I bought a train ticket to London over the internet, it cost me £131.00. I decided to pick it up at the station rather than pay to have it delivered.
At 6:15 in the morning I entered my 8 digit code into the machine only to be told that I also needed to insert the credit card I paid for it with. Needless to say this was at home, and my train was going to leave in 15 minutes.
I went to the ticket office, they couldn’t do anything to help other than offer the number of the call centre. (And point out that this happened often).
I phoned the call centre, to get a recorded message telling me that it didn’t open until 8:30.
I then went back to the ticket office and bought a second £131.00 ticket.
Needless to say I am now in lengthy correspondence with East Midlands Trains.
The source of all this pain and despair? People making things too complicated. I perfectly understand the need to enter a code or my card to get the ticket, but both?
In the 14th century William of Ockham created his razor (rule of thumb), it is the principle that “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity”
Or, to put it another way Keep It Simple Stupid.
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