On Apr 17, 12:31*am, "Michael R N Dolbear" wrote:
Jack wrote

Re. your refund - this would have been purely goodwill. *Oyster has

never been able to charge in the way that you think it should.

I hope this was made clear to you when the refund was agreed.

"never been able"

Cite please.

Previous explanations of Oyster capping here and elsewhere showed this
working as would be expected, with no cases where using two PAYG Oyster
cards would give a lower cost.

* * "Oyster will work out the cheapest combination of fares for all
your
* * *journeys in one day."

--
Mike D

Clearly TfL have to strike a balance between providing technically
accurate information about how Oyster PAYG actually works and an
easily digestible message for the majority of users. Perhaps the
balance is too far towards simplification at the moment? The Oyster
card charges single fares and caps in real time during entry and exit
transactions.

In message
, at
04:04:55 on Tue, 17 Apr 2012, Jack remarked:
If the card had capped at £12, and then the OP had then made a single
journey between any combination of zones 2-6, the total charge would
have been £13.40.

Based on the OP's information and all the available non-discounted
single fares, this is not what happened. The card never reached the
Z1-4 cap.

The Z1-4 cap is £10.80, so it *had* exceeded that, because before the
final £1.40 fare the total would have been £13.00

ps I'm now getting confused as to why the OP thinks the Z1-4 cap is £12.
--
Roland Perry

On Apr 17, 2:23*pm, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
04:04:55 on Tue, 17 Apr 2012, Jack remarked:

If the card had capped at £12, and then the OP had then made a single
journey between any combination of zones 2-6, the total charge would
have been £13.40.

Based on the OP's information and all the available non-discounted
single fares, this is not what happened. *The card never reached the
Z1-4 cap.

The Z1-4 cap is £10.80, so it *had* exceeded that, because before the
final £1.40 fare the total would have been £13.00

ps I'm now getting confused as to why the OP thinks the Z1-4 cap is £12..
--
Roland Perry

Yes, I did not refer to the fares tables and used the wrong figures in
that post.

The Peak 1-4 cap is £10.60.

£12 could have been charged if the 1-4 cap had been applied and after
that, a single Tube only Off-Peak journey between a station in Z5 or
Z6 and a station in zones 2-6 was made (£1.40)

In message
, at
07:23:38 on Tue, 17 Apr 2012, Jack remarked:

Yes, I did not refer to the fares tables and used the wrong figures in
that post.

The Peak 1-4 cap is £10.60.

£12 could have been charged if the 1-4 cap had been applied and after
that, a single Tube only Off-Peak journey between a station in Z5 or
Z6 and a station in zones 2-6 was made (£1.40)

But why did the total jump all the way from £12 to £14.40 (not £13.40)
when a further £1.40 fare was added?

Or was that indeed an error (as vaguely confirm by the helpline's
refund)?

The earlier suggestion was that Oyster was looking at the possibility of
him having reached the Z6 cap (£16) but as he was short of that, charged
the sum of all his singles instead.
--
Roland Perry

Jack wrote

[...]

Oyster cannot retrospectively apply a Z1-4 cap when a Z5 journey has
already been made earlier in the day

This seems to be entirely your invention, not anything official, the
standard view being that all caps are applied all the time so
suggesting retroactive fare setting is needed is confused.

Oyster axioms include "no negative fares" and/or "order doesn't matter"
but that not the same thing.

My files produced

========= From: Mr Thant 02 Dec 2009
is that each journey you pay for contributes to all of the possible
caps that might apply, and if any of those caps is reached you only
pay the difference (or zero).
{lots more}
==

And no one on uktl from that day to this has queried that all possible
caps can apply all the time so a Z1-4 cap is quite independent of any
Z5 or Z6 journeys that may have been taken.

--
Mike D

Roland Perry wrote
on Mon, 16 Apr 2012, Michael R N Dolbear remarked:

Cite please.

Previous explanations of Oyster capping here and elsewhere showed
this
working as would be expected, with no cases where using two PAYG
Oyster
cards would give a lower cost.

So how can we explain the OP's problem, where it would have been
cheaper
to charge for a Z1-4 plus a single journey 4-5?

No idea, perhaps submit a FoI request for the number of refunds that
invoked the Oyster G'tee ?

If it was just a glitch, I may remark that in my thirty years as a
System programmer I proved the existence of a hardware error (that
didn't crash the system) precisely twice.

--
Mike D

In message 01cd1ce7$ef07c7a0$LocalHost@default, at 22:33:37 on Tue, 17
Apr 2012, Michael R N Dolbear remarked:
If it was just a glitch, I may remark that in my thirty years as a
System programmer I proved the existence of a hardware error (that
didn't crash the system) precisely twice.

Software errors are far more common, however.
--
Roland Perry

In message 01cd1ce7$0b1bb240$LocalHost@default, at 22:33:35 on Tue, 17
Apr 2012, Michael R N Dolbear remarked:
no one on uktl from that day to this has queried that all possible
caps can apply all the time so a Z1-4 cap is quite independent of any
Z5 or Z6 journeys that may have been taken.

Until the OP's example, of course.
--
Roland Perry

In message of Mon, 16 Apr
2012 12:58:22 in uk.transport.london, Jarle H Knudsen
writes
On Mon, 16 Apr 2012 02:18:40 -0700 (PDT), Jack wrote:

On Apr 13, 12:46*pm, Walter Briscoe
wrote:
I made many LU journeys in Z1-4 and one costing 1.40 to Z5.
I was charged 14.40, rather than 12.00 - the Z1-4 cap + 1.40.
Oyster helpdesk staff took a few days to agree that I had been
overcharged and agreed an ex gratia payment for the inconvenience.
The payments were delayed for an extra day as they needed "approval".
Automatic overpayment detection does not recognise the situation.

OTOH, there are discrepancies between the Single Fare Finder and Oyster.
(Oyster charges less.)
Moorgate - Queens Road Peckham peak shows as 3.80 but charges 3.70.
It seems there were recent changes to charges between LU & NR.
The Single Fare Finder has not been updated to reflect those changes.
--
Walter Briscoe

Re. your refund - this would have been purely goodwill. Oyster has
never been able to charge in the way that you think it should.

I hope this was made clear to you when the refund was agreed.

Zone 1-4 + an extra single journey is how I assumed the worked too, but I'm
apparently mistaken. Does TfL explain exactly how it works anywhere?

This page, http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14837.aspx , states

"Oyster will work out the cheapest combination of fares for all your
journeys in one day."

A zone 1-4 travelcard plus a single oyster fare would have been the
cheapest alternative.


I missed those words and am grateful to Jarle H Knudsen for reminding me
of them.
I would value comments from Jack on them, given his
assertion that my refund was merely goodwill.
You are capped at the price of a travelcard to cover all your journeys.
I believe the cheapest combination of fares for my journeys was 10.60
for a z1-4 travelcard and a 1.40 payg fare rather than the 14.40 which
was the total price of my payg journeys.

I started in peak hours, spent 10.20 in z1-4 ending in off-peak hours,
1.40 in z4-5, and 2.80 in z1-4. Off peak caps do not apply as my off-
peak spending was less than the minimum off-peak cap of 7.70. Relevant
peak caps are 10.60 in z1-4 and 15.80 in z1-6. Once you have travelled
in z5-6, the z1-4 peak cap is ignored.

In summary, I paid 14.40 in total; 13.00 was in z1-4 and 1.40 went into
z5-6. My refund was 2.40 to match a z1-4 10.60 cap + 1.40 outside z1-4.
--
Walter Briscoe

In message , at 13:23:53 on
Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Paul Corfield remarked:
The rules say
that capping aligns to the equivalent One Day Travelcard. I have
checked this against TfL documents that I have about Oyster ticketing
rules.

That's a plausible rule (a bit severe on people making just one trip
outside Z4, but that's another issue), but isn't consistent with claims
that:

"Oyster will work out the cheapest combination of fares for all
your journeys in one day."

.... which should be removed from the literature.
--
Roland Perry