On May 25, 1:55*pm, CJB wrote:

Yes - but most (all?) of the ticket machines have been altered so as
not to take cash. Only the PTT machines could take cash. Now these
latter are all out-of-contract and are being removed or left switched
off. However the law states that a PTT MUST be purchased if a normal
ticket cannot - yet it is now impossible to purchase a PTT.

It's going to come down to a debate about the precise meaning of
section 2 in the conditions of carriage (and isn't it a pain that the
paragraphs aren't numbered properly)?

"You will not be entitled to any discounts or special
terms [[ such as not paying a PF in a PF area ]] unless either:
(i) at the station where you started your journey, there was no
ticket office open and there were no self- service ticket machines
or no self-service ticket machines were in full working order
[[ I'll call this (i)(a) ]]
and

in Penalty Fares areas you bought a Permit to Travel unless no Permit
to Travel issuing machine was in full working order [[ I'll call this
(i)(b) ]]

....

In circumstances where (i) or (ii) apply, you only need to pay the
fare that you would have paid if you had bought a ticket immediately
before your journey."

The debate's going to be whether a TVM which by design takes only
cards is "in full working order". On its face, the answer is "yes",
but it's for a court to decide. Even when cheques were at their peak
no TVM took cheques, so clearly it's OK for machines to only accept a
subset of payment methods, and as we've discussed at length there is
no right to pay with cash. It may be bad customer service, it may be
a problem for a small subset of customers, but it's a commercial
decision by the operator as to if they care. As an analogy, a PTT
machine usually only takes coins, so someone who offers cash but only
has notes won't be able to buy a PTT either. If a TVM which only
takes cards is deemed to be in full working order, then (i)(a)
applies, so (i)(b) is irrelevant.

So either
new PTT machine must be provided or the law has to be changed. Its a
catch-22 for customers that cannot be acceptable. CJB.

Alternatively, they could just get debit cards and stop whining. Pre-
pays are hardly difficult to obtain.

ian