Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi Talster,
Sorry for the delay responding. This is not really my area of expertise. My understanding is that if they cancel your train you can travel on the one either side. You may be better contacting Avanti direct and asking for their advice.
Hi,
Alan has taken the words out of my mouth. Can you confirm which zones were purchased for the travelcard? And has your daughter travelled outside those zones by train? If she has then the card will have tried to deduct the extension fare from the PAYG balance. If there was no credit then the balance will now be negative and that means that the travelcard is invalid.
There are some hidden gotchas in the system, so if you can’t see what the issue is can you paste the recent journey history here and I’ll see if I can spot anything.
In the meantime, if she tops up enough to put the balance back to at least zero then the travelcard will work again.
Hi Busong,
You are correct with A and B, but as soon as you went out to zone 6 on a train the zone 1-6 cap is the one that applies. You didn’t reach that cap.
If your Oyster card was a plain blue adult card with no discount entitlement then the journeys would later be run through the back end and you’d get a credit. Sadly the back end only deals with adult fares so you won’t.
Hope that helps.
Hi Raj,
There ought to be yellow readers at East India Station. They are probably at street level. There are no gates at virtually all DLR stations.
You don’t need to touch any readers while changing at Canning Town.
You will have been charged for an incomplete journey which is £8.90 at peak times. You may be able to correct this online if your card is registered to a TfL account. Otherwise you can call the helpdesk and explain what happened.
Hi William,
As Alan says, the bus and tram cap is included within whatever rail cap you might be charged. If you make two tube journeys in zone 1 and take two buses over an hour apart then you’d be capped at £7.70 rather than the £8.30 the individual fares would total.
And yes, contactless works the same way and uses the same caps.
Hi Edward,
Can you confirm what time of day you make each of the journeys and whether you use any other transport to get to London Bridge?
Yes, Alan is right. I notice that the fare to the Elizabth line station isn’t set yet, but I’m sure it will be the same as to the NR station.
Hi Nikolas
You’ve stumbled upon a mistake in the fare database. The £5.50 fare is supposed to be avoiding zone 1. This can be done by taking the Overground to Surrey Quays and then heading back towards West Croydon. Because it’s the default fare it is charged if no other touches are made, and no touches are required at London Bridge as long as you stay within the paid area. Obviously when starting at New Cross Gate you won’t enter zone 1 so the fare from there is correct.
And yes, any travel after 0930 is counted towards the off-peak cap, even between 1600-1900, and with a railcard the cap is reduced.
OK, thanks for this. Have you called the helpdesk? Please let me know if you have any difficulty getting a refund.
Hi C,
Can you cut and paste the expanded journey history for your trip please? There are two fares for Bond Street to South Quay; the £3.20 you were expecting and another at £5.00 if you use National Rail at Waterloo. I’d like to see what stations the history thinks you touched at.
If, as seems likely, it was out and in at Waterloo LU then you’ve hit an issue with the fare logic. The helpdesk should refund you if you state what happened.
I’m pretty sure I know what has happened, but I’d like your history so I can take it up with appropriate people in TfL.
Hi Chris,
It probably is a faulty bus reader or computer which hasn’t picked up the latest FUL list. If she’s coming back on the bus then for simplicity I’d add whatever was needed to make a zero balance at a shop. There are several in Dartford. If she decided to take the train then I’ll pretty much guarantee that the top up will be there and will be collected before any deduction is made.
Hi Allie,
Thanks for dropping by. The reason I suggested potentially exceeding the maximum journey time is because on WDTK you mentioned disruption. On Mondays to Friday daytimes you have 100 minutes to complete a zone 1-2 journey. This should be absolutely plenty of time, but it might depend on where you start and end and how much disruption there is. If you can say what the journey is that would help.
Although TfL limit you to three online corrections to an incomplete journey in a month, you can contact the helpdesk and explain what’s happened and they will correct it for you.
Do you by any chance get emailed statements, or if it’s contactless can you still see the journey history from the last time you didn’t tap? If you can copy/paste the details here that would help.
Feathers: Thanks for your input (I think, really not sure about balloons and jetskis). There’s no OSI in play at Greenwich, but to get two journeys you have to leave two minutes between touches.
Thanks for letting us know, Len.
£5.05 is the difference between a full price adult peak single and the discounted off-peak single which you should have been charged. They seem to have missed that the full price adult single was capped at the discounted off-peak rate of £9.30 which also included your earlier journey in the opposite direction. I wouldn’t worry about it though – think of it as a little bit of compensation for the hassle.
What I will add for anyone else reading is that this was an unusual scenario. It is extremely rare for clocks to go out of sync, and even rarer for it to be more than 3 minutes. The grace periods at the start and end of the peak charging times are supposed to ensure that you are never overcharged. Clearly in this case something went badly wrong and the tech teams are working to ensure it doesn’t happen again. The only people who would have been affected were those touching in during the first minute or so after peak ended, which almost certainly included you. Many of those who might have been overcharged will in fact have capped anyway. Harsh though it sounds, I agree that refunds of this nature will be extremely rare, but I’m glad that we managed to secure it in this case.
Hi Len,
TfL have admitted that there was a problem around 7th June which lasted for less than a week. I asked them to provide statistics for users touching in and out between London Bridge LU and NR on that day, and for comparison on the same day a week later. The results were stunning and proved beyond doubt that the NR station gate clocks were badly out of sync. I strongly recommend re-asking for a refund as you were clearly overcharged.
For those interested, on 7th June over 4000 cards were touched in at NR before they were touched out at LU. Given it takes at least a minute to run between the two gatelines this is clearly impossible. Having said that, on June 14th 10 cards managed it which I think possibly relates to a later journey the same day. I also asked for touch in at NR after 0-2 minutes from touch out at LU. Over 4700 cards did it on June 7th compared to just over 1500 on June 14th. I did ask about statistics the other way as well, but the outcome wasn’t as conclusive though still showed an issue.
Hi Colin,
My understanding is that you can’t add credit to a 60+ Oyster card. I can’t personally verify this yet. I will flag up that you think the system may be allowing it.
If you touch in at Shenfield and travel to Stratford as an example, the system would need to use credit if your train was Greater Anglia, but not if it was an Elizabeth line service. The system has no way of knowing.
In this instance I think extension possibly relates to boundary of zone 6 tickets.
Hi Alan,
The £1.30 refund will be related to an earlier days travel. It was probably added to the queue after you touched in at Euston Square such that it was ready to collect at Paddington.
Hi Emmet,
The cheaper route uses Overground and Underground only whereas the other one uses National Rail between Clapham Junction and Wimbledon.
See the fares guide page for more details.
Hi Aroon,
Other than using a different card as Chris suggested, there’s no way of splitting the journey without waiting 20 minutes at Vauxhall. You could touch in on a bus, but that would add more than you save.
The other possibility is to wait at Kings Cross St Pancras until 0927 before touching in. Off-peak starts a little early to avoid issues with station clocks being out of sync. The TfL journey planner says you should start at Kings Cross at 0923 to be able to make the 0951 from Vauxhall. If you can walk fast then you should be able to make up the lost time. Trains to Chessington leave from platform 8 at Vauxhall.
Hi Colin,
Sadly you can’t add anything to a 60+ Oyster card. It’s an off-peak season ticket, but because its validity sometimes depends on which train you use, the system can’t know when to use credit and when the ticket is valid.
When travelling beyond the validity of either a 60+ Oyster or a Freedom Pass you’ll need a paper or smart ticket from the boundary station. The train doesn’t need to call at that station. Sometimes a ticket from boundary of zone 6 to your destination will be better, particularly when there are more than one route that the train could take.
