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Interesting. Annoyingly I thought it was platform 0 there, not 5, but hopefully my email to GTR won’t confuse them too much.
This is very confusing. There are no cpay fares for Hertford North to Welwyn Garden City, possibly because they are both in the existing pre-oval contactless area. Also, isn’t there an issue at Stevenage where you have to exit and re-enter to get between platform 0 and the rest of the station? Do Hertford North trains ever use other than platform 0?
Hertford (North presumably) to Welwyn. Is the difference because there’s two ways to go and one is deemed more likely for North with the other winning for Garden City?
Hi Adam,
TfL don’t usually make new fares available early, unless it’s the annual fare change in March. They may be constrained by what has been agreed with the DfT. The data will be loaded onto the live system on December 7th, but even that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be on the fare finder. Unless something goes wrong I would expect the fares to be available by December 14th. I will be keeping a close eye because there should also be a resolution to the Walthamstow Central issue at the same time.
Ah, I understand now. In which case, I don’t think there is a free way of breaking the OSI, unless you are going to cap anyway so a touch on a bus is effectively free. Have you managed to get a refund?
I think the number of people who exit and enter the station within 10 minutes after fulfilling their reason for going there is probably quite small.
I take it that you aren’t complaining about being saved a complete single journey charge?
I’m not familiar with Oxford Circus. Is it just one entry and one exit gateline, or does the entry gateline also do exits? If the latter then you may be able to enter, exit and enter again. You could also touch on a bus, albeit with a charge, so I realise that that option won’t appeal to you. If you end up with a here to here journey, and two maximum fares, then the helpdesk will certainly resolve that.
The reason it is there is to assist passengers who want to interchange but end up at the exit area with nowhere else to go.
I think the fact that most of the Gpay issues will have happened after the AWS outage started probably meant that some staff did jump to the wrong conclusion. In fact, if I hadn’t been aware of an issue on Sunday and had a problem on the Monday morning, I’d have jumped to the same conclusion myself.
As to what caused the issue itself, you’ll not get more than they’ve said. It was probably an issue at TfL’s end, but maybe caused by a change implimented by either GPay or Amex, that TfL hadn’t properly understood or wasn’t properly explained to them. As long as no-one is out of pocket then it’s just one of those things that happen occasionally. And I say that as someone who loves to know exactly what happened and gets frustrated when people won’t explain.
Hi Chris,
I think you could be right. I don’t think I’ve ever applied for a refund without calling the helpdesk because my issues are always more complicated. I’d imagine that the email should show the amount. It’s likely that the journey history will also be updated to show the start point added by the passenger. If the refund is for the wrong amount then I suggest calling the helpdesk and explaining it to a human who will have the full journey history in front of them.
Thinking about it, I’m surprised those validators aren’t continuation exit.
Hi Andrew,
You will be fine. There is no penalty for not touching a 60+ Oyster within the zones that it covers. You may potentially be asked to show your other ticket, but it is unlikely. Just make sure that you have the other tickets.
Thanks for raising this issue. I’ve heard back from my contact at TfL who says:
The Amex Google Pay issue was unrelated to the AWS outage and has now been resolved. There was no impact from the AWS outage for TfL’s fares collection.
This makes sense given that the Amex issue started on Sunday whereas the AWS outage wasn’t until Monday.
OK, so 41 is a passback error. This really shouldn’t be happening. Have you noticed problems at any other stations?
However, this record looks like the existence of OSI overruled the fact that a same station exit between 0-2 minutes is cancelled within 45 minutes, which can prove problematic if one accidentally enters the wrong station among a set of OSIs to start his journey.
It seems to have been cancelled to me. They didn’t deduct a new entry charge at West Hampstead LU and adjusted it to the ‘correct’ fare for the whole journey on exit at Willesden Green.
I also tried entering a station before 09:30, realised that it was too early and exited immediately (where a peak maximum fare was charged) and re-entered after 09:30, and the correct off-peak fare was finally deducted.
That’s also what I’d expect to happen.
I’ll use two cards if I plan to do such journeys in the future.
That will certainly get round your 60p overcharge, but bear in mind if you do further journeys in the same day you might not benefit from the correct cap.
I was waiting for more details before replying, but I’ll offer some thoughts now.
What you need to remember is that each time you touch out the system tries to calculate the fare from the current origin to the place where you’ve just touched out. So, what you ended up doing looks like it should have been:
Gatwick Airport to West Hampstead Thameslink: £7.10 (journey ended)
West Hampstead Thameslink same station exit: £7.00 (max fare will be cancelled by entry within 45 minutes)
West Hampstead Thameslink to Willesden Green: undefined (2 leg journey starting with OSI)£1.90 is a TfL-LU zone 1-2 off-peak fare with railcard which seems logical as the cheapest potential route would be via zone 1. Starting (or ending) a journey with an OSI is troublesome if the fares don’t exist publicly, or do but are not what you’d expect.
As I’ve said elsewhere, Plusbus and TfL don’t have agreements. There are a few other places where Freedom Passes and 60+ are vaild on TfL services only and Plusbus also exists. Brentwood, Cheshunt and Watford Junction spring to mind.
Plusbus is not available within zones 1-6 (apart from Elstree & Borehamwood where a significant number of buses are not TfL). If you wish to avail yourself of bus travel to the station where you travel to London then I agree that maybe a traditional ticket might be better. It’s all a matter of choice and someone who drives or walks to the train station may find that the slightly cheaper daily cap compared to a day travelcard makes contactless more worthwhile.
Hi David,
I think there is some confusion there going back to the early days when the hopper only gave you one free journey. It doesn’t matter what order the touches are, buses and trams will still be free within the hour.
As for journey history, it’s not involved. The time of the first bus/tram touch is stored separately until it times out and the next bus/tram touch gets charged and replaces it. I know this because youtubers Geoff and Hugo did 25 in 60 minutes just after the facility was introduced. Hugo in fact went on to do 27 while the actual time allowed was 70 minutes, but that has since been reduced to 62.
Hi Alan (confused of Berkshire),
That’s a great question which highlights some odd features that aren’t often seen these days, and a long standing bug just to add a further curve ball.
First thing to remember is that the system keeps track of which zones have been used for both anytime and off-peak caps. With all day caps in zones 1-6 (unless a railcard is added) this rarely makes a difference. Then there’s the oddity that for some weird reason all bus journeys are treated as off-peak. This came in years ago when weekly bus capping became a thing on Oyster, and it’s never been fixed.
So, your first bus journey added £1.75 to both caps. The tube from Hatton Cross added £3.20 to the anytime cap and set the anytime zone limit to 5. The tube from West Brompton added £1.35 to both caps and set the off-peak zone limit to 4. The 11:31 bus hit the zone 1-4 off-peak railcard cap of £8.50. The tube from Earls Court extended the off-peak zone limit to 5, and the final bus hit the daily bus cap as you said. Had you made another train journey this would have capped at the zone 1-5 off-peak cap of £10.15 (unless you went beyond zone 5).
Thanks for that challenge.
Hi,
Buses contribute to any rail cap regardless of where you board the bus (even at Bluewater). If you board the morning bus before 0930 then theoretically it should not count towards the off-peak cap, but there’s a long standing bug which means it probably will. If you try the journey, please do let me know how it goes.
That’s good actually. They state that it is valid at 0930 which is what you need to know. They are probably mainly there to deal with admin issues like renewals, lost passes, etc. Don’t worry any more, you’re fine.
