The apology came after Labour London Assembly member Val Shawcross highlighted a number of complaints on social media from passengers who experienced difficulties with TfL’s season ticket website.
Other disgruntled customers complained of “long delays” to speak to TfL’s customer service line.
One person who contacted Ms Shawcross directly said they’d been left on hold for 45 minutes before being told that they needed to go to one of TfL’s six Visitor Centres or use the more expensive Oyster pay as you go.
Shawcross said: “By closing all of London’s Tube ticket offices Boris has made it much harder for people to renew their season tickets.
“Twitter has been awash with people complaining that the online renewal system doesn’t work or that TfL’s phone lines are perpetually blocked. It’s clear TfL should have done far more to prepare and make this process far easier for customers.”
TfL says customers can renew tickets online, at Travel Information Centres or at any National Rail station and adds that “around 20,000 annual season tickets have been purchased through our website since early December 2015.”
Shashi Verma, Director of Customer Experience, said: “I’m sorry to hear that a very small number of passengers have experienced problems renewing their ticket.
“Station staff have been redeployed to ticket halls, gates and platforms where they can help customers most effectively.
“As we’ve done this, we’ve closed ticket offices that were more and more under-used as customers increasingly choose to travel using Oyster or contactless payment.”
Mr Verma added TfL was “consistently seeing a noticeable increase in customer satisfaction” since the changes were implemented.
Simon Smiler says
January 15, 2016 at 12:17 amIs this what Londoners really want?
TfL does not want to handle financial transactions, it wants the banks to do this. So it closed all the staffed ticket office windows, even though transaction amount limitations (for both cash and plastic card) mean that the ticket machines cannot necessarily handle sales of more expensive (typically annual) tickets.
Now (January 2016) TfL is trying to close the ticket offices at London Overground stations which were previously operated by train operators Silverlink, and if it is given control of the rest of London’s railways it will close all their ticket offices too.
TfL would also like to discontinue the Oystercard, but for now it is just trying to get everyone to use contactless bank cards. In doing this TfL is also helping the banks achieve their long term aim of cash being withdrawn from all transactions. But the last thing that many Londoners want is to put their trust in financial organisations which only a few years ago tried to cripple the country. Then there are concerns about card security and events which might see people being financially disadvantaged. I count myself as one of the latter and for anything other than simple point to point journeys very much prefer paper tickets. This way I can pay in advance safe in the knowledge that through no fault of my own I am suddenly having too much money taken from me.
Simon
Greg Tingey says
January 15, 2016 at 9:06 amWait for the avalanche of complaints in the next couple of months as it becomes apparent that Company Cheques will no longer be accepted for “Annual” renewals, then ….
As it is, there are not enough of the “Visitor Centres” – there should be one at EVERY London terminus & they should be easy to find.