Sorry for a long post, but here’s a follow-up.
I never did contact either TfL or GA (I knew I wouldn’t bother) but that wasn’t the end of this saga.
As I mentioned, I used my Oyster for the bits where the ITSO card appeared to be not working: the Oyster history was:
Thursday, 13 March 2025 £3.95 daily total
15:22 – 15:31 Heathrow 5 [LU] to Hatton Cross £0.00 £16.90
15:31 Touch out, Hatton Cross +£4.65 £16.90
15:22 Touch in, Heathrow 5 [LU] £4.65 £12.25
14:59 – 15:13 Heathrow 2 & 3 [LU] to Heathrow 5 [LU] £0.00 £16.90
15:13 Touch out, Heathrow 5 [LU] +£4.65 £16.90
14:59 Touch in, Heathrow 2 & 3 [LU] £4.65 £12.25
13:38 – ????
Amersham to [Unspecified location] £1.35 £16.90
13:38 Touch in, Amersham £4.65 £13.60
13:21 – 13:35 Chorleywood to Amersham £1.35 £18.25
13:35 Touch out, Amersham +£3.30 £18.25
13:21 Touch in, Chorleywood £4.65 £14.95
13:17 Topped up, Chorleywood +£10.00 £19.60
12:28 – 13:11 Rickmansworth to Chorleywood £1.25 £9.60
13:11 Touch out, Chorleywood +£3.40 £9.60
12:28 Touch in, Rickmansworth £4.65 £6.20
Starting balance £10.85
The [Unspecified location] was Rickmansworth at 13:55. This seems to be one of those occasions where Oyster opened the gate and recorded the event on the card (I checked on a POM later) but the transaction didn’t make it to the back office. For several days, that journey showed in TfL Go as a pending transaction of £2.80, even though the balance was correctly shown for the charge of £1.35. Many days later, the exit at Ricky did appear correctly in TfL Go and online so I thought no more about it.
The next time I used my Oyster, a refund of £3.30 was applied to it. Whilst I’m pleased that most of my costs incurred as a result of TfL’s messing about with my ITSO card have been refunded, I couldn’t at first understand why I’d received this refund. I now do, but I shouldn’t have the refund (no, I’m not giving it back: I’m keeping it as compensation for the hassle).
I asked myself three questions:
How could it be known that the correct charge was £1.35 if the system didn’t know where I’d exited? [Answer: the back office didn’t know but the Oyster card did.]
Why was the pending charge £2.80? Surely the initial deduction at Amersham at off-peak with a senior railcard should be £4.65, which is indeed shown in the history above.
What has caused the refund, and why is it £3.30? In drafting this, I think I’ve answered this question: £3.30 is the difference between the correct maximum fare of £4.65 and the actual fare of £1.35 for an Amersham to Rickmansworth off-peak with a senior railcard discount.
So, although the Oyster card correctly recorded and charged all journeys, the back office was very confused. It lost the exit at Ricky for about a week before finding it. It then applied a refund of the difference between the maximum and actual charge for that journey, even though I had already been correctly charged.
The question of why the pending charge in TfL Go was £2.80 instead of £4.65 remains unanswered.
This is one reason why I will always prefer Oyster over contactless: I have much more control and visibility with Oyster, whereas the back office seems to have many problems. I’m not a frequent user of TfL’s technology, but if the number of issues I have with it is representative then it really has problems.