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Old March 13th 11, 01:20 AM posted to uk.transport.london
Jack[_3_] Jack[_3_] is offline
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On Mar 13, 2:07*am, john b wrote:
On Mar 13, 7:06*am, Jack wrote:





On Mar 12, 12:45*pm, john b wrote:


On Mar 12, 8:52*pm, solar penguin wrote:


Given how many faulty Oyster readers there are out there, that's the
most likely explanation. *There's one reader at Gipsy Hill that reads
the card and opens the barrier to let you out, no problems, but
sometimes doesn't always manage to write to tell the card that the
journey's been completed! *Three times it given me an Unresolved
Journey because of that! *I've tried telling the station man about it,
but he doesn't believe and/or understand it!


FWIW, nor do I. If the light's gone green and the barrier's opened, I
don't think it's *possible* for the system to leave your journey
unresolved.


John - *it is perfectly possible. *The gate / validator, *station
computer and hence the central system record the exit (or entry -
equally possible) but the exit (or entry) is not written to the card.
It happens from time to time.


And you're saying the process is designed so that, even though there's
a record of your journey being completed in the central system, the
fact that it hasn't been written to the card means that when the
system does its reckoning, the central record gets ignored and you get
penalised for an unresolved journey?

If so, that's a sufficiently stupid outcome that I hadn't even
considered it might be the case. Anyone care to confirm?

JB


John - the system adjusts data on the card chip during transactions.
The balance and / or season tickets are held on the card chip, not in
the central system. As you are no doubt aware, there are
retrospective refund processes available, both user-iniated by phone,
email etc and also "automated" refunds for "operational issues".
The scenario described may be picked up by the automated process - I
am not sure. It is not "designed" to fail to write an entry or exit
to the chip. There will always be a minority of transactions that are
not completely successful.
The point is that maximum fares are deducted during the transaction
with the gate or validator and not after the fact.