Two Contactless fares for the same journey

[moogal]

I'll start this by saying I've contacted TfL about this issue, but I was interested to see what people here thought.

Yesterday I travelled from Leighton Buzzard to Euston, where I then got the Victoria line to Walthamstow Central. I used contactless payment, tapping in at LBZ, tapping out at Euston, then again tapping in at Euston Underground and out again at Walthamstow Central. I was travelling mid-afternoon, off peak throughout.

Today the updated charge was applied to my credit card, and I was surprised to be charged £18.80. I know that the single fare LBZ - Euston is £11.50, and £7.30 was a lot more than I expected to pay for a zone 1-3 tube ride (£3.10 off peak).

I went on the TfL single fare finder, which confirmed my calculation that it should only have cost £14.60. However I then noticed that there were two entries for Walthamstow Central on the list - one for tube and one for rail. The fare to the "rail" station was £18.80 for some reason.

The confusing part is that Walthamstow Central's ticket barriers are shared between the Underground and Overground, so you can get to either set of platforms from any of the gatelines. So I'm not entirely clear how the system would know which one to charge. In this case, I'd have expected the tap in at Euston Underground to have confirmed my route as via the tube. So I'm wondering what would cause one fare to be applied rather than the other?

 

[Watershed]

It does indeed look like there's an issue with Walthamstow Central whereby different fares are charged depending on which set of barriers you use at the station. The fares to the "LU" station are charged based on the fare to Euston plus the zonal Tube add-on, whereas the fares to the "NR" station are charged based on half the previous paper return fare to Walthamstow Central - which as you say, is more expensive.

Really they should just set the zonal Tube add-on as the default fare to both stations, and have a higher fare that's triggered by travelling via Liverpool Street if they really want to retain the equivalent of the paper fare's premium for travel that way.

I'd certainly press for a refund from TfL; you can't be expected to know which gatelines count as NR and which ones as LU. At the end of the day you did use the Underground to get there, so you can quite reasonably expect to be charged the Underground fare.

 

[PeterC]

This seems to be an issue with the setting of contactless fares from the WCML stations beyond Watford Junction.

There can't be many people travelling from stations beyond Watford to Walthamstow so I am not surprised that it has taken over 5 months to be spotted

 

[etr221]

MikeWh's Oyster site Fare finder only has one Walthamstow Central (LU, NR), with the £14.60 fare (but giving it twice, like the TfL one, for 'default' and via 'London Terminals/Zone 1')

The higher £18.80 fare is given for Walthamstow Queens Road (again, for the same two routing options - no discount for avoiding Zone1!)

 

[PeterC]

MikeWh's Oyster site Fare finder only has one Walthamstow Central (LU, NR), with the £14.60 fare (but giving it twice, like the TfL one, for 'default' and via 'London Terminals/Zone 1')

The higher £18.80 fare is given for Walthamstow Queens Road (again, for the same two routing options - no discount for avoiding Zone1!)

Try looking on the official TfL fare finder. That shows separate Walthamstow Central TfL and Rail fares when using contactless from the WCML North of Watford Junction which reflects the OP's experience.

Fares are not available to Walthamstow Central Rail from other locations.

The Victoria Line barriers were installed long before those for the NR platforms. I would guess that the later barriers are recorded as a separate station even though this has been hidden from the public until now.

 

[MikeWh]

MikeWh's Oyster site Fare finder only has one Walthamstow Central (LU, NR), with the £14.60 fare (but giving it twice, like the TfL one, for 'default' and via 'London Terminals/Zone 1')

The higher £18.80 fare is given for Walthamstow Queens Road (again, for the same two routing options - no discount for avoiding Zone1!)

It was a long time ago, but I'm certain I checked multiple journeys and the fare was always the same from anywhere to Walthamstow Central. I'll run another bit of analysis and then try and get TfL to explain which gates give rise to which fares.

Try looking on the official TfL fare finder. That shows separate Walthamstow Central TfL and Rail fares when using contactless from the WCML North of Watford Junction which reflects the OP's experience.

Fares are not available to Walthamstow Central Rail from other locations.

The Victoria Line barriers were installed long before those for the NR platforms. I would guess that the later barriers are recorded as a separate station even though this has been hidden from the public until now.

The other silly thing is that fares are supposed to be interavailable between Liverpool Street and Walthamstow, or is that just PAYG fares. I know the TfL-LU scale applies up to Seven Sisters/Tottenham Hale/Walthamstow Central with the TfL-Ang fares taking over beyond the Victoria line. Also, apart from Tottenham Hale and ocasional Seven Sisters services, everything is provided by either Underground or Overground.

I'll follow this one up.

 

[PeterC]

It was a long time ago, but I'm certain I checked multiple journeys and the fare was always the same from anywhere to Walthamstow Central. I'll run another bit of analysis and then try and get TfL to explain which gates give rise to which fares.

The other silly thing is that fares are supposed to be interavailable between Liverpool Street and Walthamstow, or is that just PAYG fares. I know the TfL-LU scale applies up to Seven Sisters/Tottenham Hale/Walthamstow Central with the TfL-Ang fares taking over beyond the Victoria line. Also, apart from Tottenham Hale and ocasional Seven Sisters services, everything is provided by either Underground or Overground.

I'll follow this one up.

It seems to have only happened with those WCML stations. Looks like the whole set were applied differently in some way.

Central is two stations connected behind the gatelines. At some point in the past they were split for a while. I remember separate entrances in Station Approach.

 

[MikeWh]

Today the updated charge was applied to my credit card, and I was surprised to be charged £18.80.

Can you tell me what the journey history said the station name is at Walthamstow?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 26 Jul 2025 ==

It seems to have only happened with those WCML stations.

It's all the Project Oval stations.

 

[moogal]

Can you tell me what the journey history said the station name is at Walthamstow?

"Walthamstow Central (National Rail)"

 

[fandroid]

That's rough. The lift is out of action (for months) leading to the bus station from the LUL gates, so to get a significant reduction in the number of steps on leaving the station, the National Rail gates are the ones to head for. Discriminating against the least able?

 

[PeterC]

That's rough. The lift is out of action (for months) leading to the bus station from the LUL gates, so to get a significant reduction in the number of steps on leaving the station, the National Rail gates are the ones to head for. Discriminating against the least able?

Cock up rather than conspiracy I am sure.

The separate listing of the NR gates only seems to exist for Project Oval. I sampled several stations in the single fare finder. While most in the sample showed higher fares as in the OP there was no difference in fares from Laindon while Otford was cheaper at the NR gates

 

[moogal]

Got a completely irrelevant response from TfL this morning saying I was charged correctly because of peak fares. I've responded pointing out that it's irrelevant, since I was travelling entirely off peak, and that the peak fare for the same journey is £24.70, which isn't what they charged me either. I pointed out several of the points made from this thread, and asked them to investigate it properly.

 

[MikeWh]

I've done a full write up of the extent of the issue, including a diagram of the station and a table listing each of the 26 Oval stations affected. This can be read at https://oysterfares.com/walthamstow-central-overcharging-from-some-stations/. I'm not copying the whole article, but the start is:

Thanks to a visitor to the Rail Forums website, a quite serious problem with fares to and from Walthamstow Central has been uncovered. Until last year the fares from anywhere accepting PAYG to Walthamstow Central were the same regardless of whether you used the Underground or National Rail (Overground) there. However, the new stations being added under Project Oval are getting their fares data entered directly by the train companies, and they are entering fares for both the Underground station and the National Rail station as if they were separate. In most cases the fares are the same, but for 26 stations there are differences of up to £7.60.

 

[CyrusWuff]

Unlikely that it will be possible for this to be resolved for September, as it's now (just) under six weeks before the new fares come into effect.

 

[MikeWh]

Unlikely that it will be possible for this to be resolved for September, as it's now (just) under six weeks before the new fares come into effect.

Good Point. So it'll be December then.

 

[moogal]

Still fighting TfL over this one. Have had several boilerplate responses that indicate they aren't reading the details of my complaint, where they keep assuring me that what I was charged was correct - I assume because they see the touch out was the Overground gateline and don't bother reading any further.

 

[MikeWh]

Hi @moogal,

Would it be possible to upload (or DM if you prefer) all the correspondance involved. I'll have a go at working out some wording which they can't ignore. I'll also try to liaise with my usual contact to see if we can get someone higher up involved.