The sorry tale of the not so Smartcard

I have to commute from Sudbury Suffolk to Clapham every day. I have a long and complicated commute. I order weekly or monthly season tickets online which I use on a Greater Anglia Smartcard.

For those that don't know this is like an Oyster card for use on trains, tubes and buses. It usually works very well. Except when the system fails.

So last Monday I order my weekly season ticket online and some two hours later I am at Sudbury station, and the self service ticket machine is out of order. So I cannot get my weekly season ticket and, sans printer at home, cannot even prove I have purchased a weekly season ticket. I also have no way to traverse the. Tube and Buses.

I buy a Daily Travelcard to enable that days commute. Then I call Greater Anglia Smartcard customer service team to report the broken self service ticket machine and explain my predicament. The lady on the line  takes my email address and promises to a) refund my daily ticket and b) issue an authority to travel to enable at least part of my commute.

On Tuesday the self service ticket machine is still broken but the authority to travel I printed at work, at least gets me through the barriers at Liverpool Street and Waterloo and my dusted off Oyster card allows me to use the tube and buses. The barriers traverse takes three times as long as normal but I manage it.

Wednesday is the same except that there is no-one to let me through the barriers at Clapham Junction so I have to travel on my Oyster card all the way to Liverpool Street Station. But that is the least of my troubles. My authority to travel runs out that day and I have emailed and asked if I  can either get an extension authority to travel or swap the Smartcard season ticket for a paper weekly season ticket. I received no reply.

So armed with the Email that states clearly "I shall keep your case open pl so I can advise you of any update on this issue and if necessary issue you with another ATT until the end of your ticket. Alternatively you can request a paper replacement at the ticket office." I go to the ticket office at Liverpool Street Station and request a paper replacement as instructed.

On arrival at Liverpool Street Station ticket office I explained the situation and requested a paper replacement ticket. After a few minutes wait the ticket office manager arrives and adamantly refused to issue a replacement paper ticket. I ask again being more assertive and remind him and show him the email I quoted above. It cuts no ice. So I walk to the customer service desk and ask what I do now.

They cannot help either.

Somehow retaining some semblance of calm, I get on my train and call the Smartcard customer service team for advice. As I have no smartphone nor printer at home they can send me a new authority to travel but I have no way to use it. They suggested buying another daily travel card for the next days commute. This is a solution I am at that point resigned to using.

On the Marks Tey to Sudbury train I explain the issue to the conductor who patiently listens and tells me of another customer at Colchester Town station the previous week, who had had the same issue.

Overhearing this conversation another customer on the same train stated she had been having the same problem all week. We compared experiences, they were very similar and I showed her the email and the authority to travel I have been using. The conductor emailed his manager to explain this problem and see if his manager could suggest a solution. 

On arrival at Sudbury station we discovered to our unbridled joy(spot the slight sarcasm) that the self-service ticket machine was finally working and we could update our smart cards. I no longer need to shell out more money for this weeks commute. (the bill was currently £63.40 for a daily travelcard and £20 for buses and tubes for 2 days)

This whole sorry episodes explains exactly what is wrong with the Smart Card system. it has clearly been installed far too quickly and unlike all other electronic systems on the railway clearly has no redundancy built in. Redundancy for those who don't know, is where you have duplicate hardware and communications to ensure that computer systems work even when a cable is cut or a connection goes down.

Redundancy used on signalling, power and many other systems on the railway. Clearly Greater Anglia acquiring revenue through ticketing is not such a system worthy of redundancy, therefore there is only one ticket machine at Sudbury station and at Colchester Town station When those ticket machines go down, customers are frankly buggered and cannot obtain the tickets they have purchased.

I am sure several laws are broken here, relating to online selling and effectively refusing to supply the customer goods they have bought in good faith. But that is only part of the failings.

The questions I have about these failings are:

1. Why, when you are buying an electronic good tied to a photocard and an email, does it have to be collected at a specific Railway Station. The poor explanation I was verbally given is that it has to follow the same rules as collecting a pre paid ticket. Except that is nonsense as I bought a Trainline ticket at Christmas and collected it at the first Train Station I reached (in that case Bath Station). If we had been able to collect the electronic ticket at Marks Tey none of the delays and frustrations would have been necessary.
2. Why can't a smartcard season ticket be swapped for a paper ticket, they cost the same extortionate price and if the electonic system fails are an essential fallback.
3. Why in 2017 can you only buy online a season ticket if it is on a Smartcard, even when that system is not yet reliable enough to be fit for purpose?
4. Why is there this clear disconnect between the paper ticket system, conductors and Ticket Office Staff and the Electronic Smartcard system.
5. Why did the Smart Card Customer Service Team not know a self-service Ticket Machine was out of order and why can they not change the tickets to be collected to be collectable at a suitable alternative Station?
6. Why does the online ticket selling software not know that a Self-Service Machine is broken, I ordered my Weekly Season ticket at 5.40am, that machine was almost certainly broken then. When completing the transaction it should have stated that I could not collect it at Sudbury but could at Marks Tey. This is not difficult, assuming these ticket machines and the Greater Anglia systems (their website is in Drupal which I know is not the issue) can actually talk to each other?

Some answers would be nice and comments by anyone with similar experiences. I think some of us Smart Card users have been treated as Guinea Pigs (without the seeds and nuts either). The art of Beta Testing is learning what works and making sure the systems, policies and rules are flexible enough to work with the system, this is clearly not the case with the Smartcard system.