I wonder if the full history is held by ITSO (the organisation) and/or GA (in my case). I might see what a subject access request gives me…
I’m fortunate that I can afford to value my time and sanity over the few quid extra I spent. Dealing with customer service – in any organisation – is usually a time-consuming, stressful, and often unproductive experience so I avoid it when I can, even more so when the issue is complex and I’m unsure of my justification.
I’ve looked at the issue in more detail and I’m puzzled why the gate would return error 26 “Entry and Exit at same station” (what does such an “error” mean anyway?). If the system was concerned about my rapid exit/entry/exit/attempted entry then error 41 “Pass back through / Zig-Zag: Attempt to Enter after an Entry and Exit at the same station…” would seem to be more accurate and appropriate.
Whichever, there must also be a timeout and this backs up your theory that even though the POM at Ricky still showed “void”, presenting the card at the gate may well have cleared the problem. The fact that the ITSO card stores only the most recent journey also means that it can only test for passback at that station and would work properly elsewhere.
Looking at the ITSO specification documents and my card, no passback rules seem to be defined in the ticket (i.e. the travelcard as stored on the card). In this case, passback rules are as defined by the POST (Point of Service Terminal), i.e by TfL. It therefore seems likely that the same rules apply to ITSO as to Oyster/contactless/paper. If so, at least that gives us some times to work with. If I’d waited at T2/3 for 30 minutes the ITSO might have worked again.
Sorry, Mike, I guess this is a little off-topic for your site; I will let you know if I hear anything useful, though.