Penalty Fare

[daniels]

I've uncovered a serious problem with the passenger/TOC contract in the process. So serious that I wanted to take it up with ATOC.I had drafted a letter to the appropriate managers which I was intending to post on Monday but as the IAS have resolved it I'm going to leave it.

My own Oyster is causing no end of problems and once it expires on the 30th September I'm giving up on it completely. I hold a Zone 1-6 season ticket. Since I bought it, the card has taken £6.80 off me and stopped working. Yesterday I travelled from Forest Hill to Marylebone LU, then Marylebone NR - Feltham. Despite me having a Z1-6 TKT, it was doing some stupidness with OSIs, decided I was travelling from Forest Hill - Feltham and charged me for not completing it within the time limit, sending me into arrears!

I then attempted to travel Twickenham - Waterloo and got Code 35 rejections at both ends (as well as when I touched out at Feltham). Had the bloke at Waterloo scratching his head and he just refunded me eventually.

I'm actually fed up with it now. The system is crippled by its own complexity. If I wasn't trying to learn about every nook and cranny of how it works (and I feel I've barely scratched the surface), my money would be going down the drain and I wouldn't have the first clue why.

With respect, you could only have been charged 2x £3.40 for the journeys you describe if you set an Oyster extension permit before you started. You knew you didn't need one and deliberately set out to see what would happen. As expected, £3.40 was deducted on entry and £3.40 on exit (max journey time exceeded).

If you weren't "trying to learn about every nook and cranny of how it works" you wouldn't have made the journey in the way you did - I have no doubt about that.

 

[RJ]

I do my learning by reading the relevant documents concerning Oyster. There is a lot to read.

No OEP had been set at all. My journey history can corroborate this. The system is riddled with bugs. Is there an explanation for the time I purchased a 1 month Z1-6 TKT from the TVM at Peckham Rye - my £91.40 was taken, the TKT was allegedly loaded onto the card according to the helpline staff but as far as all validatiors and MOVies were concerned, there was no TKT on it.

 

[MikeWh]

The thing is, RJ, £3.40 is the deduction on entry at off-peak times if an OEP is set. I don't think the setting or unsetting of an OEP actually appears in your journey history as there is no financial transaction at the point of setting. At Southeastern TVMs you can see whether one is set or not and set or unset as desired. I am also uncertain whether the MOVie will detect the setting. All RPIs are interested in seeing is an entry charge if you are travelling outside the zones on your card.

You can get an LU ticket office to unset the OEP, or do it yourself if the TVM will let you. As you have a Z1-6 travelcard loaded the only other way to clear the OEP is to touch out or in within zones 7-9 or at Watford Junction or the Grays group of stations. The OEP remains set forever if you never venture outside the zones on your stored travelcard or unset it manually. This is why the consumer advice is to set the OEP just before you intend to use it.

 

[RJ]

Ok, I've been out today and checked, I do have an OEP which has been sitting there for about 3 weeks so my apologies for being wrong and also thanks as it'll stop me making that mistake again.

I've been out and about on the trains every day and I've been charged twice. I don't see why it should charge me for a Z3-6 journey with correct validations even if I do have an OEP set.

OEPs seem pointless to me. In all but a handful of exceptions one is forced to touch in and out on the LT network anyway. And on the NR network, if someone loads one, what's to stop them getting off outside their zones without touching out? And if someone doesn't load one, it doesn't mean they won't touch out. There are lots of stations with no Oyster topup facilities, SWT managed for starters.
So if someone with a Z1-3 TKT wants to go from Earlsfield to Kingston, they can't load an OEP at the origin station and are liable for a Penalty Fare if checked on the train, even if they have £90 credit.

Inexplicable things have happened before, like when I used a YP Oyster to travel from Brixton LU - Hendon via KXSP/STP and I got the dreaded "Entry" when I touched out at Hendon, only 75 minutes after starting at Brixton. I'm sure the limit according to either formula is around 2 hours. I got an £12.xx refund and an invitation to claim it at Burnt Oak after that. Part for the charge on the day then a nice email from TfL out of the blue.

 

[MikeWh]

Ah, that's good then. It'll only charge you if you don't touch in and out properly when an OEP is set. Every other time you must have done that, so you will have had repeated times where £3.40 will have been deducted then added back on at the end. I guess they chose a 4-zone fare as an average of what was likely to be needed.

The OEP system is a mess. The TOCs wanted to force everyone to touch in and out on every journey so that it would be able to deduct a charge at the beginning and adjust it at the end just like PAYG. As I understand it, TfL refused to accept this and came up with OEPs instead. Of course there is nothing to stop you abusing the system where gates don't exist, other than the danger of being penalty fared for not having a valid entry charge on your card.

If the station where you start your journey within your zones will not allow you to set the OEP, you have to go to a newsagent or other ticket-stop. The vast majority of OEPs are probably started in central London where you can also use the adjacent underground station.

I have once had a really weird situation where my card didn't log many of my touch ins and outs during a reasonably complex journey. Fortunately I didn't get checked en-route and the helpdesk were able to sort out what had happened once they had received the info from all the gates. It's the only unexplained error that I've ever had though. Everything else odd has subsequently been explained by people in the know and is the reason why I set up my site. Any electronic system is going to be prone to the occasional malfunction. The key is to ensure that systems are in place so that customers aren't penalised when this happens. I would hope that such systems are being developed as situations occur.

What I will say is that TfL do seem to try and work out when things have gone wrong and arrange automatic refunds. They probably aren't getting everything, but at least most customers should be set right in the end.

 

[daniels]

I do my learning by reading the relevant documents concerning Oyster. There is a lot to read.

No OEP had been set at all. My journey history can corroborate this. The system is riddled with bugs. Is there an explanation for the time I purchased a 1 month Z1-6 TKT from the TVM at Peckham Rye - my £91.40 was taken, the TKT was allegedly loaded onto the card according to the helpline staff but as far as all validatiors and MOVies were concerned, there was no TKT on it.

I was wondering what the resolution to this was. Did you get a refund and explanation from Southern or from TfL?

 

[RJ]

After a lot of toing and froing and establishing that Southern didn't want to refund me, I called up the Oyster Helpline. This took about six tries before I got through to someone who told me what I wanted to hear and sent out a cheque with a full refund. He couldn't clarify why it happened - he said most likely it was due to a known technical error which causes problem validating after the machine took payment. Now on the day, after I paid, the machine asked me to validate. The first attempt failed, then it asked me again - the second time it was definitely successful as it showed "Your card has been updated..." and printed a receipt showing a successful transaction. Then I immediately went to the gateline to touch in and got a code 36. T I discovered that a lot of TVMs have problems reading cards no matter what you do and other people have said the same thing. The trick is to hold the card down flat on the reader before it asks you to, always works now.

Prior to that occasion on the phone, one helper told me the card was faulty and claimed she deactivated my card and that she was sending a replacement, neither of which actually ever happened after a couple of weeks or so. Was also told that the TKT was on my card and I was getting no refund as I was using it on the buses. Also told to wait for an auto refund and ask Southern for a refund twice. The Helpline is very good if you get someone who doesn't just read from the template. One thing to ask for in any serious dispute is the Journey Status Report. This shows precisely what happened upon every single validation, unlike usage reports which offer their opinion on what journeys it thinks you made. That JSR showed that I had loaded a TKT then failed to get through any barriers afterwards. The JSR was the one and only thing that forced the IAS to accept my appeal in the Liverpool St dispute, would've been stuffed without it.

 

[daniels]

After a lot of toing and froing and establishing that Southern didn't want to refund me, I called up the Oyster Helpline. This took about six tries before I got through to someone who told me what I wanted to hear and sent out a cheque with a full refund. He couldn't clarify why it happened - he said most likely it was due to a known technical error which causes problem validating after the machine took payment. Now on the day, after I paid, the machine asked me to validate. The first attempt failed, then it asked me again - the second time it was definitely successful as it showed "Your card has been updated..." and printed a receipt showing a successful transaction. Then I immediately went to the gateline to touch in and got a code 36. T I discovered that a lot of TVMs have problems reading cards no matter what you do and other people have said the same thing. The trick is to hold the card down flat on the reader before it asks you to, always works now.

Prior to that occasion on the phone, one helper told me the card was faulty and claimed she deactivated my card and that she was sending a replacement, neither of which actually ever happened after a couple of weeks or so. Was also told that the TKT was on my card and I was getting no refund as I was using it on the buses. Also told to wait for an auto refund and ask Southern for a refund twice. The Helpline is very good if you get someone who doesn't just read from the template. One thing to ask for in any serious dispute is the Journey Status Report. This shows precisely what happened upon every single validation, unlike usage reports which offer their opinion on what journeys it thinks you made. That JSR showed that I had loaded a TKT then failed to get through any barriers afterwards. The JSR was the one and only thing that forced the IAS to accept my appeal in the Liverpool St dispute, would've been stuffed without it.

I am glad you got your money back, but this sounds like processes need to be sorted out pronto. I have not heard of the JSR before, did you get it from the helpline?

 

[RJ]

I am glad you got your money back, but this sounds like processes need to be sorted out pronto. I have not heard of the JSR before, did you get it from the helpline?

I wrote a letter to TfL explaining the whole Liverpool Street situation, that it may have had to go to court etc. and hand delivered it to Albany House, the JSR was then emailed to me. I asked about it when I had to call the helpline again, they said it's not something they give out unless absolutely necessary. It's very good, lists everything from TKTs loaded to your address/password to validator/gate identity for each validation. More fundamentally it shows the time of both touching in and out which is something of a mystery on normal usage statements.