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I am someone here can please help me.
I am having issues with my travel costs not being calculated correctly on Oyster.
As of 2021 Oyster and contactless are using the same back office system charging the lowest combination of zonal caps and extension fares. Should there be a refund due it will be refunded once there is £1.50 or more to return, or after two weeks.
I traveled around zones 1-3 hitting the zones 1-3 cap.
I then travelled to Grays and back from the zones 1-3 area. I should have been charged the Zones 1-3 caps, with 1 peak extension to Grays and an off-peak extension back to Zone 3.
This should be £9.60 + £5.80 + £3.30 for a total of £18.70. Instead I was charged £20.05
I raised a query with TfL however they state that the fare charged was correct.TfL insisted that the extension fare would only apply to travel card holders. They also stated that only contactless would have charged me the combination of a zone 1-3 cap plus two extension fares. Oyster they insist would charge the zones 1-9 cap, though it does not seem this took place as I cannot make the math work.
I am not sure what went wrong here. If I had tapped out and used a separate card for the extension fares at West Ham I would have been charged less
| Date | Start Time | End Time | Journey/Action | Charge | Note |
| Wednesday | 23:11 | 00:30 | Grays to Beckton DLR | 0.95 | This journey was cheaper or free today because you reached a daily cap |
| Wednesday | 18:02 | 19:20 | Wimbledon to Grays | 9.60 | |
| Wednesday | 17:57 | | Bus journey, route 93 | 1.75 | |
| Wednesday | 10:17 | | Bus journey, route 93 | 1.75 | |
| Wednesday | 09:13 | 10:04 | Beckton DLR to Wimbledon | 6.00 | |On a side note:
I could have saved even more money had I used a paper ticket to Grays as a return ticket from Grays was £7.90 meaning a whole days travel would have been 17.50. I asked the rail staff what would be cheapest and they assured me that Oyster would be cheaper than a return paper ticket, but that is a separate issue.
Note I have a NR card entitlement on my Oyster which all parties were aware.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Hi YearOfTheBusOyster,
Sadly there are a lot of misconceptions in this post, some from TfL staff who really ought to know better.
So, the first thing to point out is that only adult Oyster cards with no discount entitlement go through the back office process overnight. This means that you won’t get a refund, sadly. It also means that sometimes it is cheaper to get a normal ticket with the railcard.
Helpline staff really ought to be aware that both Oyster and contactless charge extension fares, albeit that the Oyster ones are only calculated overnight. They also ought to know that Grays is not in zone 9 and that the caps are more expensive.
I can, however, explain how the charges were arrived at.
The first £6 counted towards the Anytime cap only.
The 2x £1.75 counted towards the Anytime and off-peak caps (and the bus cap, though that’s irrelevant here).
At this point the Anytime total was £9.50, just short of the £9.60 Anytime cap.
The £9.60 counted towards the Anytime and off-peak caps, but now they are the Grays ones of £28.60 and £14.05.
Finally the 95p took the off-peak travel up to £14.05 which was the off-peak cap.I hope this helps a bit.
Thanks. Does this mean that an Oyster with a railcard entitlement also does not qualify for weekly fare capping? No where does TfL advertise that an Oyster with a railcard entitlement could result in higher charges than a standard adult Oyster card without an entitlement. Personally this seems unfair.
If TfL does post this somewhere please do share as I did look before posting.
Many Thanks,
It’s not ideal, I agree, but I think the only calculations so far programmed in are for full adult fares. It is mentioned in a way on: https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/tube-and-rail-fares/pay-as-you-go-caps
Weekly cap
A weekly cap limits how much you pay for all your journeys in a fixed Monday to Sunday period. It works using adult rate pay as you go on contactless (card or device) or Oyster.
Hi, I’m posting on this thread as I think I have a related issue with an Oyster discount entitlement.
This does not involve caps, but the calculation of an an Oyster fare for a single journey into zone 1 in the evening peak. My Oyster card has the NR senior railcard discount applied.
I have two examples of journeys, tapping in during the evening peak between 16:00 and 19:00, but because the journey terminated in Zone 1 the charge on my Oyster should have been the Off Peak discounted fare.
The first is from Cheshunt NR to Zone 1, transferring from NR to LU at Tottenham Hale by tapping out/in.
The Off Peak discounted fare is £3.10, but I was charged £4.90.The second example is from Hertford East to Zone 1, again transferring from NR to LU at Tottenham Hale.
The Off Peak discounted fare is £6.45, but I was charged £7.00.It appears to be significant that I tapped out/in at Tottenham Hale as the amount I was charged on each occasion was the discounted Peak fare from my origin station to Tottenham Hale NR rather than the discounted Off Peak fare to Zone 1.
My questions are:
1) Is this overcharging for evening peak journeys terminating in Zone 1 a known issue?
2) If my Oyster did not have a discount entitlement would the overcharge eventually be resolved through the back office process?
3) Could the overcharge be avoided by not interchanging outside Zone 1. e.g. in my examples by interchanging at Liverpool Street NR/LU or travelling via Stratford where tap out/in between NR/LU is not required?
Regards,
To David,
I have also had this experience too you know but in a different location. I was travelling to Leicester Square (zone 1) from North Greenwich (zone 2). I went to Canary Wharf, did an OSI to the EL station and went to Tottenham Court Road and then took the Northern line. As Canary Wharf is in Zone 2, it had charged me the peak fare there when tapping out. Just like your situation, when I tapped out at Leicester Square it had STILL charged me the peak fare. I don’t know why this is happening tbh.
I have also made a post on this which is titled ‘Zone 1 peak fare charged in the evening peak’ where Mike has already replied to my post as this was made earlier. If you want to go and check that out you can do that too. Or wait for Mike to reply here anyway.
Hi David, and Duncan,
Just to clarify David’s specific questions:
1) Yes it is a known issue.
2) Yes, an adult Oyster would be corrected overnight and refunded within 2 weeks.
3) Yes, if you avoid touching out in zone 2 or above then the system will work correctly.And for Duncan, thank you very much for helping out. It is appreciated. As I tried to explain in the other thread, the Oyster system will not refund a previously charged journey. When you exit at Canary Wharf the system has to assume that you will end the journey there and charges the peak fare. When you come to exit again in zone 1, although the journey is now off-peak the system can’t charge less than has already been charged.
Hi Mike,
I am really struggling with TfL customer services here. I totally understand your point about discounted Oyster cards, however they continue to insist that a blue adult rate Oyster does not offer the same features as contactless, namely the best value combination for journeys. They continue to insist that oyster will always cap for all zones passed through rather than charging extension fares.
What they continue to state is
“Best Value Combination cap is different for Oyster and Contactless Payment Cards (CPC) purely because CPC takes into account extension fares on single journeys and Oyster does not.
This is due to Oyster being old technology and it simply was not possible to implement this way of calculating caps.
They would suggest to use CPC for the best value on travel of this type.”
Since 27/09/2021, when Oyster introduced weekly fare capping, oyster is processed through the same backend system as Contactless. As Oyster is not charged on a daily basis, the system works slightly differently.
“Each validation would now be run through the same back office system used for contactless to ensure the customer received the best value for their travel. If the customer was overcharged an automatic refund would be made to their Oyster card via the Faster Universal Load (FUL) facility.” If there is a refund due it will be sent to the Oyster card when the refund due exceeds £1.50, or once 14 days has passed.
For example if you look at TRU 139 (Obtained via an FOI Request) FOI-1196-2223, you will find it states:
“One of the key features of contactless payment, is that each journey is fed through to the TfL back-office systems, which then calculate the value of the whole day’s travel.
Each day, providing the customer does not have any incomplete journeys, the cost of travel will be capped at the appropriate Daily Cap.After End of Day, the customer is then charged one single amount covering all of their day’s travel and this will be repeated through the week on each day that they use their contactless payment card / device.
The cost of each day’s travel is then compared against the appropriate Weekly Cap, to ensure that between Monday and Sunday, the cost of their journeys does not exceed the Weekly Cap (which is set at the same price as the corresponding 7 Day Travelcard).
When Weekly Capping was introduced on Oyster for rail PAY users on 27 September 2021, we were advised that the customer would continue to be charged for each journey up to the Daily Cap but each validation would now be run through the same back office system used for contactless to ensure the customer received the best value for their travel. If the customer was overcharged an automatic refund would be made to their Oyster card via the Faster Universal Load (FUL) facility.”
Therefore the information TfL customer services are providing, conflicts the information provided by TfL’s own revenue team.
Am I getting the wrong end of the stick here? Or are TfL really unaware of their own revenue collection systems?
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