On 02/01/2016 11:36, Recliner wrote:
On Sat, 2 Jan 2016 11:00:45 -0000 (UTC), "Peter Smyth"

The free travel ended at 0430 1st Jan and there weren't any reports of
problems yesterday. I'm guessing it is relating to the annual fares
increase which takes effect today, there was probably some sort of
update being pushed out to the gates overnight which has failed.

Yes, that appears to have been the problem.

If so, why would they be able to accept contact-less cards while Oyster
was u/s? Don't the same fares get charged either way?

Any why, if all you had to do to get a free trip was to claim to have an
Oyster card, would anyone during the outage try to use a contact-less card?


--
Clive Page

On Saturday, 2 January 2016 17:00:55 UTC, Clive Page wrote:

Any why, if all you had to do to get a free trip was to claim to have an
Oyster card, would anyone during the outage try to use a contact-less card?

Lack of knowledge? My friend left for work at 0615 this morning, and said the gates were closed at Wood Green, so she touched in as normal (but a '1' flashed up on the display rather than her balance).

In message , at 17:00:46 on Sat, 2 Jan
2016, Clive Page remarked:

Any why, if all you had to do to get a free trip was to claim to have
an Oyster card, would anyone during the outage try to use a
contact-less card?

I think that's called "not understanding the exact nature of the outage
and not wanting to be caught deliberately evading fares, even if for a
short time TfL will decide not to worry about it".
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 17:00:46 on Sat, 2 Jan
2016, Clive Page remarked:

Any why, if all you had to do to get a free trip was to claim to have
an Oyster card, would anyone during the outage try to use a
contact-less card?

I think that's called "not understanding the exact nature of the outage
and not wanting to be caught deliberately evading fares, even if for a
short time TfL will decide not to worry about it".

There is also the crazy notion of "honesty" and "believing in paying for a
service because it's the right thing to do", which is not in fact entirely
lost to the world...

(Back in the day when I travelled regularly between unstaffed stations with
PERTIS machines, I actually used to pay my fare in full, or seek out the
guard if I didn't have enough change. Strange but true.)

On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 17:32:16 +0000
Paul Corfield wrote:
I haven't seen the precise detail of why downloads seemingly failed
but I am not as deeply sceptical as some on here about the table
testing process. All the "oh they can't have tested it properly"
comments are unlikely to be true. There were / are very well

Well they quite evidently didn't test for some condition otherwise the failure
wouldn't have occured.

This is simple. Oyster cards hold value on the card and are read,
processed and then written back to with an updated balance and journey
history. In order to work out a PAYG fare or extension fare then you

I'd love to know how many hacked Oysters or DIY cards are out there that
can be loaded with a random value and/or don't decrement the value.

--
Spud

On 04/01/2016 09:48, d wrote:
On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 17:32:16 +0000
Paul Corfield wrote:

This is simple. Oyster cards hold value on the card and are read,
processed and then written back to with an updated balance and journey
history. In order to work out a PAYG fare or extension fare then you

I'd love to know how many hacked Oysters or DIY cards are out there that
can be loaded with a random value and/or don't decrement the value.

--
Spud

Presumably the "read" part of the above has some form of linked
reconciliation which quickly identifies and blocks those cards?

On Mon, 4 Jan 2016 10:15:37 +0000
Someone Somewhere wrote:
On 04/01/2016 09:48, d wrote:
On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 17:32:16 +0000
Paul Corfield wrote:

This is simple. Oyster cards hold value on the card and are read,
processed and then written back to with an updated balance and journey
history. In order to work out a PAYG fare or extension fare then you

I'd love to know how many hacked Oysters or DIY cards are out there that
can be loaded with a random value and/or don't decrement the value.

--
Spud

Presumably the "read" part of the above has some form of linked
reconciliation which quickly identifies and blocks those cards?

Not when the original MiFare was hacked they didn't. Anyway, if its DIY
card they could easily program in a rolling Id number. I doubt if the gates
keep a list of every single valid card thats been issued, probably just
blocked ones if anything. Presumably the version 1 cards are still valid so
that hack could still be used. Which probably means it is.

--
Spud

On 03/01/2016 17:32, Paul Corfield wrote:

Paul, thanks for your explanation.

Well far too many people were getting ridiculously excited about "free
travel" - it was all over Twitter. By the time the excitement reached
fever pitch the fault had been fixed.

I wonder how they brought the system back up - I assumed that there
would have been quite a number travelling using Oyster who didn't have
their card read on entry who would have been expected to touch out after
the system came back up, thereby getting an unresolved journey and a
hefty penalty. I haven't heard any howls of protest about that
occurring so maybe it didn't. Or maybe lots of people get unresolved
journeys so often and are rich enough that they simply don't care?


--
Clive Page

On Tue, 5 Jan 2016 09:54:33 +0000
Clive Page wrote:
On 03/01/2016 17:32, Paul Corfield wrote:

Paul, thanks for your explanation.

Well far too many people were getting ridiculously excited about "free
travel" - it was all over Twitter. By the time the excitement reached
fever pitch the fault had been fixed.

I wonder how they brought the system back up - I assumed that there
would have been quite a number travelling using Oyster who didn't have
their card read on entry who would have been expected to touch out after
the system came back up, thereby getting an unresolved journey and a
hefty penalty. I haven't heard any howls of protest about that
occurring so maybe it didn't. Or maybe lots of people get unresolved
journeys so often and are rich enough that they simply don't care?

Apparently they'll get a refund. Whether it'll happen or not is anyones guess.
If it had been me I'd have just gone to the guy at the gate and explained the
situation and refuse to touch out.

--
Spud