Thanks John,

It almost certainly is an LU cash fare, though quite why that is available from National Rail outlets is beyond me. I don’t think it’s anything to do with Crossrail because the fare from Farringdon to the rail stations at Heathrow will be the same as, or more than, it currently is from Paddington. And the Crossrail fares which were added to the database in 2018 are all still there.

It will be interesting to see if it’s still there later today as it’s the third fare change day of 2021.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Mike (admin).

Hi Andyboy,

No charge is made when the only touch is within the zones covered by your travelcard.

Hi Darren,

If it is applied automatically then you won’t need to claim. It will be added onto your balance next time you touch in within 3 days of the refund being generated. You should also get an email if your card is registered. I’m not sure whether it applies to all categories or not.

If you haven’t received a refund or email after 48 hours then you can claim by calling the helpdesk.

Hi Darren,

If you click on your name next to your post you’ll see your profile. On the left hand side is an edit link which allows you to change any fields apart from your username.

Hi Chris,

When did you obtain this Oyster card? My first thought is that it’s the refund of the fee paid when you buy the card. That’s a two stage process kicked off with a touch in and completed with the next touch. I agree that it’s unlikely to be the Stratford fare.

Still puzzling.

Hayes to White City £5.20 (off-peak as you touched in before 0630, assuming you went straight to the tube at London Bridge)
White City to Oxford Circus £2.50
Oxford Circus to London Bridge £2.40
Total so far £10.10
London Bridge to Hayes should have cost a further £2.60 to bring you up to the daily cap. After 1900 you get 2 hours and 5 minutes to make the journey so you shouldn’t have exceeded that, and Hayes has validators so you couldn’t be going the wrong way. If you touched twice in the morning they would have to have been separated by 2 minutes to makae a difference.

Journey history. Do you have an account set up already? If yes, login* and add your contactless card to it and you’ll be able to see the history. If no, go to https://contactless.tfl.gov.uk and scroll down to where it says 7-day journey and payment history. I strongly advise getting a proper account and adding your card to it because you can then see history for up to a year. If you look at the Journey history and queries page it shows how to contact them about a journey.

I have to caution about what you did. Had there been a revenue check at Oxted you would probably have had to pay a penalty fare for travelling without a valid ticket. My recommendation would be to travel by the next train to East Croydon, touch out and get a ticket to Oxted and use that to get back in. Upper Warlingham is the furthest you could go on contactless, but your train may not have stopped there so you couldn’t touch out. No need to queue for the extra ticket at East Croydon as you can purchase an e-ticket on your phone. End of caution.

*Logging into a TfL account can be a bit of a pain because they’ve screwed up implimenting the captcha code, but you should get in eventually. It usually takes two goes.

Hi Shana,

I don’t think it’s a good idea to combine the airport shuttle with the rest of your journey. The fare for adults is £2.40 single or £3.80 for an open return (should be valid for a month). Children are half price.

For the rest of your journey I can’t actually see your quoted prices. I think the £37 price may be wrong. £12.60 is correct for contactless from Luton Airport Parkway to Waterloo using the Underground from Kings Cross. But there’s an even cheaper way. Stay on the Thameslink train to London Bridge and then pick up any Southeastern train to Waterloo East. This avoids the Underground and so saves you £2.40 making the fare £10.20. The main exit from Waterloo East is onto the concourse at Waterloo Mainline.

For your child it’s a bit more complicated. Contactless only charges adult fares so you’ll need to buy them a ticket. Unlike contactless you can’t avoid an Underground inclusive fare for Waterloo East, even though you don’t actually use it. The £10.30 price is from the Airport including the shuttle bus. Separately the bus is £1.20 and the train from Luton Airport Parkway is £9.05, so a 5p saving. If you get the return on the bus it’ll save a bit more over both journeys.

So to summarise, shuttle bus returns £3.80 + £1.90, contactless for you £10.20 and ticket for child £9.05.

Thanks Y’ossi,

That’s very interesting indeed. It’s clearly something to do with TOC smartcards because an Oyster or contactless bank card will never show exit.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Mike.

Hi Adam,

I’m sure there will be threads and articles when it becomes clear how the Elizabeth line is going to work in respect of interchanges with two tube stations connected to one EL station.

It’s important to distinguish between OSIs with NR stations compared to LU stations. The Liverpool Street to Bank OSI is only with Liverpool Street NR and is intended for people using the Northern line at Bank and National Rail at Liverpool Street. The same can be said about the Embankment OSIs (District/Circle to National Rail) and the Marylebone (NR) to Baker Street for Circle, Ham & City and Jubilee lines.

The big difference with Moorgate is that there is only one station. National Rail comes in to the Underground station and indeed the NR and Northern lines are above one another. This is why I can’t see an OSI between Moorgate and Bank.

Thanks for those observations, Adam.

Long term I think Moorgate to Bank is unlikely to be an OSI as it’s one stop on th Northern line. While Liverpool Street NR to Bank is an OSI, it doesn’t work to the Monument entrance. There may be some temporary stuff put in while the Bank branch of the Northern line is curtailed.

Right, that’s interesting.

Firstly, Kerry: National Rail smartcards which contain a travelcard allow travel within the zones without a separate Oyster card. I didn’t realise that they also provided journey history, which is good to know. The GTR version of the Key also allows PAYG travel on GTR services AFAIK, though I’m not sure how that is worked. If they rely on a data feed from TfL there might be issues.

Y’ossi: Given that you have a travelcard covering all of zones 1-6 I think touching pink readers is a little superfluous. If you truly were ending a journey at a station with one you’d need to exit via a gate. The issue we usually get is where a person has a ticket from say Brighton to Clapham Junction and wants to go onwards using Oyster PAYG without leaving the station. I have never seen a pink reader display Exit so I’m slightly skeptical that one would. Usually they display valid for interchange if using Oyster and touched in, or Enter if not touched in. With contactless they just say card accepted. I will follow this up though, so thank you for bringing it to my attention.

Hi Adam,

In answer to question 1, it won’t retrospectively discount the initial journey, but it will lower the off-peak cap for that day which the initial journey will count towards as long as it started after 0930.

As for question 2, it depends. As far as I know railcards do not actually have a start date. I also don’t know how quickly they’ll send out the railcard. If it’s a 1-year railcard then I’d get the discount added when you first travel to somewhere that can do it. If it’s a 3-year railcard there is another annoying consideration. The TfL system will allow the expiry date to be exactly 3 years from the date the discount is added, but railcards issued by post have an extra 5 days added to account for a slow postal delivery. If you take the railcard to be added on the day you receive it the system won’t allow them to put in the real expiry date. What they usually do is record the expiry as two years hence, then you have to get that updated at some point after the extra days have finished.