I’ll echo thanks and congratulations on completing the challenge. It’s good to know that the research paid off.

Thanks for clarifying the question, and apologies for the delay answering.

In the situation described, capping would still work, but the card could not be used for any further travel until the negative balance was cleared.

Thanks for letting us know. I completely agree about the 5p. It’s good to know that they have corrected it.

With a Railcard the Elizabeth line costs £8.70 off-peak, which is all day weekends. In any case, caps always override single fares. That does mean that sometimes a single fare will never be charged. If you change the card type to National Railcard/Gold Card in the fare finder you’ll see the railcard prices.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Mike.

Hi Michael,

Easy one first. As you only ever pay for each zone once, a 3-2-1-2-3 journey will only have one extension fare.

Now for some history. In the early days extension fares were easy. They literally were just the normal single fares for the zones covered at the same scale as the overall journey. Then contactless came along and extension fares became more dynamic depending on the amount of journeys made and the zones covered. If you made more than just a single return journey then it was likely that you’d hit a cap and have a couple of extension fares. It was still usually just the single fares for the zones covered, remembering that extra bits like Shenfield, Hertford East etc were still in zones, numbered 10-12.

The game changer was the extension to Gatwick utilising zones 13 and 14. GTR/DfT expected commuters to pay pretty much the same fares as they did on paper, but the bonkers cheap single fares between East Croydon (5) and Gatwick meant that contactless users were capped at zones 1-4 with cheap extension fares, undercutting the expected overall fares by a significant margin. The result was that contactless extension fares were allowed to be set at different levels.

Also introduced at the time of the Gatwick extension was the concept of mixed mode fares avoiding zone 1 being different to just the National Rail element. I’ll be honest, I don’t know what extension will be charged for Gatwick to Oxford Circus with a zone 1-2 travelcard. It might be like the Victoria fare, or it could be the Tooting Bec fare. If you try it out then please do let me know. I’m sorry I can’t be more precise at this point.

Hi Michael,

You’ll need to break the journey at New Cross Gate and touch out and back in again. That way the extension will be a London Overground charged one, and the National Rail bit will be covered by the travelcard.

I think you may have found a bug.

Hi Hazy,

No. The Wimbledon to Paddington journey is in the morning peak so will not count towards the off-peak cap.

It’ll work like this:

Bus: £1.75 towards anytime and off-peak caps.
Train: £3.70 towards anytime cap only.
Train: £3.70 towards both.
Bus: 45p – £9.30 anytime cap reached, £5.90 of off-peak reached but the anytime cap stops it.

The discount is actually 34% and then the result is rounded down to the next 5p. This is to ensure that it is always at least a third off after rounding. If you use the fare finder on this site, or look at the daily caps and travelcards information page, you’ll see what the caps actually are. In the fare finder remember to say you have a National Railcard rather than Adult.

Hi Hazy,

Assuming you have a railcard discount on your Oyster card then you benefitted from a minor bug. The bus journey counted towards the reduced zone 1-4 off-peak cap of £7.70, even though it was before 0930.

Had you not had a discount entitlement then you would not have capped. Your total would have been £12.05 which is below the zones 1-6 anytime cap of £14.90.

Bus fares also count towards rail caps. In theory, bus fares before 0930 shouldn’t count towards the off-peak cap, but for some unknown reason they do at present.

Hi Chris,

It’s possibly an extremely rare edge case of doing an auto topup after an unstarted journey. I’ll pass the history on in the hope that someone might look at it. In the meantime I’d phone the helpdesk and ask them to refund your contactless charge and adjust the Oyster charges to be what they should be. I’m sure you won’t be the only person complaining about the broken down c2c train.

You’ve reminded me, I also had that issue 2 weeks before. I phoned them up and they said try again the next day, which worked. I also suggested they change the website. One day!