While we're on the subject of web sites in another thread I'll describe my
battle with Greater Anglia last week.

A month or so ago I travelled from Bishop's Stortford to Southminster using the
GA app and downloading the ticket (not a pdf) to my phone. It all worked well.
It's rare for me to be able to use the app as I normally have a Travelcard or a
via-London Maltese Cross ticket both of which, so far as I know, still need to
be dead tree.

On Thursday I went to Slough and, on the return, decided I wanted to over-ride
slightly. No problem, I'll just use the app to buy a ticket. But I couldn't.

On the Buy page I couldn't select my departing or arriving stations. The app
stubbornly wanted me to repeat my last journey, to Southminster. I could reverse
the order of the stations but couldn't change them. I contacted GA's social
media team who suggested I update the app. It was already up to date so I
reinstalled.

I no longer had Bishop's Stortford and Southminster in the station pair, just
placeholder Origin Station and Destination station. And they were still not
responding to clicks.

OK, I'll try the web site. Yes, it's nice and responsive and looks easy to use
on a phone. But it wants me to log in and I don't have my password manager
installed. Right - reset my password.

Reset email received and link clicked. Taken to a page that let me choose a new
password. OKed that, and was taken to a 'amend your details' page. This was a
long html form and the page was not responsive at all but designed for a large
screen. After many minutes of fumbling, zooming, turning through 90 degrees,
hitting the wrong field and swearing a lot I finally hit 'submit'. To be told I
should have entered my password, twice. I.e. I needed to change the password I'd
only just chosen.

Total smegheads. I gave up and GA lost revenue.

On Tue, 13 Jul 2021 09:59:44 +0100
Trolleybus <unknown@birchanger.com> wrote:
>Total smegheads. I gave up and GA lost revenue.

And politicians wonder why people won't give up their cars.

In message <sekqegp1hkhlbrit7panj8iqvti5duo588@4ax.com>, at 09:59:44 on
Tue, 13 Jul 2021, Trolleybus <unknown@birchanger.com> remarked:

>While we're on the subject of web sites in another thread I'll describe my
>battle with Greater Anglia last week.
>
>A month or so ago I travelled from Bishop's Stortford to Southminster using the
>GA app and downloading the ticket (not a pdf) to my phone.

As a fairly early adopter of m-ticketing, they have in-app wallet/
display. Which has the advantage of being more intuitive, but the
disadvantage that the ticket is trapped inside *that* app on *that*
phone. Ruling out the possibility of having one wallet on the phone with
all the different tickets for different things.

>It all worked well.
>It's rare for me to be able to use the app as I normally have a Travelcard or a
>via-London Maltese Cross ticket both of which, so far as I know, still need to
>be dead tree.

You can load Travelcards onto an ITSO card (sadly, that's *all* you can
do with some TOCs' ITSO cards).

The problem with Maltese-cross e-ticketing is presumably that TfL
barriers don't have scanners.

>On Thursday I went to Slough and, on the return, decided I wanted to over-ride
>slightly. No problem, I'll just use the app to buy a ticket. But I couldn't.
>
>On the Buy page I couldn't select my departing or arriving stations.
>The app stubbornly wanted me to repeat my last journey, to
>Southminster. I could reverse the order of the stations but couldn't
>change them. I contacted GA's social media team who suggested I update
>the app. It was already up to date so I reinstalled.
>
>I no longer had Bishop's Stortford and Southminster in the station pair, just
>placeholder Origin Station and Destination station. And they were still not
>responding to clicks.
>
>OK, I'll try the web site. Yes, it's nice and responsive and looks easy to use
>on a phone. But it wants me to log in and I don't have my password manager
>installed. Right - reset my password.
>
>Reset email received and link clicked. Taken to a page that let me
>choose a new password. OKed that, and was taken to a 'amend your
>details' page. This was a long html form and the page was not
>responsive at all but designed for a large screen. After many minutes
>of fumbling, zooming, turning through 90 degrees, hitting the wrong
>field and swearing a lot I finally hit 'submit'. To be told I should
>have entered my password, twice. I.e. I needed to change the password
>I'd only just chosen.
>
>Total smegheads. I gave up and GA lost revenue.

I'm currently using the EMR app, not least because as a fellow Abellio
subsidiary, the ITSO readers are interoperable. Yes, I know, they should
all be interoperable countrywide, but little steps... The Fat Controller
might be able to bang some heads together.

Talking of which, he's presumably going to replace all these different
TOC booking apps with one integrated one. Let's hope it combines all the
various advantages and none of the disadvantages.
--
Roland Perry