When I had an apparent Oyster overcharge a couple of weeks ago I went to
a TfL ticket office where they gave me a printout of my Oyster history.
Since I use Oyster infrequently this went back several months, and
showed (in addition to the problem I was then trying to solve) an
unexpected debit for a trip on a route 405 bus last November.

This surprised me, and so when I got home I checked my diary and found
that I had been nowhere near London on that date. In any case since I
have an over-60s bus pass, I never need to use Oyster on a bus in
London. The only explanation I can think of is that some technical
failure got my account charged for a trip actually made on a card owned
by someone else, and that the card's record was updated when I used it
next. This is rather worrying.

I filled in an Oyster claim form online and have just got a reply from
TfL saying that they cannot even do checks on journeys more than 8 weeks
in the past, and that claims can be considered only if they are within
the last 2 weeks. This seems wholly unreasonable, since the printout
from my card clearly shows journeys back many months before.

Since it appears that an Oyster Card account can be debited even when
you don't use it, this also means that everyone with an Oyster Card
really needs to check their journey history at least every two weeks, to
make sure that there have not been any random debits made in their
absence, so they can if necessary put in a claim within TfL's time limit.

Fortunately accounts can be checked on-line (provided you have made at
least one on-line top-up, a rather bizarre restriction) but this is
still a bit of an imposition on the occasional user like me. I guess I
shall just have to remember to do this from now on.

--
Clive Page

On 13/04/2012 10:44, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:31:33 +0100, Clive
wrote:

When I had an apparent Oyster overcharge a couple of weeks ago I went to
a TfL ticket office where they gave me a printout of my Oyster history.
Since I use Oyster infrequently this went back several months, and
showed (in addition to the problem I was then trying to solve) an
unexpected debit for a trip on a route 405 bus last November.

This surprised me, and so when I got home I checked my diary and found
that I had been nowhere near London on that date. In any case since I
have an over-60s bus pass, I never need to use Oyster on a bus in
London. The only explanation I can think of is that some technical
failure got my account charged for a trip actually made on a card owned
by someone else, and that the card's record was updated when I used it
next. This is rather worrying.

I filled in an Oyster claim form online and have just got a reply from
TfL saying that they cannot even do checks on journeys more than 8 weeks
in the past, and that claims can be considered only if they are within
the last 2 weeks. This seems wholly unreasonable, since the printout
from my card clearly shows journeys back many months before.

Since it appears that an Oyster Card account can be debited even when
you don't use it, this also means that everyone with an Oyster Card
really needs to check their journey history at least every two weeks, to
make sure that there have not been any random debits made in their
absence, so they can if necessary put in a claim within TfL's time limit.

Fortunately accounts can be checked on-line (provided you have made at
least one on-line top-up, a rather bizarre restriction) but this is
still a bit of an imposition on the occasional user like me. I guess I
shall just have to remember to do this from now on.

A question - did you hand over your card at the ticket office for them
to provide a printout? The print out should reflect what is on the
*card* and not what may or may not be in the central system.
Transaction data is only held centrally for 8 weeks AIUI whereas card
data is the last 10 transactions and only changes as you use the card
and the oldest data is overwritten.

Do you ever use the 405 bus?

The other thing to note is that the print out from a ticket office only
shows the day and month, *not* the year - so this journey didn't
necessarily happen in November 2011.

(And AFAICS it's simply impossible for 'ghost journeys' to be recorded
on an Oyster card.)

In message , at 10:31:33 on Fri, 13 Apr
2012, Clive Page remarked:
I filled in an Oyster claim form online and have just got a reply from
TfL saying that they cannot even do checks on journeys more than 8
weeks in the past, and that claims can be considered only if they are
within the last 2 weeks. This seems wholly unreasonable, since the
printout from my card clearly shows journeys back many months before.

The 8 weeks is mentioned on their web site, with a note saying they are
in the process of extending it to two years.

Not sure about the 2 weeks though, I managed to successfully complain
about a problem on 2nd February, on 11th March.

It doesn't even make sense for it to be "within two weeks of the end of
the 8 weeks", unless they are secretly keeping everything for 10 weeks
so they can sort problems out.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 11:06:01 on Fri, 13 Apr
2012, Mizter T remarked:
The other thing to note is that the print out from a ticket office only
shows the day and month, *not* the year - so this journey didn't
necessarily happen in November 2011.

Maybe we can tell from the other entries whether it was Nov 2010, they
should be in chronological order. Also, what was the fare charged, they
tend to go up relentlessly year after year.
--
Roland Perry

In article , (Mizter T) wrote:

On 13/04/2012 10:44, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:31:33 +0100, Clive wrote:

When I had an apparent Oyster overcharge a couple of weeks ago I went
to a TfL ticket office where they gave me a printout of my Oyster
history. Since I use Oyster infrequently this went back several months,
and showed (in addition to the problem I was then trying to solve) an
unexpected debit for a trip on a route 405 bus last November.

This surprised me, and so when I got home I checked my diary and found
that I had been nowhere near London on that date. In any case since I
have an over-60s bus pass, I never need to use Oyster on a bus in
London. The only explanation I can think of is that some technical
failure got my account charged for a trip actually made on a card owned
by someone else, and that the card's record was updated when I used it
next. This is rather worrying.

I filled in an Oyster claim form online and have just got a reply from
TfL saying that they cannot even do checks on journeys more than 8
weeks in the past, and that claims can be considered only if they are
within the last 2 weeks. This seems wholly unreasonable, since the
printout from my card clearly shows journeys back many months before.

Since it appears that an Oyster Card account can be debited even when
you don't use it, this also means that everyone with an Oyster Card
really needs to check their journey history at least every two weeks,
to make sure that there have not been any random debits made in their
absence, so they can if necessary put in a claim within TfL's time
limit.

Fortunately accounts can be checked on-line (provided you have made at
least one on-line top-up, a rather bizarre restriction) but this is
still a bit of an imposition on the occasional user like me. I guess I
shall just have to remember to do this from now on.

A question - did you hand over your card at the ticket office for them
to provide a printout? The print out should reflect what is on the
*card* and not what may or may not be in the central system.
Transaction data is only held centrally for 8 weeks AIUI whereas card
data is the last 10 transactions and only changes as you use the card
and the oldest data is overwritten.

Do you ever use the 405 bus?

The other thing to note is that the print out from a ticket office
only shows the day and month, *not* the year - so this journey didn't
necessarily happen in November 2011.

(And AFAICS it's simply impossible for 'ghost journeys' to be
recorded on an Oyster card.)

Sounds like I'll have problems with my wife's card then! I emailed them but
haven't had more than acknowledgement yet. :-(

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On 13/04/2012 11:55, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 11:06:01 on Fri, 13 Apr
2012, Mizter T remarked:
The other thing to note is that the print out from a ticket office
only shows the day and month, *not* the year - so this journey didn't
necessarily happen in November 2011.

Maybe we can tell from the other entries whether it was Nov 2010, they
should be in chronological order. Also, what was the fare charged, they
tend to go up relentlessly year after year.

That's a good point - perhaps the OP could tell us what fare is shown?
(Though that's not necessarily definitive, if the fare was capped - but
whether that happened or not should be fairly obvious.)

FWIW the 2009 Oyster PAYG bus fare was £1.00, the 2010 fare was £1.20,
and the 2011 fare was £1.30.

On 13/04/2012 11:56, wrote:

In , (Mizter T) wrote:
[SNIP]
The other thing to note is that the print out from a ticket office
only shows the day and month, *not* the year - so this journey didn't
necessarily happen in November 2011.

(And AFAICS it's simply impossible for 'ghost journeys' to be
recorded on an Oyster card.)

Sounds like I'll have problems with my wife's card then! I emailed them but
haven't had more than acknowledgement yet. :-(

I haven't looked at that thread yet!

On 13/04/2012 12:17, Mizter T wrote:

On 13/04/2012 11:55, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 11:06:01 on Fri, 13 Apr
2012, Mizter T remarked:
The other thing to note is that the print out from a ticket office
only shows the day and month, *not* the year - so this journey didn't
necessarily happen in November 2011.

Maybe we can tell from the other entries whether it was Nov 2010, they
should be in chronological order. Also, what was the fare charged, they
tend to go up relentlessly year after year.

That's a good point - perhaps the OP could tell us what fare is shown?
(Though that's not necessarily definitive, if the fare was capped - but
whether that happened or not should be fairly obvious.)

Actually it's more than just fairly obvious, it's spelt out, as a line
on the print-out reads:
"*** cap applied ***"


FWIW the 2009 Oyster PAYG bus fare was £1.00, the 2010 fare was £1.20,
and the 2011 fare was £1.30.

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at 11:06:01 on Fri, 13 Apr
2012, Mizter T remarked:
The other thing to note is that the print out from a ticket office only
shows the day and month, *not* the year - so this journey didn't
necessarily happen in November 2011.

Maybe we can tell from the other entries whether it was Nov 2010,
they should be in chronological order. Also, what was the fare
charged, they tend to go up relentlessly year after year.

Journey history from a ticket machine shows the day of the week but not the
year. The day of the week made it clear which year my wife's 30 March
entries came from. So not hard to work out the year.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On 13/04/2012 10:44, Paul Corfield wrote:
A question - did you hand over your card at the ticket office for them
to provide a printout? The print out should reflect what is on the
*card* and not what may or may not be in the central system.

Yes, I thought I'd made that clear, but do so now.

Do you ever use the 405 bus?

Sorry, my mistake the digits weren't very clear, it was the 507 bus.
Yes, I have used it once or twice maybe once in the last 12 months. But
I'm sure I wasn't in London on that date. And I never swipe my Oyster
card on a bus.

There is one other oddity in the printout on my card: a couple of tube
journeys that I took in December don't seem to be there, but the
November bus trip and a couple of top-ups that I made in December are
there. I wonder if there's some data corruption on the card, so the
whole printout is completely unreliable?

--
Clive Page