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Hi,
The fare will be the off-peak discounted zone 1 fare. The journey is from outside zone 1 so the off-peak rate applies and zone 1 is all that’s not been covered by your travelcard.
As for capping, that will apply if you reach the zone 1-2 cap (there is no zone 1 only cap).
Hope that helps.
Hi Chris,
I think it’s likely to be an authorisation rather than an actual charge. What times were your journeys and when did the bank charge go on? Is there still only one charge on there now?
I do realise that you’re quite sensitive to potential issues given your experience, but at this stage I’d not be inclined to worry.
Yes, the fare is from zone 3 rather than a specific station. The extension fares aren’t always the same, but they are on that line.
And yes, any LNWR service that calls at Watford Junction is fine.
At the moment the extension fares are £4.80 peak (0630-0930) and £2.20 off-peak. I would expect the fares change to add 10-20p to each fare, but details will be confirmed shortly.
Chris: Covid and government incompetence.
Hi Jaimie,
It will cap at zones 4-5 weekly, although this will only be done by the back office. That means you may be overcharged on the day but refunded later on. If you only make 2 rail journeys in a day then I don’t think you’ll reach the cap anyway. Any buses or trams you need will be covered by the zone 1-3 travelcard so won’t be charged.
£8.10 is the cap applied if all travel is within zones 1 and 2 only. There is a cap for zone 1 to Watford Junction, but you may not reach it. The same cap applies whichever operators trains you use.
The Anytime cap is £28.60 and the off-peak cap (after 0930 weekdays) is £21.30.
In so far as LNWR is operated by WMR, then yes. There are a couple of new trains in WMR livery running on LNWR services, but they are all LNWR. WMR do not operate into Euston.
Hi Julio,
Contactless and Oyster are both accepted on both LNWR and London Overground. Under 11s travel free with a fare paying adult between Euston and Watford Junction using either LO or LNWR.
Hi Krel,
There is no error, but there are a lot of unintended consequences going on behind the scenes.
Firstly you have to go way back to the early days of Oyster PAYG and a success story for this site. I discovered that Crayford to Alexandra Palace was always a mixed (NR-T) fare. It was possible to travel using only NR services by changing at New Cross and Highbury & Islington, but that didn’t have a fare defined. Then I discovered that NR had a paper ticket fare for the journey which wasn’t valid on the Underground and therefore cheaper. I queried this with TfL and persuaded them to change the default fare to NR only. As a result, fares from SE London to stations between Moorgate and Hadley Wood/Crews Hill were amended to default to NR only.
Fast Forward to the opening of the Elizabeth line and Liverpool Street LU station was joined to Moorgate as one station. This meant that someone arriving at Moorgate could legitimately walk to Liverpool Street and exit there. So the fares to both Liverpool Street LU and Moorgate were combined with the cheapest fare prevailing in each case.
Another issue that causes confusion is that there are two ways to travel between Abbey Wood and Farringdon. One uses the EL while the other is NR. Both are direct trains so there is no way to tell which way the passenger went.
Hi Robert,
As you may have seen we’re getting a lot of these queries at the moment.
From what you’ve said I think it’s likely that you’ve been charged the zone 1-6 daily cap plus the Maidenhead to West Drayton peak single and an off-peak extension fare from zone 6 to Maidenhead. The problem is that no-one publishes the extension fares so it’s difficult to tell. If it’s as I’ve suggested then the extension fare is £2.20 which seems a little low. It is possible that the first fare has part contributed to the cap, but I’m not convinced that is necessarily the case. If a smaller cap (eg zone 1-5) is used then there would also need to be an extension fare on the West Drayton to Canary Wharf journey.
At this stage I can’t offer much more. I am trying to get to the bottom of these extension fares, so watch this site in the new year.
Hi Jacek,
I’m getting a little further with my own query which is currently with GWR as they set the fares and cap extension fares for all the branches off the Reading mainline. The problem is that no-one seems to want to publish what the cap extension fares are.
I am intending to take the matter up with either London Travelwatch or Transport Focus in the new year because the unpublished nature of the extension fares means it’s impossible to check that you have been charged correctly.
Keep an eye out on the site.
Hi nssa,
The cap you reached was the zone 1-2 daily cap at £8.10. In addition you paid a peak zone 3-5 extension fare of £2.80 for the trip to Harrow. Remember that buses count towards any zonal cap.
Hi Lauren,
That’s opened a can of worms, so to speak. I’ve tried a few ticket selling sites, most of which didn’t want to sell me the correct ticket. The one which did work was southeasternrailway.co.uk, but that points out that it’s cheaper to go all the way to Waterloo and change onto the Underground there. Perversely you pay more for each zone that you want to use the Underground. So the fare is now £16.50 with the railcard. You can put Sloane Square in as the destination on Southeastern, but the ticket will be to Zone U1 London and can be used to go to any zone 1 tube station from either Vauxhall or Waterloo.
I did try South Western Railway’s website, but they wanted to charge singles each way, which hit the £12 minimum fare in the morning and was thus more expensive. Another site didn’t seem to understand what I wanted and was only selling tickets to Vauxhall.
You can also try buying the tickets at a ticket office, but make sure that the route is “via Surbiton” rather than “Any Permitted” which allows you to go via Virginia Water.
Hi Lauren,
As has been mentioned, Weybridge is beyond the contactless area at the moment, and sadly isn’t included in the extension planned for next month. Your options would appear to be:
Weybridge to Zones U123 London is £26.40 return (£17.40 with railcard)
Weybridge to Wimbledon is £12.60 return (£12.00 with railcard) plus 2x£3.70 PAYG singles.So, thanks to the £12 minimum fare before 10am, you’d be better off buying the through return.
Also to Si,
I’m aware that train companies are revising fares for the introduction of contactless. It seems that normal fares are being aligned with PAYG, including singles being half of the appropriate return. SWR are also abolishing their evening and Sunday fares on lines with contactless.
Luton Airport Parkway is the current limit of contactless on the Midland Mainline.
Phase 1 of Project Oval will be ready, from a software point of view, on December 3rd. The actual golive date is being controlled by the DfT who will probably want to make a big bang announcement. Currently they say by the end of this year.
Phase 2 is likely to be sometime next year, or even 2025, given that phase 1 was supposed to be ready earlier this year. That will include SWML to Farborough and GEML to Witham according to current plans. These do change from time to time though.
It may depend on whether there are any fares priced with the walking interchanges in mind. Ware to Bayford is only available via London, meaning that if you wanted to make the journey via Hertford you’d need two tickets, or two PAYG fares. Ware to Stevenage is available via Hertford, but it may depend on whether the fare is different to the sum of the two singles. The same consideration will apply to other pairs. If the train companies want through fares to be available using PAYG and those interchanges, they’ll have to ask TfL to set up new OSIs.
Hi Chris,
As Andyboy says, it is possible to use phones without requiring verification. Might be an idea to check that out.
If the bank refuse to pay the charge then TfL will probably blacklist the device. If it’s not registered to a TfL account I’m not sure what then happens. It can probably be sorted out with a call to the helpdesk. They should cancel/refund the charge once it’s explained that it was supposed to be a zip card being read.
I’m with you on not understanding how this all works. I did try it once on a bus, but I’m very wary of using systems that I don’t fully understand.
Hi Jacek,
It’s going to be a combination of a zonal cap (1-2, 1-3, 1-4 etc) and an extension fare for each direction from that zonal boundary to/from Windsor. I’m having trouble understanding how they are working these out, and I’m waiting on a response from TfL after a trip I made to Marlow. I think it’s going to be an error because the cap should be £19.20.
If you click on the link in your journey history relating to the return journey from Windsor where it says “Contact us about this journey” you could ask them to explain how the cap was calculated, and whether there were extension fares involved.
A brief holding update. I made a journey to Marlow in the evening peak having already capped at zones 1-5. The extension fare charged on the way to Marlow took the whole charge for the day upto the off-peak cap for Marlow. This was not what was expected at all. Nothing further was charged on the way back. I raised a query on the charge for the specific journey from my contactless account and am still waiting for a response. It’s been a lot more than 10 days, working or otherwise.
Well I am surprised there. I’d be asking Monzo how long they leave pending transactions which aren’t collected. My own experiences with a variety of credit cards is no more than 5 working days.
It’s up to you though.
Hi Bryan,
That’s an interesting journey. It uses an extra train, but cuts off quite a chunk of mileage by avoiding West Hampstead.
You may get lucky on one occasion and get them to allow a refund, but I wouldn’t repeat it until they decide, if they do, to add the alternative route.
To request the alternative routing you can use the help and contact facility on the TfL website. They may well have to consult with SWR and get agreement, so it won’t be a quick process. It would be beneficial to give them as much information as possible, including approximate journey times, to persuade them that it is worth considering.
Hi Alan,
Just catching up here. I hit a similar brick wall when I asked for the MJT multiplier for each potential journey along with the zonal coverage that they supply at each fare change. As I understand it, TOCs have requested that details are no longer quoted outside the zonal area to avoid people gaming the system. The TfL Web page has subsequently been cut back to show duration across 11 zones whereas it used to go up to around 20 zones.
I did have some success in that I managed to get their website amended so that it no longer said that no refunds would be given if the maximum time was exceeded.
I’m currently chasing a query about contactless extension fares which I fully intend to take to London Travelwatch if I don’t get appropriate transparency.
Please do let me have any updates to your correspondence.
