UPDATE: Southeastern say that a fix has been applied today after they received an email yesterday.
FURTHER UPDATE: It hasn’t been fixed as touches are missing from yesterday (Sun 4th).
After hearing reports about a serious equipment malfunction at Kidbrooke station in Southeast London I visited the station last night. It seems to be related to the activation of new validators at the Pelger Square entrance on the up platform starting from the weekend of the 5th/6th September. Contactless and some Oyster touches are not being transmitted to the central system. This results in incomplete journeys which might be automatically resolved based on previous history. If they are not resolved then a maximum journey charge is applied.
On my contactless card I ended up with two incomplete journeys, both starting at Crayford because it can’t tell which way you’re going when you use a validator. The first one was available for me to manually complete, so I did and the change was accepted within an hour and updated. The second journey was auto completed to Watford Junction. It said this was to avoid overcharging me, but the fare charged is more than the incomplete journey charge, so that didn’t work out well. I have been to Watford recently, though not the most recent journey.
On my son’s zip Oyster card the journey from Crayford to Kidbrooke is shown correctly but the return is shown as unspecified location to Crayford. This is because the fare deduction is made on the card and the validators are working properly in terms of Kidbrooke station itself. At least I don’t need to get a refund for the zip card.
Notwithstanding the inconvenience of getting incomplete (or wrongly completed) journeys adjusted there is a more serious aspect. If a revenue check is made and the central system thinks you are out of the system at the time then you get a maximum journey charge and a black mark against your card or device. If you get three of these then your card or device is hotlisted and cannot be used again on TfLs system.
Still not working today. Neither Pegler Sq nor the original readers on the Kent-bound platform. 2 incomplete journeys. Must be a nuisance if it’s your regular station. Southeastern have pasted notices up blaming TfL.
Hi David,
Thanks for this. I’m beginning to wonder whether this is colateral damage in the struggle to keep TfL running.
I contacted TfL who said technicians went every 3 days to the station to download the data on the card readers – so I’ll see if the journeys ‘right’ themself shortly.
Hi David,
I don’t know about every 3 days, but the journey history has all updated today, going back into last month. I’ve also heard from SE on twitter that it’s all been fixed now.