Back at the start of January, to take advantage of being able to use
PAYG on National Rail - and to visit the steam museum there - I took a
trip from Wood Green to Kew Bridge.

The fares finder on the TfL site says that this should cost £3.10 off-
peak, or £2.05 with a Railcard.
I was charged £2.40, which is the z1-3 LU-only fare. This suggests to
me that either the fares finder is wrong, or the system is
overcharging.

I emailed a query to the Oyster helpline at the time, and they've
finally got around to writing back to me:
Please note that National Rail discounts only apply for journeys made during
Off-Peak times and are only applied if you reach the daily price cap. This
means that discounts are not applied to single journeys.

I pointed out that this is contrary to what it says on
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/oyster...aspx#section-3 - but
in response, they pointed me towards http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/faresa...ares/6769.aspx
and added:
The National Rail fares you are referring to in your email apply to National
Rail annual Gold card holders.

I just thought I'd check with the experts he they are wrong, aren't
they? I mean, the bit about Gold Cards is Very Wrong, given that you
can't even load a Gold Card discount onto your Oyster card yet.

Does anyone know of a way to escalate an email conversation to someone
who knows what they're talking about?

On Mar 11, 2:00*pm, martin wrote:
Back at the start of January, to take advantage of being able to use
PAYG on National Rail - and to visit the steam museum there - I took a
trip from Wood Green to Kew Bridge.

The fares finder on the TfL site says that this should cost £3.10 off-
peak, or £2.05 with a Railcard.

Yep.

I was charged £2.40, which is the z1-3 LU-only fare. This suggests to
me that either the fares finder is wrong, or the system is
overcharging.

Very peculiar. Almost seems like the system failed to realise it's an
LU+NR journey - can't see why, as Kew Bridge is unmistakeably an NR
station only served by NR trains (which are all on the NR PAYG fare
scale).

It's almost as if the system thinks you ended up at Kew Gardens LU,
not Kew Bridge NR.


I emailed a query to the Oyster helpline at the time, and they've
finally got around to writing back to me:

Please note that National Rail discounts only apply for journeys made during
Off-Peak times and are only applied if you reach the daily price cap. *This
means that discounts are not applied to single journeys.

I pointed out that this is contrary to what it says on
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/oyster...spx#section-3- but
in response, they pointed me towards
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/faresa...ares/6769.aspx
and added:

The National Rail fares you are referring to in your email apply to National
Rail annual Gold card holders.

I just thought I'd check with the experts he they are wrong, aren't
they? I mean, the bit about Gold Cards is Very Wrong, given that you
can't even load a Gold Card discount onto your Oyster card yet.

Yes, AFAICS they are Wrong with a capital W. Which is very
disappointing. How they've managed to bring Gold Cards into the mix I
don't know.

The only thing the blurb doesn't explicitly state is that off-peak LU
+NR single PAYG journeys get the Railcard discount, in addition to
plain vanilla NR-only journeys. But the Fares finder seems pretty
unambiguous that they do get the discount.


Does anyone know of a way to escalate an email conversation to someone
who knows what they're talking about?

I don't, sorry. You could try writing a letter to Shashi Verma, TfL's
Director of Fares & Ticketing! No idea if that'd actually work.
There's London TravelWatch as well of course - it's not like this is
some ultra-complicated and arcane issue, so taking it to them might be
an idea, not least because of the duff replies that you've had.

On Mar 11, 2:44*pm, Mizter T wrote:
It's almost as if the system thinks you ended up at Kew Gardens LU,
not Kew Bridge NR.
That was one of the suggestions the helpdesk made to me. I'm fairly
certain I spent half an hour shivering on a mainline platform at
Vauxhall.

not least because of the duff replies that you've had.

Calling me Ms hasn't warmed me to them either.

It's all fairly moot anyhow - I hit the cap later in the day. But it's
the principle, dammit!

On Mar 11, 3:00*pm, martin wrote:
Back at the start of January, to take advantage of being able to use
PAYG on National Rail - and to visit the steam museum there - I took a
trip from Wood Green to Kew Bridge.

The fares finder on the TfL site says that this should cost £3.10 off-
peak, or £2.05 with a Railcard.
I was charged £2.40, which is the z1-3 LU-only fare. This suggests to
me that either the fares finder is wrong, or the system is
overcharging.

For those who are still following, I finally got a sensible answer
from TfL:

I have spoken to our Fares and Ticketing department and they have informed
me that your combined National Rail and Tube journey should have been
charged £2.05 if you had a NR concession on your card.

The system as currently written does not give money back if the fare for the
journey up to the interchange is more than the fare for the whole journey..
In this case your NR discount did not register for your journey from Wood
Green to Vauxhall LU so the undiscounted TfL Off-peak fare (£2.40) was
charged for that part of the journey. Unfortunately the system did not
lower that fare for the rest of your journey.

Which makes some sort of sense, but I'd hope that this kind of thing
would be autocorrected. Perhaps it now is? My railcard has since
expired, so I can no longer check.

They've also offered me a £5 goodwill payment. Which was nice.

I still find it incredible that it's taken three months to get a
straight answer out of them. I think that probably deserves a letter
to someone at the GLA.

On 11 Apr, 11:28, martin wrote:
On Mar 11, 3:00*pm, martin wrote:

Back at the start of January, to take advantage of being able to use
PAYG on National Rail - and to visit the steam museum there - I took a
trip from Wood Green to Kew Bridge.

The fares finder on the TfL site says that this should cost £3.10 off-
peak, or £2.05 with a Railcard.
I was charged £2.40, which is the z1-3 LU-only fare. This suggests to
me that either the fares finder is wrong, or the system is
overcharging.

For those who are still following, I finally got a sensible answer
from TfL:

I have spoken to our Fares and Ticketing department and they have informed
me that your combined National Rail and Tube journey should have been
charged £2.05 if you had a NR concession on your card.

The system as currently written does not give money back if the fare for the
journey up to the interchange is more than the fare for the whole journey.
In this case your NR discount did not register for your journey from Wood
Green to Vauxhall LU so the undiscounted TfL Off-peak fare (£2.40) was
charged for that part of the journey. *Unfortunately the system did not
lower that fare for the rest of your journey.

Which makes some sort of sense, but I'd hope that this kind of thing
would be autocorrected. Perhaps it now is? My railcard has since
expired, so I can no longer check.


Does that mean in practice that you can only get the discount if
starting the combined journey on NR rather than LU?

What would have happened if you did it the other way I wonder? Did
you do it the other way, or were you capped by then?

On Apr 11, 11:59*am, MIG wrote:
On 11 Apr, 11:28, martin wrote:





On Mar 11, 3:00*pm, martin wrote:

Back at the start of January, to take advantage of being able to use
PAYG on National Rail - and to visit the steam museum there - I took a
trip from Wood Green to Kew Bridge.

The fares finder on the TfL site says that this should cost £3.10 off-
peak, or £2.05 with a Railcard.
I was charged £2.40, which is the z1-3 LU-only fare. This suggests to
me that either the fares finder is wrong, or the system is
overcharging.

For those who are still following, I finally got a sensible answer
from TfL:

I have spoken to our Fares and Ticketing department and they have informed
me that your combined National Rail and Tube journey should have been
charged £2.05 if you had a NR concession on your card.

The system as currently written does not give money back if the fare for the
journey up to the interchange is more than the fare for the whole journey.
In this case your NR discount did not register for your journey from Wood
Green to Vauxhall LU so the undiscounted TfL Off-peak fare (£2.40) was
charged for that part of the journey. *Unfortunately the system did not
lower that fare for the rest of your journey.

Which makes some sort of sense, but I'd hope that this kind of thing
would be autocorrected. Perhaps it now is? My railcard has since
expired, so I can no longer check.

Does that mean in practice that you can only get the discount if
starting the combined journey on NR rather than LU?

That appears to be the case.

What would have happened if you did it the other way I wonder? *Did
you do it the other way, or were you capped by then?

I was hampered by the rather infrequent Sunday service, so took a bus
to South Ealing and the tube back, and hit a cap.
I wonder if the system would have autocorrected the fare if I hadn't
been capped?