Hi BadenBaden,

If you travel from Gatwick to London and then jaunt around zones 1-2 then the most you’ll pay is the zone 1-2 cap (£8.10) plus the single fare from Gatwick. So £17.60. It might be fractionally lower, but that’s the most.

If you haven’t got much luggage and don’t mind going up and down a ramp at East Croydon then that can be reduced to Gatwick to East Croydon* £3.70, zone 3-5 extension* £3.00 and the zone 1-2 cap of £8.10, total £14.80. You just need to get out at East Croydon, touch out and back in again, then get the next train to London. *Note that slightly higher fares apply between 1600-1900 from Gatwick.

Hi YearOfTheBusOyster,

Sadly there are a lot of misconceptions in this post, some from TfL staff who really ought to know better.

So, the first thing to point out is that only adult Oyster cards with no discount entitlement go through the back office process overnight. This means that you won’t get a refund, sadly. It also means that sometimes it is cheaper to get a normal ticket with the railcard.

Helpline staff really ought to be aware that both Oyster and contactless charge extension fares, albeit that the Oyster ones are only calculated overnight. They also ought to know that Grays is not in zone 9 and that the caps are more expensive.

I can, however, explain how the charges were arrived at.

The first £6 counted towards the Anytime cap only.
The 2x £1.75 counted towards the Anytime and off-peak caps (and the bus cap, though that’s irrelevant here).
At this point the Anytime total was £9.50, just short of the £9.60 Anytime cap.
The £9.60 counted towards the Anytime and off-peak caps, but now they are the Grays ones of £28.60 and £14.05.
Finally the 95p took the off-peak travel up to £14.05 which was the off-peak cap.

I hope this helps a bit.

Thanks for that. I’m not surprised they couldn’t work out what was happening. I’m not sure I know why the evening maximum fare was only £4.80 because it’s usually £6.40 off-peak. I also think the touch on the validator at Farringdon may be confusing things because that should have been part of the main journey. Anyway, you are correct that you should have been capped, so just ask them to refund the rest down to the cap.

Moving forward, you don’t need to touch the validators when changing at Farringdon if you are making a PAYG journey. They only need to be used if the Thaneslink journey is using a paper ticket and you are starting/ending a PAYG journey at Farringdon. The signage is awful in that respect.

I hope you get it sorted out.

Edit. I’ve just noticed you spent 9 minutes at Farringdon, so probably went out of the gates, but if you are just changing and don’t need to go through both sets of gates then you don’t need to touch.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Mike (admin).

Hi Michael,

If this was today (August 1st) then I’d check again on your full account tomorrow. Fortunately you haven’t committed an offence because you held a valid travelcard and an extension ticket. It’s possible that the gate was faulty, or that it hasn’t uploaded it’s touches straight away.

If the touch in doesn’t appear tomorrow then it’s up to you whether you report this to the helpline. You’ll neither have been overcharged nor undercharged, so it’ll just be to report a curiosity.

Hi Aron,

This is an interesting question.

The pink validator in this case is designed to demonstrate that you have avoided zones 1-2. If you are simply making that journey there and back then there is a saving to be made by touching the pink validator. However, if you have already used zones 1-4 and capped then touching the pink validator at Rayners Lane will charge you for going into zone 5.

The rules say that you should touch a pink reader if you pass one to ensure that you pay the correct fare. The only penalty for not touching one is that you will be charged the higher fare. In your case you are happy to pay the zone 1-4 fare because you have already capped. I don’t see a problem ignoring the pink validators in this instance.

Indeed. We’ve already seen some reporting suggesting that pay as you go will be the cheapest method, which it isn’t guaranteed to be. The BBC even suggested the whole thing was starting the day of the announcement. I can certainly see lots of problems ahead.

If the whole journey you are making includes NR elements, then any extension fare will be at the NR scale, even if the extension is not on NR services. If there was another way I’d tell you.

As for using Whitechapel or Canada Water rather than London Bridge, I don’t know but it may well be a similar time. There are more ELL trains at Penge West than Southern and you have extra services joining at Sydenham. My best advice is to try it out.

That’s very interesting. Thank you.

That’s interesting. How long was there between touching in for the second tram and touching in on the bus? Could that actually have been a hopper?

Hi Hazy,

It’ll happen again if you repeat the same journeys. Basically any bus journey counts towards all 3 caps, the anytime rail cap, the off-peak rail cap and the bus cap. It was introduced when weekly capping was first applied to Oyster and it’s never been fixed.

Hi Lauren,

Weybridge is currently beyond the contactless area, so you’d need to buy a ticket for at least part of the journey. I think the cheapest reasonable route is likely to be via Wimbledon. You’d need an Anytime return from Weybridge to Wimbledon which is £12.60, then use PAYG from Wimbledon to South Kensington on the District Line which is £3.70 peak (£3.00 off-peak if you touch in after 1900 at South Kensington). Total £20.00 (or £19.30) which is quite a bit cheaper than the Anytime day travelcard at £29.40.

If your commute is generally 5 days a week then a season ticket for Weybridge to Wimbledon will save a bit, but I’d still use PAYG for the Underground.

Hi Martin,

No it wouldn’t. The hopper fare was derived from the original tram system including the feeder buses in Addington, so a touch within an hour of the first one would have been effectively ignored.