Trenitalia and online tickets with wrong QR Code: you could miss the train

Last week, for a weekend out of town, I organized my round trip by train, combining different tickets on the Trenitalia website, paying for them in a single solution via PayPal.

Immediately I notice a very strange thing, the electronic tickets that are delivered to me by email don't indicate the real price I paid for each route but for each ticket repeat the total amount paid. Perplexed, I check on my account that the correct amount has been withdrawn anyway and therefore I limit myself to taking note of how much a company so important is lost on small things.

On Friday morning I start my journey and arrive at Roma Termini station where I have the second train after about two hours, while I wait then I leave the Gate to take a walk to return about twenty minutes before the departure of my second train and it is here I come across a bitter surprise: the QR Code on my tickets that is so much advertised by Trenitalia does not work and I cannot go through the turnstiles independently.

Trenitalia from some time and in some stations in Italy has provided for the access to the trains of the turnstiles which should unlock independently by reading the QR Code on the ticket through a scanner. Trenitalia also wants to be smart and it would all be very nice if it worked, but technology is not for our public thing.

In my case, when I arrive at the Gate, I queue for the first turnstile, I arrive at the QR Code reader, I scan it, the hourglass starts to turn and it cannot validate my access. I re-queue for two more turnstiles, repeating the same operation with the same result, at which I manage to attract the attention of one of the gate attendants who, without any control, invites me to go through an unlocked turnstile on the far left of the Gate. This pathetic pantomime took my time and risked making me miss the train departing from distant platform 2 EAST. Absurd.

Why has my access to the gates not been validated? It is difficult to say for sure, but analyzing my tickets for my outward journey I realize that in addition to repeating the total cost paid online for each ticket, they all have the same QR Code and the same ticket code. Most likely, therefore, the QR Code of my first ticket was printed on all tickets, which did not have Roma Termini as the departure station and therefore my access to the Roma Termini Gate was not validated.

If my intuition is correct it is a very serious mistake made in the Use Case Analysis and consequently in the development of the online ticketing. The situation is even more disarming if you think that there are certainly hundreds and hundreds of users who have this problem every day and the situation becomes paradoxical if you think that to solve it it would be enough to generate a correct QR Code for each single ticket even if you make a combined purchase. . If for my trip instead of buying the ticket by choosing the arrival and departure station directly, I had chosen individual tickets, then I am more than sure that each of them would have had their own correct QR Code and access to the gates would have worked correctly.

Really nobody in Trenitalia is aware of this problem or is simply not interested in solving it?

As some would say: "And I pay". Obviously I pay Trenitalia tickets only and exclusively with PayPal in order to be protected and get a refund even when their ridiculous policies do not provide for it.

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