London Banter - View Single Post - Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off

[email protected] · April 23rd 14, 02:46 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(David Cantrell) wrote:

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 09:31:14AM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at
22:28:28 on Mon, 21 Apr 2014, Scott
remarked:
When I had a difficulty (my own fault) it was corrected very
quickly.
But too many people encounter problems, not always because they've
failed to take a degree in "advanced orienteering at Wimbledon
station".

I don't even mind that there are problems. What I object to is:

* TfL's computers knew that there was a problem with this journey;
* TfL's computers knew an email address associated with that card;
* TfL's computers could have notified me automatically but didn't.

If they'd emailed me to notify me that there was a problem I'd be
happy.

Well, mostly happy. Once I'd found out that they'd ****ed up, and I'd
filled in a form on their website, there was an additional step
required. Before they could refund me, they had to talk to me on the
phone. Which is a bit of a problem, because I'm deaf, but eventually and
with the nice gentleman in the call-centre repeating himself a lot we
got it sorted.

It's still not obvious that I've been charged the right amount, because
working out what the fares should be requires an advanced degree in
non-Euclidean economics*, but I did at least get *some* money refunded.
Given that I'm not a conspiracy theorist I'm going to assume that I was
refunded the right amount.

* yes, really. Explain this:

Tue 15 Apr
09:15 - 10:14 Thornton Heath - Aldgate East: GBP 5.30
18:49 - 19:56 Aldgate East - Thornton Heath: GBP 5.30
Total: GBP10.60

OK, that looks sane. Same amount in both directions.

Thu 17 Apr
09:07 - 10:16 Thornton Heath - Aldgate East: GBP 5.30
18:41 - 19:01 Aldgate East - Victoria : GBP 2.20
19:50 - 20:26 Victoria - Thornton Heath : GBP 2.60
Total: GBP10.10

Apparently if I spend too long hanging around at Victoria, making it
think that I made three journeys instead of two, the price goes down.

I would suggest that the last of those journeys:

19:50 - 20:26 Victoria - Thornton Heath : GBP 2.60

was charged off-peak while the rest were charged at peak rates. The Peak
fare Victoria-Thornton Heath is £3.70 and the through peak fare £10.60 so
Oyster took advantage of you break of journey to save you money.

--
Colin Rosenstiel