholder value. If you want to know the reason why everything is so these days that's it in a sentence.

[woodenhead]

12 minutes ago, whart57 said:

I was told thirty years ago by my manager, who to be fair was merely passing a message from the Chief Exec down to the minions, that our job was not service to the customer but it was to increase shareholder value. If you want to know the reason why everything is so these days that's it in a sentence.

It's always been that way - a company works to the benefit of it's shareholders, they hold shares for one reason and one reason only - to profit.

 

Customer Service is one part of delivering profit and therefore value to the shareholders, if your customer service stinks then customers will go elsewhere (unless you have a monopoly).

[phil-b259]

13 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

 

Customer Service is one part of delivering profit and therefore value to the shareholders, if your customer service stinks then customers will go elsewhere (unless you have a monopoly).

 

And thats the problem railways are by and large a natural monopoly situation (individual operators even more so). Yes you could drive or take the plane for some trips but there is a reason railways are still around as a technology even after those inventions became widely accessible to the travelling public at large - namely they happen to be the most convenient way of making a particular journey.

 

The same is true of Water, Electricity, Gas or fixed telecoms networks too - in all cases the cost of providing true independent 'consumer choice' (as right wing free marketers love to bang on about) is far too costly and a 'monopoly' is the only viable model to deliver that commodity.

 

The problem them comes when people try and operate that monopoly as if its some sort of competitive enterprise and shareholders demand the same financial rewards - as has been aptly demonstrated by the UKs mass privatisation of such things over the past three decades resulting in a legacy of under investment, profiteering and increasing taxpayer liabilities

 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by phil-b259

[whart57]

3 hours ago, woodenhead said:

It's always been that way - a company works to the benefit of it's shareholders, they hold shares for one reason and one reason only - to profit.

 

Not strictly true. Companies have to declare a purpose other than just get rich in order to get registered. Granted the system for setting up companies in this country is very lax but if it worked as it's supposed to then businesses have made a contract with the state to deliver certain products and services. Just rewarding shareholders is not really enough. The issue is that government has shown little interest in enforcing that bit of company law.

[andyman7]

But these cuts were actually put in progress by the DfT - there is no shareholder role in the contract specification, it was Government wanting to cut costs, trying to get the change rammed through and then getting cold feet in the face of objections. The final straw was the realisation that they wouldn't be in power to benefit from any of the cost savings. The operators are just patsies in the face of Government chaos. Anyone who has followed the COVID enquiry is getting a insight in just how hopeless Government is at actually managing anything.

Edited November 2, 2023 by andyman7
Spelling

[roythebus1]

I'd suggest the government wanted a bit of "feel good" news in the run-up not only to the GE next year but in the light of what has been revealed this week as the Covid Inquiry gets under way. This has shown them for what they really are, totally incompetent, to say the least. 

[SZ]

2 hours ago, whart57 said:

Not strictly true. Companies have to declare a purpose other than just get rich in order to get registered. Granted the system for setting up companies in this country is very lax but if it worked as it's supposed to then businesses have made a contract with the state to deliver certain products and services. Just rewarding shareholders is not really enough. The issue is that government has shown little interest in enforcing that bit of company law.

 

This is not true at all. A contract with the state to deliver certain products and services? Where's that bit of company law stated?

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by SZ

[jjb1970]

A contract deals with a business transaction, that contract will be subject to laws of the governing jurisdiction. Laws concerning company registration are concerned with what is necessary for a company to be established and do business. So whether or not a contract references other laws doesn't alter their applicability. 

[Bernard Lamb]

This seems to be going the same way as the other two threads on the current situation on the railway.

Bernard 

[jjb1970]

It's easy to blame rapacious private companies, but the key decisions affecting railways in Britain are taken by DfT or their devolved equivalents. If a train is dirty or staff rude and other failures of service delivery then it's probably reasonable to blame the operator. However most of the things that really matter are down to government. 

 

It's not just rail. When I worked in electricity generation as a strategic development engineer my job (though it wasn't said aloud) was to maximize subsidies and payments from the government. Whether the means of doing so made any sense was a problem that electors could think about if the media was willing and able to report on the matter. You can criticize commercial electricity companies but they were behaving within a framework created by government in an entirely rational way.

[eatus-maximus]

16 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

This is sadly a common occurrence due to staffing cuts and sweating the (human) assets over the years.

 

If a counter is single manned then anything from staff sickness / a family emergency through to annual leave or staff training will leave the office without anyone on duty....

 

Made worse by decisions not to recruit.

 

Some train companies have not recruited for ticket office positions since the beginning of 2020, meaning training courses for staff movement within the company do not happen either. My company has a staff deficit of approximately 10% and no sign of recruiting in the near future.

[Reorte]

Number of tickets sold in person will vary hugely depending upon the station. A quote from somewhere else (on another forum, says it came from Modern Railways ) gave 62% for St Helens Central. Logically it'll vary hugely from TOC to TOC, with an operator like Northern who runs local services which don't offer advanced fares being far more likely to sell a ticket in the office than one like Avanti.

[eatus-maximus]

16 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Number of tickets sold in person will vary hugely depending upon the station. A quote from somewhere else (on another forum, says it came from Modern Railways ) gave 62% for St Helens Central. Logically it'll vary hugely from TOC to TOC, with an operator like Northern who runs local services which don't offer advanced fares being far more likely to sell a ticket in the office than one like Avanti.

 

Northern do offer Advance fares on many routes, many on the day too (with a deadline of 5-15 minutes before travel), but unlike many other Train Companies, they're not available on the day from ticket offices.