Has anybody had any luck using their Monzo card in one of the new Northern Railway ticket machines with giant screens?
I managed to lock up a few of them in Manchester Victoria at the weekend just by simply selecting a ticket and trying to pay by either chip and pin or contactless. First the card reader freezes then the main screen.
It worked fine in the old machines but my local station has unfortunately just been “upgraded”.
Same issue here: SWR Contactless at Ticket Machines
I bet whoever wrote the card-handling software on those machines is the same idiot that did the SWR ones.
Whoever designs the hardware and software for train ticket machines needs a slap. They seem like the most convoluted, over engineered things ever. Dodgy touch screens, awkward screen angles, the card reader is 1ft from the floor, vending machine style door flaps, card readers that sometimes work, a contactless option that never works, that Thameslink swipe and go thing that is barely supported and so on…
And then you get your ticket and there’s a chance the gate at your destination refuses to read it so you awkwardly wave it at the guard while nursing your groin that just walked into the doors that didn’t open. Urgh.
They are pretty rubbish - though having said that I had no problems using one of them at Victoria a few weeks ago. Contactless went through fine on the first go for two different sets of tickets.
I think these machines (by Greggs) were only a few days old from what the ticket office said so maybe they’ve introduced a new bug.
Looks like the same problem as SWR but different machines, these ones are made by Parkeon rather than S & B.
Which suggests the same software inside; often the “manufacturers” of the machines just put pieces of metal together and buy off-the-shelf “very reliable” 2000-era software.