It was certainly an interesting experience; you can always trust me to stress-test a ticketing function 🙂
I don’t recall trying the ITSO on the gates at Ricky: I tried the POM and as it still showed void I gave up and resigned myself to a discussion with GA about a replacement card.
For that reason, I don’t think I can ask TfL for a refund as I chose not to use the ticket I already had. It was only a few quid anyway.
Also for that reason, I can’t answer your interesting question about whether the block applied only at T2/3 and would have cleared had I tried the card on a gate elsewhere.
One thing that backs up that that might be true is that the POM at T4, after the card had been unblocked by the gate at Hatton Cross, showed incomplete details of the last journey (i.e. from HC to T4). Usually the place/date/time of both touches would be shown but it had only the place. The full place/date/time was shown for T4. This suggests to me, and I think you’re suggesting the same, that the gate at HC unblocked the card in a way which resulted in incomplete details being recorded. As no-one will ever tell us, we can only speculate.
Before contacting GA – though I hope I don’t have to – I need to test the ITSO to make sure it’s still working properly. I’ll pop up to London sometime this week and make some more normal journeys.
One of the benefits of Oyster is that every touch (at least until TfL broke it in TfL Go) is visible. An ITSO seems to hold only the last journey. Do you know if the full history is available from an ITSO?