C2c have admitted that a data error is causing customers using contactless PAYG to travel from any station east of Upminster or Grays (ie anywhere that doesn’t accept Oyster) to either Fenchurch Street or Liverpool Street to be overcharged by up to £3.00. The issue is actually bigger than that, but first, here is what the companies are saying:
On the c2c website:
We advise customers travelling from stations east of Upminster and Grays to Fenchurch Street and Liverpool Street to purchase paper or mobile tickets today to ensure you pay the correct fare. A technical issue in our fares data means pay as you go with contactless fares are currently being charged at an additional £3 for these journeys. All other journeys, including those onwards using the Underground, are unaffected. We are working with TfL to resolve the issue and will be issuing guidance soon on how to claim for a refund.
This only applies to journeys that either started or ended at Fenchurch Street or Liverpool Street stations.
c2c would like to apologise to customers for any inconvenience this technical issue is causing. Customers are advised to keep a full record of all contactless journeys where they have been overcharged, and a further update, including details of how to claim a refund, will be shared as soon as possible.
A statement from TfL:
We are aware that, following a pre-planned update to the fares data within the contactless pay as you go system last weekend, some of the data provided by c2c was incorrect. As a result, customers travelling specifically to Fenchurch Street or Liverpool Street (National Rail) on c2c services from outside London may have been overcharged. All other contactless journeys are not affected by this issue.
We apologise for this issue and are working closely with c2c to urgently correct the data, and are working to issue refunds as soon as possible to affected customers.
Advice for Affected Customers
- This issue only affects journeys that start or end at Fenchurch Street and Liverpool Street (National Rail) on c2c services from outside Zone 6 (excluding Purfleet, Chafford Hundred, Grays, and Ockendon). Customers who change at Upminster, Barking, West Ham, Stratford or Limehouse to other services, or are made solely within the London Zonal system, are not affected by this issue.
- To avoid being overcharged, affected customers are advised to purchase paper tickets for these journeys until the issue is resolved.
- TfL can only implement changes to the fares system at pre-determined points in the year but is working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.
- Customers who believe they have been incorrectly charged can also contact TfL Customer Services. Our team will review journey history and issue refunds where appropriate.
So, what’s actually happened and why is it bigger than they say?
C2c made some minor changes to the fares data for their stations beyond Oyster. This data was passed to Cubic/TfL who integrated it into the PAYG database and released it on Sunday morning as part of the (roughly) quarterly update of fares data. Unfortunately the fares for journeys wholly on c2c starting or ending at Fenchurch Street or Liverpool Street were wrongly given the fares which apply if you travel onwards on the Underground to another zone 1 station. The overcharge is £2.80 off-peak and £3.00 at peak time.
The observant among you will already have spotted the problem making this far bigger. The extra fare for travelling on the Underground in zone 1 is supposed to be the same as a zone 1 Underground fare, that is £2.80 off-peak and £2.90 peak. So a commuter making a c2c+tube journey in the morning and a tube+c2c journey in the evening will be overcharged every day by 20p if they use the same payment card. If they use a paper/e-ticket for the c2c journeys and an Oyster card for the tube journeys they won’t be overcharged. The daily cap or travelcard won’t help them unless they make other journeys in London on the same day. Here are the details for Southend Central:
Southend Central to Fenchurch Street: £12.40 (paper until they fix the issue above)
Tower Hill to Oxford Circus: £2.90 (PAYG)
Southend Central to Oxford Circus: £15.40 (PAYG)
Daily Cap/Travelcard from Southend Central: £36.50
I have reached out to c2c for comment and will add anything they say when I receive it. In my view this kind of back-door fares increase makes using contactless PAYG on National Rail somewhat of a lottery and the government needs to get a grip if they really want people to consider using this option.
Update:
C2C and TfL have come to an agreement that the incorrect fares to/from Fenchurch Street and Liverpool Street will be fixed from Sunday 29th June. Automatic refunds will be processed to refund everyone who may have been overcharged. The first refunds have already been made, and they will continue to be processed until the fix is in place.
There is no word yet on the extra 10p needed to travel to zone 1 Underground stations in the peak.
Given these problems, and how unintuitive it is to typical commuters, scrapping the mixed fare scale should really be a priority in the first place.
I’d certainly like to see it go across the board in zones 1-6, and maybe zones 1-9, but from outside the zones it’s a question of how do you raise the money? People have always been charged extra to use the Underground at the end of a journey into London on National Rail. It’s the same for paper tickets as well as PAYG. If you don’t use the Underground, would you be happy subsidising those who do?
Certainly a fair fare system would want to keep something similar to preserve the London Terminals ticket idea for those coming from beyond the zones.
We got given the TfL-Eus and TfL-LSt fare scales to do that for stations within Z1-9 (the latter is gone, and the former can be buffed out for Z1-6 as the peak discount is 10p for 1-2 and 1-4, and nothing for other journeys) because people complained about it. There’s also cheaper Heathrow Elizabeth line fares if going to Paddington vs any other Z1 station.
I think South London would be very happy to see the mixed-mode fare go provided it was the NR scale, not the NR-T scale, that became the fares they had (and even more happy if it was a cheaper TfL-set scale!) as no one would lose out, and mixed-moders would gain. Whether the DfT would go for that is a different matter.
The only other way that’d achieve that is by separating TfL services out from National Rail entirely and charging separately but that would mean new gate lines between platforms at places like Wimbledon and Farringdon. My feeling is that this would be even more of a nightmare for the commuter and raise more issues than it solves.
I’m more surprised by the number of people who have no idea what they’re paying, because they just don’t bother to check, than those who actually have issues with the current charging structure.
This wasn’t about mixed-mode TfL/NR fares, but about the lack of London Terminals fares. Such things can be put into the system – and already are, and the problem here was that they were not (and there’s the other problem that the wrong fare was entered for peak fares) and so a default fare to/from Z1 was incorrectly charged.
It was kind of about both, Si. The inflated fares to/from Fenchurch Street and Liverpool Street have been fixed now. The erroneous extra 10p on peak fares to/from zone 1 stations other than the two terminals still exists. Although this isn’t the traditional mixed mode fare as applies in zones 1-6, it’s certainly the normal add-on when someone comes in from outside the zones and uses the Underground. I may try again to ask c2c why they are encouraging split cards by overcharging through journeys, now that the big error has been fixed.