On Feb 24, 11:02*pm, (Roy Badami) wrote:
A couple of times recently I've attempted to buy a ticket from
Boundary Zone 2 to Cambridge (either CDR or SVR) from Finsbury Park
station ticket office, and was issued instead with a ticket Finsbury
Park to Cambridge, Route Not London.

The second time I saw what the (same) clerk was doing before he issued
the ticket and tried to argue the toss but got nowhere - he insisted
on issuing the ticket from FPK "because it's the last station in Zone
2". *The problem is that these tickets are *almost*but*not*quite*
equivalent (provided your using a 7 day or longer Travelcard). *The
prices are the same, the restriction codes are the same and in
particular, AIUI the train doesn't have to stop at FPK, by virtue of
the rule about using one ticket that is a season ticket and one ticket
that is not (7 day Travelcards and longer are considered season
tickets for the purpose of this rule).

But, and there's a big but -- the ticket I requested is interavailable
between First Capital Connect and National Express East Anglia - the
one sold to me is not (because the West Anglia Main Line is a
permitted route between London Terminals and Cambridge, but it's not a
permitted route between Finsbury Park and Cambridge).

So it seems to me that FCC are deliberately refusing to sell me the
ticket I ask for because because there's another ticket that is in
identical in price and availability (this can't be an accident) but
ORCATS will allocate them a larger share of the ticket price
(presumably almost all - I think there may be the very odd journey
where change-at-Stevenage onto East Coast may be plausible).

The problem is that although you typically will want to use FCC on
that route, using NXEA is not entirely implausibe. *It's particuarly
likely on a Sunday when fast trains are only hourly. *If you just miss
the xx28 semi-fast train from CBG to KGX (which calls at FPK) then
there's a huge advantage in catching the NXEA service to LST four
minutes later, alighting at TOM and completing the journey by tube by
Oyster PAYG.

It's annoying enough that they insist you queue at the ticket office
to buy a Boundary Zone ticket, but when they refuse to sell you one
even there - what do you do? *Well you rant on uk.transport.london and
uk.railway of course :-)


My recollection is that a number of people have reported on here how
FCC (at least on the GN side of things) seem to issue extensions for
Travelcards as a conventional ticket from a specific origin station as
opposed to a Boundary Zone extention ticket (from the edge of a zone),
and indeed do so even in combination with a Day Travelcard when such a
combo isn't technically valid, but it gets passed by any ticket
checking staff as a matter of course.

So just wildly speculating, but I wonder whether staff (on the GN
side) might could have got into this habit a number of years ago
perhaps in the WAGN-era, say as the result of directions passed down
from managers with the aim of maximising ORCATS revenue, and it's all
just stuck? Something like that anyway.

(All that said, requests for Travelcard extensions elsewhere don't
always result in one being issued with the proper BZ extension ticket
either - though in many cases it doesn't really matter, which I
suppose means it never becomes and issue and hence there are never any
efforts made to ensure it's done the correct way.)