NS Flex not showing costs on check out

I also remeber that earlier with the 40% discount before the NS Flex thing it was visible immediately when I check out… NS Flex was supposed to be an upgrade and now I definitely find it a downgrade. The most important thing in a travel/billing system is to have an immediate and very clear overview of my travel history with the associated costs, I am shocked that NS does not provide one. If you want to use 40% discount you are trapped in black box system charging you potentially arbitrary costs that you can only see after you forget you even traveled…

With a subscription on balance you see the cost when you check out, with Flex this is not possible. If you have a Flex Dal Voordeel now (40% discount during off-peak hours) you can switch to Dal Voordeel on balance, that is is still available. All other subscriptions are only available as Flex subscriptions. The advantage of Flex is that you can easily switch to another Flex subscription, where before Flex you could not do this and some subscription were only available as yearly subscriptions. 

I agree that the checkin/out terminals should display the costs. Especially when checking in, you should be notified on what conditions you are checking in. Whether it’s peak hours, or if your subscription is active.

For example I have a subscription for free travel first class in the weekends (weekend vrij). This is valid from friday 18:30. The checkin terminal should notify me when that’s in effect, or when I’m outside those hours, notify me that I am traveling at full price and must take second class.

Now I have to check for myself if my subscription should be active (public holidays which the NS recognizes) and take note of the time before I check in, and then go in blindly and hope that the billing will be as expected.

How hard would it be to display the current conditions? Especially for people with multiple chip cards, they should get some confirmation about the travel they are going to take.

With NS Flex there only is NS Flex on your card and it is determined later on in the system of you have a subscription that gives your discount of free travel. This is also the reason you don't need to go to a machine to confirm a change in Flex subscription. Therefore it is not possible to show you the subscription and costs when checking out in the current set-up. Before Flex I had a Traject Vrij and with that subscription it was also not shown what the costs were even when I traveled outside my traject and I could not if that outside traject travel was with 40% discount or not.

They can’t because terminals have no knowledge about what subscription you have.

This is super weird, NS should definitely make that information available immediately, can be through an app, but preferrably the terminals. It’s a very clear question: under what conditions am I travelling? How come that everyone is not complaining about this?

Technically not possible, you would have to replace the entire infrastructure to make it realtime and even then each transaction would take seconds to process (like with an ATM).

There are a lot of complaints about that, but your travel history will show the cost after a day or two and your invoice is usually correct. If not, a phone call will sort it out.

It used to work earlier, so it is possible definitely :-) Not with Flex but with Dal voordeel it used to work, I could see the costs right after the travel. Well as far as infrastructure goes this should have been basic design principle in the check in/out infrastructure, with bus I really don’t mind 1 eur more less it’s fine to have access later, but with trains I do mind the costs a lot, and if not available immediately it’s not practical to check later you will most likely forget and end up potentially paying larger costs to NS for no reason. The system sucks, it’s that simple.

Yes, it worked earlier because the subscriptions were placed on the card. Now with Flex the subscription is not on the card, there is only NS Flex on the card and if and what subscription you have is not on the card but only somewhere in the system. This is the choice NS made.

All subscription are now only available as Flex subscriptions with one exception. Dal Voordeel is still available as a subscription on balance, so the old way where you see the costs when checking out. So if you have Flex Dal Voordeel now, you can switch to Dal Voordeel on balance and see all what you saw earlier. 

You will now see your NS transactions the same way (check-in/out) but the cost really needs to be determined by the Flex system, so the cost is not shown instantly.

When traveling on balance (stored on your card), travels with other carriers than NS will not even show up in your history (because NS has no access to that for privacy reasons).

It works both ways but traveling on balance is only available for Dal Voordeel (€ 67,20 per year or so)

You cannot change the cost of the trip after the travel, so they should figure out a way to present you that information, as passanger I don’t care about system, Flex, transactions… it’s their problem, I simply want to see the costs what I am paying when traveling, just strange.

The thing is that the cost of the trip isn't determined when you check-out with flex. It's just logged where you travelled to, but the cost are calculated in backoffice at a later moment.

Those costs are impacted by a lot of factors, like subscriptions giving discount or TrajectVrij having a lowest price guarantee for travels outside the set route. So actually the cost can change afterwards and isn't known when you check out.

Whole idea behind the flex system is that a backoffice can determine a lot more afterwards than the tiny computer inside the barriers can calculate in the seconds while you present your card. So it enables a lot of advantages for passengers which are not possible when travelling on balance.

Though NS remains NS and managed to introduce a lot of hurdles for using flex instead of making things easier.

Hi All, thanks for the useful post. It is not clear to me how long after I'll be able to see the applied discounts in my account: I activated NS Flex Dal Voordeel more than 3 weeks ago and still I can't see any discount… thanks!

Do you mean that you've travelled and in the travel history in Mijn NS you still see the full fare for every trip? Then it seems your season ticket was not activated properly. If you didn’t have NS Flex already, then you need to activate it at a ticket machine before it's active. You should have received an email with instructions about this.

Do you mean you don’t see any travel history at all? Then you should check if your card is properly linked to your account. If this isn't the case, or something else seems amiss, then you should contact customer service directly to have an NS employee take a look at it. This can be done by phone; they are available 24/7 at 030-751 51 55. You may also contact them by chat (click the link Chat with NS on this page) or by sending a message on X (formerly Twitter) or Facebook.

To be clear: NS Flex season tickets only give discount for train travel. You always pay the full fare if you travel by bus, tram or metro.