Online booking? Not worth the trouble

My regular readers will already be familiar with the rigmarole necessary to book National Express coach tickets online. You have to jump through several hoops simply to travel between the capital of England and the capital of Wales – a process which takes far more time and demands far more patience than the average passenger has to spare.

But, gentle reader, that's just the start of it. Booking a coach ticket online is an absolute piece of piss compared to buying an advance ticket via the Arriva Trains Wales website.

I'm travelling to Bristol tomorrow, so I decided to see what the fares were. I was surprised to learn that an off-peak day return from Aberdare was £14.90. That puts Bristol – some forty minutes from Cardiff – in more or less the same price band as a day return to London by coach. Anyway …

I tried to log in to my account, but (needless to say) I'd forgotten my password. I first registered with Arriva Trains Wales about five years ago, just for their news updates. It was the first time I'd tried booking a ticket online. It took me no less than five minutes to reset it.

First I had to request a new password, which arrived by email within seconds. Then I had to complete a whole new registration form, with the 'mandatory' boxes unlabelled. Every time I clicked 'Submit', I was returned to the top of the form, because I hadn't completed one of the mandatory fields. After four attempts I was finally able to access the website.

Then I had to choose my journey date and time. That was easy enough. I'm travelling out in the morning, so I opted for a fairly early start (after 0900, naturally. I know it's the weekend, but I wasn't in the mood to fuck around). I chose my departure time, selected the 'off-peak day return option', and waited to be taken to the payment screen.

And waited.

Even though an off-peak day return ticket is 'open' (available on any train at any time), it transpires that you still have to choose a return service. You don't necessarily have to catch that train, of course, and seats aren't bookable anyway, so I really don't see what difference it makes.

I went for a fairly late departure, so that I'll have a minimum of hanging around in Cardiff on the way home. I finally arrived at the payment screen, and entered my card details. I waited while my payment was processed, and then the confirmation appeared on screen, along with an eight-character booking reference.

The confirmation email arrived a few moments later, but there was also an option to have the details sent as a text message to my phone (at an additional cost of 25p, of course). Since I won't have access to the internet while I'm at the station tomorrow, it seemed like a good idea. I entered my number, selected my service provider, and waited for the website to generate an eight-character code, sent as a text message, which would link the two together.

In fact, I did it twice, because the first time the operation was 'unsuccessful'. The second time it failed, I defaulted to ancient technology and wrote the booking reference on a scrap of paper.

I still don't have the tickets, mind you. They take two hours to generate via Arriva's computer system. Then I can walk over to Aberdare Station and collect them from the ticket machine there – using my card and the booking reference to release them from the system.

Hang on a minute, though – will the ticket machine actually be working today? It hasn't been operational on my last three train journeys from Aberdare. I've got a bad feeling about his already. By the time the tickets are ready for me to pick up, the booking office will have closed for the day. Watch this space, folks …