A Payment Limbo Story
On Friday, I set out early for my weekly trip to Tuttle. When I'm a Steemit bazillionaire, I will not care about peak/off-peak/super-off-peak travel, I'll just get in my Steem-Driven-Automobile and be whisked off to London with a couple of clicks. However, for the time being, I need to get the train and pay for it with my Visa Debit card and look after the pennies so the pounds can look after themselves.
So I got their early because I wanted to speak to a friend on the phone before getting on the train and getting stuck in the mobile black hole between Guildford and Woking. But, the gods of smooth payment were not working for me.
First some fare structure explanation. If I leave after 10am I can get a super-off-peak travelcard for £20.60 - this is the best deal because it gives me all the travel I might want in London as well as the trip there and back. The only pesky point is that I can't get a train back from London until 7pm, but a 11am to 7pm day in London suits me fine. But for Tuttle, I want to be in town well before 11am - the next best ticket is an off-peak return for £20.00 as long as it gets you into London after 10am, so the 9.34 works well. I don't have a travelcard with this, but I usually only go to Bank and back again on Tuttle days or walk around a bit, so that comes in under £5 which is better than buying a travelcard at this time which is £26.60. Travelling before 9.30 is just silly money in comparison so we don't even go there until we are rich.
OK. So I turn up around 9.15 to be able to make my call. Most of the ticket machines aren't selling off-peak tickets yet and the queue for the meatware ticket dispensers is long and fraught with the risk of having to actually speak to someone. So I stood around a little and then noticed there was one other machine that was a little different and looked like it might be able to help. I went and ordered an off-peak return. It asked for my card and my pin number. I did that and removed my card and then it froze... and I froze, staring at it... and it just didn't do anything for long long minutes and then it just flashed up OUT OF SERVICE and turned itself off - having taken my money but not discharged my tickets.
There was no alternative but to queue up and talk to a person. We crawled forward. I missed the opportunity to make a call lest I be summoned to the guardians of the ticket queue too early. I got there and the operative behind the thick glass sat looking over my shoulder as I waited for her to actually acknowledge me and start our transaction, but she was much more interested in someone slightly to the side. Eventually she said "Yes, how can I help you?" So I explained my situation. She said "Ah yes, well you see it's gone into what we call Limbo." I said I'd looked at my bank and could see that the payment had gone through, could she just issue a ticket based on that? "Oh no, you can't do that, you'll need to buy another ticket." So today was going to cost me £40 after all... I started to say something about whether it was right that I should be lending South West Trains £20 for the day and possibly the weekend, but I realised I was starting to be "that guy" in the queue and between the dumb stare of the operative and the cold ice beams burrowing into my back from the people behind me in the queue, I thought I'd let it go.
So yeah, they've still got £20 of mine "in Limbo" - I'm fortunately just solvent enough to be able to take this on the chin for a few days, but many people aren't. It's one of the ways in which the rich get rich and the poor get poorer. We need a better way of dealing with these things, these little annoyances that crop up between people, machines and money where mistakes have been made and arbitration over how they get sorted out is not dependent on frosty exchanges with over-worked and over-abused customer service staff.
Good post, thanks for sharing
This comment has received a 0.10 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @hamzaoui.
Hello @lloyddavis. I can totally relate to your situation. Even I have faced difficulties while traveling in the world famous tubes. Sometimes the card doesn't get out of the automatic access doors and you. Loose the ticket. Now all you can do is to buy a new one and think that a limbo machine has just gulped your hard earned money.
And this on peak, off peak pricing is a complete facade. You got have a digree in aeronautical sciences, just to decode all permutation and combinations... 😛😜
Peace ✌️
Yeah, there's lots of weird stuff that you need to study hard in order to understand - it could all be so much simpler, but it would be really difficult to get there!
Indeed.!
@lloyddavis I know the experience is not funny but i just cant help but laugh, we all have such days. i assume with time, we will evolve to better relationships between people, machines and money. Till then, take heart i assume you will get your money back eventually. Do not let that stop you from having a wonderful trip, i will love to see pictures. We def have to live well before we become steemit bazillionaires. Have a wonderful trip, nice post by the way. Cheers
Yes, you have to take these things lightly - as you can see, it looks like this post will earn the money back in any case :)
This is one reason why I favor pre-paid user cards. If there is any concern about a payment not going through they could simply place it on your user card until the payment goes through.
However, some things are a one-way street and 'liquidity flexibility' is one of those things. I am sorry for the bitter experience that you've had.
Ah, all those Oyster's and travelcards. The Transport for London ticket system almost made my head explode when I was planning my London trip some time ago.
Off-peak, 1 day, 7 day, contactless...
Ended up buying the one week travelcard, it offered many 2-for-1 coupons for many London's attraction like Tower of London, Kew Gardens and etc.
BTW I think the best thing you should is send an e-mail to TFL's incident support service ( [email protected] ) with the details of the date and location of your purchase.
Indeed it might take forever for them to answer, but I am pretty sure you'll end up getting a reply.
Yeah, this is South West Trains not within TfL. I know it will work out in the end, but it will take a few e-mails :)
So yeah, same thing just different company. Wish you luck, hope it doesn't take too long :)
infrastructure man. we rely so much on boxes of flashing lights don't we? :)
and they keep going wrong! :)
what a rip off -- how can they steal your card and money and then ask for you to pay ? shocker ----- i am now following you
Amazing posts :O
Good post
Upvoted & RESTEEMED!