I have added a new section in the left sidebar called Latest Comments. This gives a snippet of the last eight comments (not posted by me) from anywhere on the site. I have ignored my comments as they are usually responses to questions raised and thus best read with the previous comment.
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Hi Mike, I have been having a few problems with my Oyster card not reading properly. At Greenwich yesterday I tapped in, but apparently didn’t do it properly (there is no gate) and ran for the train. When I got to Charing Cross, I couldn’t go through and was charged a maximum fare – this meant there was no money left on my card. I had only topped up a few days previously, with £30, and had only travelled a few journeys ago so asked a Network South East guy to look at it for me – he gave me the third degree about not tapping in, when I said I did, he then asked had it bleep twice, I said it might have done but I wasn’t sure and he asked me in a very bullying tone why I had got on the train. why would it have bleeped twice do you reckon if there was enough credit on the card – until the £7.50 was taken off at Charing Cross, which put me into negative. He then said I had to buy a ticket for the journey. He then announced again loudly in that bullying tone that he could give me a penalty fare if he wanted to, to which I stupidly replied “go on then” because I was already humiliated and upset and didn’t think he could. On the penalty ticket, the guy has ticked the box “no valid ticket” rather than pre-pay Oyster. Is this correct, why would he have ticked that box, given that I didn’t need to have a ticket, I had my Oyster card, which I told him had been playing up anyway and he could see I did the same journey every day and had topped up only a few days ago. Kathryn
Hi Kathryn,
First of all, please calm down.
Starting at the end, technically an Oyster is only treated as a ticket if it has a valid travelcard on it or it has been validated by touching in at the start of the journey. If you get two beeps it means that something is wrong and you’ll also get a red light. Most commonly it means that there isn’t enough money on the card, but it can also mean that the communication failed between the reader and the card or several other less common things. In your case it sounds like it was a comms failure. You really need to get a new card. If you contact the helpdesk they can look at the recent history and see whether you have been overcharged and how many times. If you are due a refund they can send that straight to a bank account. An Underground ticket office can transfer the balance and/or deposit to a new card. You can get the new card from a shop and add some initial top-up to get you into town if it’s easier.
For the future, make sure you get your new card registered with an online account so you can regularly check your journey history. If you use it quite a bit then consider auto top-up so you haven’t got to worry about needing to top up.
Thank you so much, Mike. I will get a new card… and calm down! Thanks for the advice.
Kathryn