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I check my TfL account around once a month. When checking for July I was irritated with myself when I saw that, on 5 July, I had forgotten to touch in at Slade Green both when entering in the morning and when exiting in the evening, giving me two incomplete journeys to/from zone 1. I also made five bus journeys on that day.
I work two days a week in the office and normally use contactless for those journeys, but I tend to take the bus to Abbey Wood, which is a gated station, and begin my rail journey there. At the weekend I often use Slade Green, but I’m generally travelling on a pre-purchased paper ticket in order to get my Network Railcard discount. So 5 July was a bit exceptional because I commuted via Slade Green and I must have unthinkingly ignored the free-standing Oyster/contactless validators just as I would at the weekend.
In any event, I was pleased to see from TfL’s website that this degree of low-level senility is catered for and, within certain limits, you can normally get a refund in cases like this. However, the refund is less than the amount I was (through my own fault) overcharged.
All the journeys I made on 5 July were within zones 1-6 so should have been capped at £14.90. Because of the maximum fares, together with the bus fares, I was charged £22.10. So, once the incomplete journeys have been resolved and confirmed to have been within zones 1-6, I was expecting a refund of £7.20, but TfL has only refunded me £4.10.
Have they just looked at the journeys in isolation and refunded the maximum fare less the relevant single fare? And if so, isn’t that a bit odd? I can see the argument that the whole thing is my own silly fault, but in that case why give me anything? If I’m due a refund, it should be a full refund taking into account daily price capping, shouldn’t it?
Hi redreni,
Yes they should have applied the cap. They usually do in my experience. Go back to them and ask them to look at the whole days travel again. If you want to post your journey history for the day I’ll check your calculations.
Thanks Mike!
I’ll ring them tomorrow.
Here is the journey history. “Unknown” should have been Slade Green in each case.
05/07/2023 £22.15
Bus Journey, Route 428 £1.75
08:28Unknown to Farringdon £9.40
–:– – 09:21Farringdon to City Thameslink £2.70
09:30 – 09:34Bus Journey, Route 76 £1.75
09:37Bus Journey, Route 59 £1.75
12:29Bus Journey, Route 341 £0.00
13:17Bus Journey, Route 76 £0.00
18:36Moorgate to Unknown £4.80
18:57 – –:–Bus Journey, Route 99 £0.00
19:41Thanks for that. I’m not surprised they couldn’t work out what was happening. I’m not sure I know why the evening maximum fare was only £4.80 because it’s usually £6.40 off-peak. I also think the touch on the validator at Farringdon may be confusing things because that should have been part of the main journey. Anyway, you are correct that you should have been capped, so just ask them to refund the rest down to the cap.
Moving forward, you don’t need to touch the validators when changing at Farringdon if you are making a PAYG journey. They only need to be used if the Thaneslink journey is using a paper ticket and you are starting/ending a PAYG journey at Farringdon. The signage is awful in that respect.
I hope you get it sorted out.
Edit. I’ve just noticed you spent 9 minutes at Farringdon, so probably went out of the gates, but if you are just changing and don’t need to go through both sets of gates then you don’t need to touch.
Thanks.
I didn’t touch the validator at Farringdon (though the signs telling me I should did have me confused until I read your excellent article on the subject).
What I did was exit the station to grab a coffee and some provisions from the Co-Op before re-entering and continuing to City Thameslink (a necessity ever since the Co-Op at Ludgate Circus closed down). I’m usually quite happy for that to be charged either as a continuation or a separate journey, since daily capping means it costs me the same either way (providing I’ve touched in, of course).
Well, that was odd. Didn’t need to call in the end.
At some point during the course of today, unprompted, TfL amended the refund of £4.10 (which had been applied to my charges for 4 August, which they’ve still yet to take as far as I can tell), increasing the refund to £7.25.
They’ve shown their working for this: when I click on the £7.25 “amendment to past fares” credit it takes me to a page showing that I was originally charged £22.15 (which is 5p more than I was actually charged, but I’m going to let that go as I’m sure the admin of trying to give them their 5p back would cost them more than 5p to deal with). It then shows the amended charge as £14.90, the applicable daily cap, and calculates the refund as £22.15 less £14.90 = £7.25.
If I have to request a refund again I’ll give them a few days to sort themselves out before worrying about it too much. All looks fine from TfL’s end now. Will check my credit card account in due course but should be fine.
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