Tap On Tap Off - Is Overcharging Common?

cav1975 · 11 Aug 2026

I used the H1 First Portsmouth service last week. I tapped on at the City Shops South bus stop and attempted to tap off at the Hovertravel stop. The tap off machine didn’t register so the driver asked me to tap off on his ticket machine. This second tap was only 8 minutes after the first and on the same bus.

The next day I checked my card app and found that I had been charged for two incomplete journeys rather than one completed journey. First refunded the second trip with the agents comment being words to the effect that I shouldn’t forget to tap off.

So, my case is resolved but how often does this sort of thing happen? It has certainly made me wary of using TOTO again. I suspect that most people don’t check so the bus companies are making extra profits that way.

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stevieinselby · 11 Aug 2026

Unless you are making a journey below the maximum fare for that route, there is no reason to tap off – so ever since the fares cap came in, most people have had no need to tap off and so I doubt that there is much scope for overcharging. If the fares cap is ever removed and we see single fares reaching over £10 on longer routes again then it will become a lot more important to tap off when making a shorter journey!

kkong · 11 Aug 2026

stevieinselby said:
Unless you are making a journey below the maximum fare for that route, there is no reason to tap off – so ever since the fares cap came in, most people have had no need to tap off and so I doubt that there is much scope for overcharging. If the fares cap is ever removed and we see single fares reaching over £10 on longer routes again then it will become a lot more important to tap off when making a shorter journey!

A periodic reminder that the "fares cap" does not apply to many areas of the UK.

stevieinselby · 11 Aug 2026

kkong said:
A periodic reminder that the "fares cap" does not apply to many areas of the UK.

That's a "fare" point, sorry, I was thinking in terms of the original question being asked about Portsmouth.

Bletchleyite · 11 Aug 2026

I don't believe I have ever been overcharged, and I always use TOTO if it's offered. Is the Hovertravel stop the terminus? If so perhaps the driver had ended the trip he was on (or the machine had done it itself) so the tap counted as a new tap in on a new journey?

I once almost got penalty fared on a London bus a while back because I tapped on at the start of the trip at Euston on a 68 and the driver hadn't set the machine up yet so my tap was recorded on a previous journey, fortunately after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing the inspectors accepted my argument and just issued a free ticket instead of a penalty fare with no details taken. The payment did come out of my account so presumably a PF appeal wouid have succeeded but it was a nuisance I didn't need.

Gaelan · 11 Aug 2026

stevieinselby said:
Unless you are making a journey below the maximum fare for that route, there is no reason to tap off – so ever since the fares cap came in, most people have had no need to tap off and so I doubt that there is much scope for overcharging.

Depending on the reimbursement mechanism for the fare cap - surprisingly difficult to find details about this, I’d be curious if anyone has documents to point me to! - it may be the cause that the government is being overcharged for the journey, even if the passenger is only paying £3.

cav1975 · 11 Aug 2026

Bletchleyite said:
Is the Hovertravel stop the terminus? If so perhaps the driver had ended the trip he was on (or the machine had done it itself) so the tap counted as a new tap in on a new journey?

Yes, the Hovertravel stop is the terminus and I’m pretty sure that is what happened. Fundamentally it is a training issue as the driver shouldn’t reset until after all the passengers have got off. Also, the refund agent should not have put the blame on me.

WelshBluebird · 11 Aug 2026

I had lots of issues when it was originally introduced by First in Bristol. Things like tap offs not being registered, return / daily caps not being applied if you hadnt tapped off for every journey etc. But its been fine for a while now.

stevieinselby said:
Unless you are making a journey below the maximum fare for that route, there is no reason to tap off – so ever since the fares cap came in, most people have had no need to tap off and so I doubt that there is much scope for overcharging. If the fares cap is ever removed and we see single fares reaching over £10 on longer routes again then it will become a lot more important to tap off when making a shorter journey!

Most "normal" people dont really know what the maximum fare for the route is though, or where the fare stages are. Even simple scenarios like the X39 heading out of Bristol - if you want to be charged the correct £2.40 fare for a journey to say Brislington then you jave to tap off, rlse you'll get charges the full £3 fare to Bath.

Cesarcollie · 11 Aug 2026

Gaelan said:
Depending on the reimbursement mechanism for the fare cap - surprisingly difficult to find details about this, I’d be curious if anyone has documents to point me to! - it may be the cause that the government is being overcharged for the journey, even if the passenger is only paying £3.

The reimbursement formula is shrouded in mystery, even for operators. However there is no scope for ’government being overcharged’ as each operator agrees a fixed reimbursement amount in advance.

stevieinselby · 11 Aug 2026

Cesarcollie said:
The reimbursement formula is shrouded in mystery, even for operators. However there is no scope for ’government being overcharged’ as each operator agrees a fixed reimbursement amount in advance.

But if that sum is based in part on the previous period's lost income then knowing whether passengers are travelling 3 miles or 30 miles would be germane, as in one case the operator might have lost nothing at all and in the other they might have lost 75% of the fare. That said, I'm sure they can do clever stuff by looking at journey origins in the other direction to match them up and get a rough idea of how far most passengers are travelling, even if they don't record a destination by tapping out.

Cesarcollie · 11 Aug 2026

stevieinselby said:
But if that sum is based in part on the previous period's lost income then knowing whether passengers are travelling 3 miles or 30 miles would be germane, as in one case the operator might have lost nothing at all and in the other they might have lost 75% of the fare. That said, I'm sure they can do clever stuff by looking at journey origins in the other direction to match them up and get a rough idea of how far most passengers are travelling, even if they don't record a destination by tapping out.

You are over-thinking this……

JonathanH · 11 Aug 2026

A particular issue seems to be routes with a loop at their end which are run as two separate services, and it is accepted that passengers can alight on the 'return' journey. If the tap off occurs after the driver has set up for the return journey, then the system may charge two journeys when the tap off happens after the 'terminus' point.

Dwarfer1979 · 12 Aug 2026

JonathanH said:
A particular issue seems to be routes with a loop at their end which are run as two separate services, and it is accepted that passengers can alight on the 'return' journey. If the tap off occurs after the driver has set up for the return journey, then the system may charge two journeys when the tap off happens after the 'terminus' point.

If you set these up properly actually the system copes quite well, it knows it is on a loop and can marry the tap off on the inbound to the passenger travelling outbound (and I know it works even on the ticket machine not just the tap off reader as we had an incident where a driver erroneously believed a customer had to pay again if they travelled past the "terminus" on a loop and insisted the passenger tapped on the machine for a second fare and the system just tapped them off).

The issue around tapping off after the driver switches from inbound to outbound at straight terminuses does exist, it doesn't seem that common at the moment but is easy to identify and refund but I suspect that is down to the fare cap and most passengers believing that it is a £3 flat fare so just don't bother to tap off regularly (I myself am quite undisciplined on that but am generally travelling quite long rides). There has been a lot of effort trying to get drivers to understand the system, to stop them switching early, but drivers are simple creatures of habit (a "bit" of a generalisation but anyone who deals with drivers knows you have to keep instructions and procedures as simple as possible as there always a few drivers who simply don't pay attention, operate on autopilot or don't understand and won't ask for explanation) so there will always be some who don't do it right. Back at one of the points where the fare cap was on the verge of ending we did have a bit of a discussion of the need to effectively relaunch our tap-on tap-off system to remind passengers how it works and they need to remember to tap off to ensure they pay correctly as it had been a while since it mattered and many may gave forgotten - it is going to be even more vital whenever this current heavily subsidised almost flat rate fares ends (even if fares remain subsidised, long term I do think the government will need to return to some form of gradiation via a discount rather than what will effectively be a national flat fare).

BuhSnarf · 12 Aug 2026

Surely if all areas had a hopper fare this wouldn't be an issue as the second journey would be free anyway so no extra charge.

Edvid · 12 Aug 2026

stevieinselby said:
Unless you are making a journey below the maximum fare for that route, there is no reason to tap off

TOTO caps rely on taps off so any max fares incurred during a capped day/week results in overcharging. This happened to me last October when two Grant Palmer trips were closed before I could tap off at the termini; on request they refunded the excess but it involved exchanging a posted voucher for cash at one of their buses as opposed to simply crediting my card.

More recently it almost happened to me on Carousel Buses as well. One of the buses I used didn't have an exit reader and I had to convince its driver that tapping off with the ticket machine was required in my circumstance.

Dwarfer1979 said:
The issue around tapping off after the driver switches from inbound to outbound at straight terminuses does exist, it doesn't seem that common at the moment

IMX it's 50/50 whether or not the driver closes a TOTO-enabled trip before they're parked at the terminus. Nowadays I either leave the bus before the terminus (if feasible) or tap off the moment "present card" appears on approach (presumably this happens when a bus is in GPS range of a route's NaPTAN marker).

py_megapixel · 12 Aug 2026

Edvid said:
TOTO caps rely on taps off so any max fares incurred during a capped day/week results in overcharging.

This seems to depend on how the operator has set up their system.

The other day I travelled on some Go-Ahead East Yorkshire buses and reached their £9 cap. On a couple of these buses I did not tap off but the system still applied the cap to these journeys, as you can see in the attached screenshot from their website:

(Screenshot shows a tap in recorded at Bridlington Bus Station, with the messages "Incomplete journey - the maximum fare was applied to this journey", but with a cap applied)

cav1975 · 12 Aug 2026

Dwarfer1979 said:
The issue around tapping off after the driver switches from inbound to outbound at straight terminuses does exist, it doesn't seem that common at the moment

This is clearly what happened in my case.

Edvid · 12 Aug 2026

Something else I remembered - tapping off also provides the operator with a more accurate record of where TOTO passengers are travelling to, which can be used to help shape planned network changes.

py_megapixel said:
This seems to depend on how the operator has set up their system.

The other day I travelled on some Go-Ahead East Yorkshire buses and reached their £9 cap. On a couple of these buses I did not tap off but the system still applied the cap to these journeys, as you can see in the attached screenshot from their website:
View attachment 209329

(Screenshot shows a tap in recorded at Bridlington Bus Station, with the messages "Incomplete journey - the maximum fare was applied to this journey", but with a cap applied)

Assuming the Go Anywhere zone covers all Go-Ahead EY bus routes that's a sensible approach.

Budge1980 · 12 Aug 2026

Whilst I've used TOTO successfully with Carousel a few times, when using it with Lloyds Coaches, I had a similar problem to ones mentioned above. Driver from Bala to Dolgellau reset his machine for the Dolgellau to Barmouth leg before I had exited the bus and I was overcharged as if travelling to Barmouth. Fortunately I hit the weekly cap so wasn't overcharged overall, This was on the T3 16:57 arrival which shows (and did show at the time) as a through service.

kkong · 13 Aug 2026

Edvid said:
TOTO caps rely on taps off so any max fares incurred during a capped day/week results in overcharging.

This is not the case with First Aberdeen.

The capping applies even if you don't tap off.

The TOTO fares are:

Singles: £2.25 and £3.50
2-trip cap (24 hours): £5.45
Daily cap (calendar day): £5.80
3-in-7 day tickets bundle cap: £15.50
5-in-7 day tickets bundle cap: £23.00
Weekly cap: £27.00

So there's no cost benefit in tapping off unless you make <=2 trips in a calendar day (or 24 hours), at least one of which is £2.25.

OK, you'd save 5p on a day ticket if you make exactly two trips in a calendar day for £2.25 + £3.50...

One caveat is that the calculation isn't a rolling period of days, it resets each Monday.

You can see this in action from the journey history image below.

Ignore the idiocy of the Littlepay portal showing the first trip of the day as "Trip 7 of 7" and the last trip as "Trip 1 of 7"; you have to read from the bottom up for a chronological order of the day's travel (albeit, the incomplete trip was made between Trip 4 and Trip 3).

Bletchleyite · 13 Aug 2026

Edvid said:
TOTO caps rely on taps off so any max fares incurred during a capped day/week results in overcharging.

Requiring a tap off otherwise you penalise someone is a bit silly to be honest. I can see why you would penalise for failing to tap on (as that potentially shows an attempt to evade) but it just makes sense to charge the full route and apply any relevant capping if the tap off is missing. It's not a complex system like the TfL one, it's just a single bus and the journey can't be longer than to the end of the route.

SSmith2009 · 13 Aug 2026

JonathanH said:
A particular issue seems to be routes with a loop at their end which are run as two separate services, and it is accepted that passengers can alight on the 'return' journey. If the tap off occurs after the driver has set up for the return journey, then the system may charge two journeys when the tap off happens after the 'terminus' point.

First had this in Leicester but during a round of changes most routes were changed to show as operating as a combined outbound/inbound service.

Service 18 timetable.

kkong · 13 Aug 2026

cav1975 said:
So, my case is resolved but how often does this sort of thing happen? It has certainly made me wary of using TOTO again. I suspect that most people don’t check so the bus companies are making extra profits that way.

I have mentioned on the forum before this exact circumstance happened to me in Motherwell on First Glasgow.

I did receive a refund on request, but it was less than it should've been and they ignored what I had typed in the refund request, replying with something trite like "please remember to always tap off".

Edvid · 14 Aug 2026

Yesterday I learned that standalone 'exit' readers will charge you for a new journey (instead of closing your existing journey) if the operator is running a tap-on only PAYG scheme - in my case, the First Essex Tap&Cap scheme. On the Littlepay portal such taps aren't labelled ON / OFF like TOTO taps, they're labelled TAP like paper ticket purchases.

For Basildon routes Tap&Cap is advertised as being limited to the Shuttle Zone but it worked when I joined the B1 at Harold Wood station.

Bletchleyite · 14 Aug 2026

Edvid said:
Yesterday I learned that standalone 'exit' readers will charge you for a new journey (instead of closing your existing journey) if the operator is running a tap-on only PAYG scheme - in my case, the First Essex Tap&Cap scheme. On the Littlepay portal such taps aren't labelled ON / OFF like TOTO taps, they're labelled TAP like paper ticket purchases.

That's poor design. Unless the system is intended to allow multiple taps for multiple people, there seems to be no good reason for doing this. If a given card has already tapped on on a given journey, further taps should just be disregarded as they cannot be a new journey.

py_megapixel · 14 Aug 2026

Bletchleyite said:
That's poor design. Unless the system is intended to allow multiple taps for multiple people, there seems to be no good reason for doing this. If a given card has already tapped on on a given journey, further taps should just be disregarded as they cannot be a new journey.

It's poor design that an operator running a tap-on only PAYG scheme has the exit readers at all, unless the same operator runs two separate schemes, which would be daft and a recipe for passenger confusion.

BuhSnarf · 14 Aug 2026

The industry really needs to standardise on one way to collect fares, these differences lead to customer confusion and then having a lack of faith in the system.

Bletchleyite · 14 Aug 2026

BuhSnarf said:
The industry really needs to standardise on one way to collect fares, these differences lead to customer confusion and then having a lack of faith in the system.

Perhaps if long term capping of fares/subsidy is the future, there needs to be a single national system such as what the Dutch have. In that context there's little reason to ieave it up to operators.

BuhSnarf · 14 Aug 2026

Bletchleyite said:
Perhaps if long term capping of fares/subsidy is the future, there needs to be a single national system such as what the Dutch have. In that context there's little reason to ieave it up to operators.

Agree, tap on and not off is a much simpler system for customers too.

JonathanH · 14 Aug 2026

BuhSnarf said:
Agree, tap on and not off is a much simpler system for customers too.

It may well be, but at some point there is likely to be a resumption of graduated fare scales.

Tap On Tap Off - Is Overcharging Common?

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