Richard J. wrote:

Of course it is! You deliberately travelled through Zone 1.

Also, if you "had to" take some of your friends to the Stansted Express,
they must have thought you a bit unfriendly to just dump them on the LU
side of the gates and leave them to find Stansted Express on their own,
just because you wanted to save money by defrauding LU.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)
I travelled through zone 1, but at the same time I travelled from a
zone 2 to a zone 2 station, and LU just calculates the fare between
the two. If I travel from Ladbroke Grove to Earl's Court, it sees that
as a zone 2 to zone 2 journey as well. If I take the H&C to Edgware
Road and change for the District/Circle there to get to Earl's Court,
I would've also travelled through zone 1 without paying for it. Would
that be wrong?

Anyway, my friends were more than happy that I took them there and
showed them where to walk to exactly, and understood that I wanted to
save myself some money here.