How does autocomplete work

[pethadine82]

The station that I wanted to touch out at had a complete power failure. I touched in at my origin, but at the exit station, the barriers were all open, there was no power supply to the gateline.
Some LU staff were there and I asked them what happens, and they said the system will do it for me.
How does this work?
I have a contactless card but this is not linked to my phone, however I have the TfL app, and didn't use it until this morning to see what the autocomplete did.
It did autocomplete but the station was one station further down and the fare higher.
Can anyone shed any light on how this autocomplete works. Does it use AI?

 

[Chris M]

As I understand it, the system guesses your destination based on a number of factors, including usual travel patterns and subsequent journeys. If it got it wrong then ring the helpline and they should refund you.

 

[jon81uk]

Not sure why you think your card needs to be linked to your phone? Register the card on the TfL website or app to see the journey history.
They use your prior journey history to guess where you were going and then autocomplete it. If its wrong then claim a different refund from your online account or phone TfL.

 

[rebmcr]

Not sure why you think your card needs to be linked to your phone?

That's not what they said though.

 

[jon81uk]

That's not what they said though.

They said “I have a contactless card but this is not linked to my phone” which is of no relevance to autocomplete of journeys. Being linked to your TfL account shows the journey history.
Also not clear what they mean by linked to my phone, do they mean Apple/Google Pay? Which again bears no relation to autocomplete.

 

[pethadine82]

I thought the tfl app uses your location to work out where you are , then just AI to work out which station you got off at.

 

[jon81uk]

I thought the tfl app uses your location to work out where you are , then just AI to work out which station you got off at.

No all the TfL app does is show the same journey history information as the TfL website. On iPhone it doesn't even have permission to access location data.

Your location is determined by where you touch the card and then if you don't tap out the system guesses where you usually go to.

 

[Chris M]

Worth noting that if you can't touch in then you shouldn't touch out - tell the staff at your destination where you came from and they should be aware and let you out. At least this is what happened when there was some sort of failure at Mile End a couple of years ago that meant the gateline was out of action, the instruction was to just tell staff at your destination you'd travelled from Mile End. On that occasion I was travelling to Euston Square and the person on the gateline there was well aware of the issue and I didn't even need to say more than "I've just come from Mile End..." and they let me out.

 

[Recessio]

Ring them up and they'll fix it. Especially for one off events they just take your word for it.

 

[Snow1964]

I assume if they have guessed next station along, then 2 stations in a row both had gate problems (or power failures).

However if the one chosen caused a higher fare, then clearly TfL have auto-completed in their favour by picking the higher fare (and probably done this for loads of others).

Seems wrong that you need to contact them to get it adjusted, (that's if you notice their wrong choice of higher fare ), instead of them choosing the lower fare.

Very wrong for staff to be trained to say system will sort it, if system doesn't default to the lower of the two possible fares in circumstances like this. Actually if TfL were financially regulated and staff gave out misleading info causing customers to lose money, unless customer followed up to get a correction, then they would be getting huge fines for doing this.

 

[edwin_m]

Very wrong for staff to be trained to say system will sort it, if system doesn't default to the lower of the two possible fares in circumstances like this. Actually if TfL were financially regulated and staff gave out misleading info causing customers to lose money, unless customer followed up to get a correction, then they would be getting huge fines for doing this.

If the staff are dealing with a serious problem such as a power failure, the last thing they want is a load of people bothering them to ask about issues such as this, which they probably have no control over even when things are all working. "System will sort is" includes the bit of the system where you dispute a payment online or by phone, so it's not technically wrong.