Queues at St Albans City Station as ticket machines refuse to accept credit cards

TICKET machines at St Albans City Station stopped accepting credit card payments this morning (Thursday), causing long queues for passengers who missed trains as a result.

County Councillor for St Albans North, Allan Witherick, arrived at the station just after 11am to discover that none of the five self-service machines were accepting cards and only two of them were accepting cash.

Forced to wait at the kiosk in a long queue, Cllr Witherick missed two trains into London as did many other First Capital Connect (FCC) customers.

He said that when he asked the staff to sort out the problem they replied that they would only do it when the queue had gone - but a frustrated Cllr Witherick explained the queues would get worse unless they took action.

When he finally got through the barriers to catch his train, he saw that people were queuing out of the station to buy a ticket.

He said: "The worst thing was seeing one young family upset at missing their train and another getting through the barrier as the train door was closing just for the station staff to wave it on its way.

He added: "I left the station several trains late having taken 15 minutes just to buy a ticket. At 11.25am there were people queuing almost out of the station with three ticket windows open - that's not normal for 'off peak'."

A spokesperson for FCC attributed the problems with the machines to communications problems but said they were fixed within half-an-hour.