On 18 Oct, 11:18, Fig wrote:
..

They're still not very good at dealing with the benefits though. I
recently tried to by a discounted ODTC as a Gold Card holder (issued by
the same ticket office; Finchley Road) and was told they couldn't do that
and was refered to a NR ticket office.

--
Fig- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Strange. When I held a Y-P railcard a (good) few years ago, I never
had any trouble buying discounted ODTCs at a LU booking office, and
IMX people still don't have any problem these days. On the LU
travelcard it just says "Railcard Travelcard" (with the initial R in
large type), so presumably the booking clerk just applies a generic
Railcard discount and doesn't have to specify which one it is (unlike
at a NR ticket office). Maybe you should have asked the clerk to do
it as if it was a Y-P card (it's the same discount, after all) and he/
she may have then understood. As Railcards can only be used on one LU
product (the offpeak zone 1-6 day travelcard), it surely can't be that
hard to grasp. The only problem would be the Network Card, where the
discount is only available at weekends, because of the minimum fare.
Maybe that's what your clerk was unsure about, confusing the Gold Card
with the Network Card.

--
Ken

On 18 Oct, 11:37, Ken wrote:
On 18 Oct, 11:18, Fig wrote:


They're still not very good at dealing with the benefits though. I
recently tried to by a discounted ODTC as a Gold Card holder (issued by
the same ticket office; Finchley Road) and was told they couldn't do that
and was refered to a NR ticket office.


Strange. When I held a Y-P railcard a (good) few years ago, I never
had any trouble buying discounted ODTCs at a LU booking office, and
IMX people still don't have any problem these days. On the LU
travelcard it just says "Railcard Travelcard" (with the initial R in
large type), so presumably the booking clerk just applies a generic
Railcard discount and doesn't have to specify which one it is (unlike
at a NR ticket office). Maybe you should have asked the clerk to do
it as if it was a Y-P card (it's the same discount, after all) and he/
she may have then understood. As Railcards can only be used on one LU
product (the offpeak zone 1-6 day travelcard), it surely can't be that
hard to grasp. The only problem would be the Network Card, where the
discount is only available at weekends, because of the minimum fare.
Maybe that's what your clerk was unsure about, confusing the Gold Card
with the Network Card.

--
Ken

I've read several similar complaints to Figs on this newsgroup in the
past. The notion that someone with say a Gold Card Travelcard (i.e.
an annual) for a few zones wants a further Day Travelcard for all the
zones seems to cause considerable confusion at LU ticket offices.
Whether they'd as confused with a Gold Card valid outside of London -
say Bedford to Luton - is also a good question!

past. The notion that someone with say a Gold Card Travelcard (i.e.
an annual) for a few zones wants a further Day Travelcard for all the
zones seems to cause considerable confusion at LU ticket offices.

I split my travel into 2 tickets - a point to point into zone 4 and a 4
zone travelcard (both annuals). If I want to buy a discounted travelcard
for someone, I must also buy one for myself (even though my ticket
combination covers the journey already).

This makes the discount pointless, it's cheaper to buy the thing full rate.

D

On 18 Oct, 21:07, DaveP wrote:
past. The notion that someone with say a Gold Card Travelcard (i.e.
an annual) for a few zones wants a further Day Travelcard for all the
zones seems to cause considerable confusion at LU ticket offices.

I split my travel into 2 tickets - a point to point into zone 4 and a 4
zone travelcard (both annuals). If I want to buy a discounted travelcard
for someone, I must also buy one for myself (even though my ticket
combination covers the journey already).

Of course what your ticket combination doesn't cover is travel in
zones 5 & 6 - for better or worse the rule demands that you must have
a ticket with exactly the same zonal validity as your travelling
companions(s), and as they can only get Z1-6 at a discount then a
ticket (either a season or also discounted Day Travelcard) valid for
Z1-6 is what you too must have.


This makes the discount pointless, it's cheaper to buy the thing full rate.

D

I suppose that's the downside of splitting your ticket.

I split my travel into 2 tickets - a point to point into zone 4 and a

Of course what your ticket combination doesn't cover is travel in
zones 5 & 6 - for better or worse the rule demands that you must have

Indeed it doesn't, though the point to point ticket allows travel along the
route through those zones, and that's all I need. Like most commuters I go
same route every day and rarely travel anywhere else. If I do go out
socially it's invariably within Z1-4 anyhow, at least this way I'm not
paying for three sides of London I never use.

... discount pointless, it's cheaper to buy the thing full rate.
I suppose that's the downside of splitting your ticket.

The upside being £400 saving a year, which pays for quite a few day
travelcards without discount, overall I'm quids in, but it would be nice to
have the discount for travelcards too

D

On 19 Oct, 16:02, DaveP wrote:
I split my travel into 2 tickets - a point to point into zone 4 and a

Of course what your ticket combination doesn't cover is travel in
zones 5 & 6 - for better or worse the rule demands that you must have

Indeed it doesn't, though the point to point ticket allows travel along the
route through those zones, and that's all I need. Like most commuters I go
same route every day and rarely travel anywhere else. If I do go out
socially it's invariably within Z1-4 anyhow, at least this way I'm not
paying for three sides of London I never use.


... discount pointless, it's cheaper to buy the thing full rate.
I suppose that's the downside of splitting your ticket.

The upside being £400 saving a year, which pays for quite a few day
travelcards without discount, overall I'm quids in, but it would be nice to
have the discount for travelcards too

D

Everything you say I well understand, as it's all perfectly
reasonable.

Having the discount for Day Travelcards would of course be great,
however so long as the discount is only available to zones 1-6 Day
Travelcards then there would be problems:

(1) Your travelling companions would have a ticket which on face value
would be valid for all the zones, but would in actually fact only be
valid for the zones covered by your Gold Card Travelcard. Arguably not
an insurmountable problem as their discounted Day Travelcard would
only be valid when accompanied by you and your Gold Card Travelcard.

(2) Even if there was a rule that their discounted Day Travelcard was
only valid in the zones covered by your Gold Card Travelcard, if you
had your Gold Card loaded on to an Oyster then you would easily be
able to travel outside of its zonal validity on routes where Oyster
Pay-as-you-go is available (i.e. the whole LU network and a few
limited National Rail routes) as Oyster PAYG allows holders of season
Travelcards to automatically get ticket extensions (i.e. the system
combines the Travelcard validity and PAYG to charge you the
appropriate excess fare).
Thus it'd be practically unenforceable to insist that your whole party
only travelled within the zones covered by your Gold Card - they'd
appear to have a valid ticket, as would you (especially given that
it'd likely be ticket gates examining your tickets, not a ticket
inspector).


The alternative would be to introduce discounted Day Travelcards for
each and every zonal combination so as to match the zones that might
be held by a Gold Card holder (bearing in mind that there are only
four existing Day Travelcard combinations - 1&2, 1-4, 1-6 and 2-6).
This is v unlikely to happen!

Also one needs to consider why all-zone discounted Day Travelcards
exist. I believe it is because otherwise railcard-discounted Day
Travelcards from stations just outside the zones would actually be
cheaper than those available within the zones, which wouldn't be fair
- hence the discount being available only for an all-zones Day
Travelcard.

Having the discount for Day Travelcards would of course be great,
however so long as the discount is only available to zones 1-6 Day

I've certainly had the GOLDC discount issued on Z1-4 travelcards from an NR
station in the past, physically it's possible but I guess it's not a
permitted product (though the kit certainly allows its issue).

I see what you're saying, it would complicate matters to allow it.

Hopefully when some form of integrated smartcard ticketing comes around
this won't be a problem anymore (though I suppose discounted tickets will
always need to be done on paper or loaded specially onto the card?).

Cheers,
Dave

Mizter T wrote:
On 18 Oct, 11:37, Ken wrote:
On 18 Oct, 11:18, Fig wrote:


They're still not very good at dealing with the benefits though. I
recently tried to by a discounted ODTC as a Gold Card holder (issued by
the same ticket office; Finchley Road) and was told they couldn't do that
and was refered to a NR ticket office.

Strange. When I held a Y-P railcard a (good) few years ago, I never
had any trouble buying discounted ODTCs at a LU booking office, and
IMX people still don't have any problem these days. On the LU
travelcard it just says "Railcard Travelcard" (with the initial R in
large type), so presumably the booking clerk just applies a generic
Railcard discount and doesn't have to specify which one it is (unlike
at a NR ticket office). Maybe you should have asked the clerk to do
it as if it was a Y-P card (it's the same discount, after all) and he/
she may have then understood. As Railcards can only be used on one LU
product (the offpeak zone 1-6 day travelcard), it surely can't be that
hard to grasp. The only problem would be the Network Card, where the
discount is only available at weekends, because of the minimum fare.
Maybe that's what your clerk was unsure about, confusing the Gold Card
with the Network Card.

--
Ken

I've read several similar complaints to Figs on this newsgroup in the
past. The notion that someone with say a Gold Card Travelcard (i.e.
an annual) for a few zones wants a further Day Travelcard for all the
zones seems to cause considerable confusion at LU ticket offices.

Someone once posted the text of an internal document which was poorly
written, and seemed at a first reading to suggest that you can't buy a
ODTC with a Gold Card discount unless you have an all-zones Gold Card
(in which case you wouldn't need to buy the ODTC!).

What it was apparently intended to say was that you can only buy a
travelling companion a discounted z1-6 ODTC if either (a) you have an
z1-6 annual or (b) you buy a z1-6 ODTC for yourself as well. Someone
with a z2-6 annual can't buy a friend a z1-6 ODTC.


Whether they'd as confused with a Gold Card valid outside of London -
say Bedford to Luton - is also a good question!


--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:41:33 +0100, Arthur Figgis wrote:

Someone once posted the text of an internal document which was poorly
written, and seemed at a first reading to suggest that you can't buy a
ODTC with a Gold Card discount unless you have an all-zones Gold Card
(in which case you wouldn't need to buy the ODTC!).

What it was apparently intended to say was that you can only buy a
travelling companion a discounted z1-6 ODTC if either (a) you have an
z1-6 annual or (b) you buy a z1-6 ODTC for yourself as well. Someone
with a z2-6 annual can't buy a friend a z1-6 ODTC.

I've had a few experiences of LU offices applying the opposite rule -
that the Gold Card holder (regardless of zones covered by the season)
can only buy Z1-6 ODTCs for accompanying adults, not for himself.

(Or to be pedantic, Z1-D ODTCs, as that's what you actually get.)

asdf wrote:

On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:41:33 +0100, Arthur Figgis wrote:

Someone once posted the text of an internal document which was poorly
written, and seemed at a first reading to suggest that you can't buy a
ODTC with a Gold Card discount unless you have an all-zones Gold Card
(in which case you wouldn't need to buy the ODTC!).

What it was apparently intended to say was that you can only buy a
travelling companion a discounted z1-6 ODTC if either (a) you have an
z1-6 annual or (b) you buy a z1-6 ODTC for yourself as well. Someone
with a z2-6 annual can't buy a friend a z1-6 ODTC.

I've had a few experiences of LU offices applying the opposite rule -
that the Gold Card holder (regardless of zones covered by the season)
can only buy Z1-6 ODTCs for accompanying adults, not for himself.

I suppose that one way to get around this, if the ticket office are
being that obstinate, is to pretend another travelling companion is
not yet with you - e.g. he's in the shop or still walking to the
station!


(Or to be pedantic, Z1-D ODTCs, as that's what you actually get.)

And herein lies a slight anomaly - if you had a Z1-6 Gold Card
Travelcard (i.e. annual) and wanted to buy a discounted ticket for a
travelling companion, you yourself would not need to get one. However
you're travelling companion would actually end up with an ODTC valid
in Z1-D rather than Z1-6, i.e. it would cover more zones than your
Z1-6 Gold Card Travelcard. Of course they would not be able to use it
outside of Z1-6 as you would not be accompanying them, unless of
course you bought one yourself. But I can imagine even the most "with
it" LU ticket office might get confused by the idea that someone with
a Z1-6 Gold Card Travelcard would want a further discounted Z1-D ODTC
for themselves!

And if you had that Z1-6 Gold Card Travelcard loaded on Oyster, I can
well imagine the ticket office would simply suggest using Oyster PAYG
to allow you to travel to/from zones A-D - though in this case any
travelling companion's discounted ODTC would technically cease to be
valid when the travelling party entered zones A-D.


Indeed the existence of Oyster PAYG actually rules out any changes of
the rules regarding the necessity for Gold Card holders to buy a
discounted ODTC for themselves. Let me explain...

Let's say the rule that a Gold Card holder had to buy an all zones
ODTC for themselves (except if their season covered all Z1-6) was
ditched - and the rule rewritten so that the Gold Card holder could
buy discounted all zones ODTCs for their travelling companions but as
a group you could *only* use them within the zones covered by the Gold
Card holder's Travelcard (say zones 1-3).

Before the introduction of Oyster PAYG, notionally speaking this
could've been enforceable. However, since Oyster PAYG started, anyone
who held a Gold Card Travelcard loaded on Oyster can of course extend
their journey into any zone and the extension is automatically paid
for from their PAYG balance. Therefore the idea of restricting that
Gold Card holder plus travelling companions only to the zones covered
by the Gold Card holder's Travelcard becomes totally unworkable.

OK, my head hurts now!