With an increase in ticket prices due, Go South Coast area already announcing other changes to some tickets coming up in October.
Following on from the announcements that Bluestar, morebus and Southern Vectis are putting up fares, they will also be withdrawing the paper version of adult weekly tickets from a few months later.
- Click here for the Bluestar price changes on 3rd September
- Click here for the morebus price changes on 3rd September
- Click here for the Southern Vectis price changes on 3rd September
Paper Withdrawals
The changes that affect paper tickets though will take effect from Wednesday 1st November.
This will only affect weekly (also known as 7 Day) adult paper tickets, with these being available only via the app, or by weekly price cap on the tap-on-tap-off that many people now use.
Go South Coast are citing among other things that these tickets are susceptible to fraud. Not surprisingly, with the cost of fuel up again, and wages on the increase, then steps to reduce this are inevitable. I suspect most of that is people sharing the same ticket as I am sure the use of photocards for weekly tickets was removed further back than memory allows….
If you are commuting into a Bluestar or morebus area by train, then do not forget you can also purchase PlusBus tickets alongside your season tickets. These are sometimes cheaper than even the operators equivalent and are available in daily, weekly, quarterly and annual variants.
This is not available on the Isle of Wight though… sorry
Not good at all!Been caught out on more than one occasion with “Tap on,tap off”,by being charged the full amount for a journey after 6pm,instead of the £1 evening fare.When i noticed they refunded me,but have to wonder how many passengers were over charged without spotting it.Yes,the paper tickets are transferable and that seemed to be a selling point for bus operators,when they ditched needing a photocard.
The Isle Of Wight County Press covered this,but the Echo have ignored it-yes,they have been informed,by the way.
I don’t think the fraud in question is transferability between people but actual fraud. Due to how contactless works on buses (unlike shops the funds aren’t deducted during the transaction but stored & done later when the ticket machine can communicate without delaying the journey) it has become clear there is an issue when using contactless that is being exploited by the unscrupulous to obtain longer period tickets on bus without actually paying – this has been spreading across the country over the last 6 months and is an ongoing issues. I don’t fully understand it myself, my colleague who deals with the ETM programming has been managing this for months, but there is a way using certain electronic payment methods to trick the ETM into thinking a valid payment method is presented but when it comes time to submit it there is no payment method attached to the account details. This means the customer gets a ticket for free and the system used means that it is easy to generate new payment method details so the system can’t easily block the method in the way it would if a conventional card had been presented and the transaction failed. It takes my colleague several hours a week of reviewing failed transactions and then cancelling the QR code of unpaid weekly tickets to keep on top and for a much larger operator like GSC that may be unviable.
If it`s a fraud involving contactless payments,then they could still sell paper buses,but only if paying by cash.
Should be paper bus tickets.
And some operators have done that but it creates an extra layer of confusion that you can pay contactless for some tickets but not for others so you have to decide what works best for you and there is a general move away from paper season tickets anyway so it may be seen as simpler to speed the process and do the move now. Admittedly my employers managed something similar by simply not increasing their contactless limit last time it was increased but it does mean all weekly products can be bought on contactless which is where the fraud is largest generally so it isn’t as good a solution as it may appear and we are moving more season ticket options onto mobile only options now as well.