TfL have announced that Kentish Town, on the Northern line, will re-open to passengers on Monday 23rd December. The work on the escalators is complete, along with a comprehensive deep clean and a new floor and ceiling in the ticket hall. They have also increased the number of gates to 7.
There is still some work to complete before new ticket machines can be made live, so initially there will be some hoardings in the ticket hall. Customers wishing to top-up their Oyster card or purchase tickets will need to do so before arriving at the station. The other thing that will also be unavailable to start with is the passage within the paid area between the ticket hall and the Thameslink station footbridge. Access to the Thameslink station will continue to be via the out-of-hours entrance as at present.
This means that to interchange between the Underground and Thameslink stations you will need to touch out at the gates and touch back in at the validators by the street entrance. I’ve asked whether there will be an out-of-station interchange setting in use and am currently waiting for an answer. If you do interchange and it charges you for two journeys then contact the helpdesk and ask for a refund because they don’t intend to overcharge.
I have been overcharged many times changing between the Northern line and Thameslink (daily commute). I have obtained refunds previously without much issue but recently I had TfL hotline staff refuse the request after raising it with their manager, which is unacceptable given what you said.
Could you ask TfL to inform hotline staff that any journey through Kentish Town are eligible for a refund? They seem to have no idea what is going on with Kentish Town, saying “you have been charged a normal fare” – i.e., yes, the two separate journeys made in/out of Kentish Town were charged correctly, but it should have been one single journey between Northern Line/Thameslink.
Hi Lee,
Can you tell me what the full journey you’re actually making is, please?
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Lee. I will contact TfL and ask what’s happening. It’s disappointing that the work to re-open the internal pathway between the stations hasn’t been finished yet.
Mike,
It still hasn’t been re-opened, and I got caught out today. It didn’t help that on my northbound journey (Liverpool Street to West Finchley) I got confused about what was going on (it’s been a few years and I remembered just going straight through) and forgot to touch out leaving the Thameslink station, so I’ve got a charge for that. On the southbound journey (West Finchley to City Thameslink) I did it correctly but still got charged for two individual trips not the combined.
Annoyingly I was using an old Oyster card (to use up the balance, I managed that at least!!) which is unregistered, so will I have to now attach it to an account in order to request a refund?
Cheers,
Neil.
Hi Neil,
Sorry to hear about the hassles. Once you’ve registered the card I’d be interested to see the journey history for that day, in particular the touch out and in times at Kentish Town which registered as different journeys. This is something that happens more than just occaisionally and I’d like to be able to help pinpoint the issue. I have a theory. I asume you didn’t exceed the 1 hour 50 minute maximum journey time?
Mike,
I took photos of the ticket machine when I checked – there doesn’t seem to be a way to upload images but the details are:
Wed 23 Apr 17:21 Kentish Tn to City Thameslink Charge £2.90
Wed 23 Apr 16:49 W Finchley to Kentish Tn Charge £3.00
Wed 23 Apr 11:55 Kentish Tn to W Finchley Charge £2.20
Wed 23 Apr 11:14 Liverpool St LU to [No touch-out] Charge £7.00
Regarding journey times, I went directly to the final destination both ways.
Hi Mike,
So apparently I can’t register the card because it doesn’t have a security question – I did buy it 2010, so I suspect that was before the security questions were added to the cards???
Hi Neil,
That’s ridiculous! Presumably the helpdesk can see the history and should be able to issue a refund to your bank account? Please let me know what they say. There must be a way to sort out issues like this. You can after all give them details of the latest journeys. If you can think of anything else about the card to prove it is yours (last topup date/amount, where/when you bought it) that might help. I’ll ask some questions this end too.
Hi Mike,
I spoke to a very helpful lady on the helpdesk this afternoon, the refund for the missing touch out is already pending, and after some arguing with the computer she was able to link the oyster card to my existing account, adding a security question as well, and I can now see it on my list of oyster cards.
The refund will be applied the next time I touch in on a journey, however this is unlikely to be some time, therefore I can ring back from Friday onwards to get it applied. She has given me the reference number to quote.
She also accepted the overcharge on the route, and has put a note on the ticket for the additional refund from that – I can then get the card closed down and clear out the balance. So hopefully nearly there!
Cheers,
Neil.
Good to hear common sense has prevailed.
I’ve now rung back and received the refund in my bank account, however the Oyster card has not been refunded because I forgot to ask! The balance is only a few quid – apparently I can do that at a tube station ticket machine.
I’ve only had to ring TFL a few times over the years because I live outside London, but I’ve always found them very helpful.