Whilst taveling around London today, I ended up at Tottenham Court Road
with what I assumed to be a Zone 1-4 PrePay ODTC on my Oyster, as well
as a remaining balance of 1.80GBP. Upon trying to touch in however, I
was confronted with an error. I checked my balance and found that I had
only 50p left. After adding 5GBP to the card I tried again.

I still got an error; checking the card again found no errors, and the
appropriate balance of 5.50GBP. I asked the guy behind the ticket
window about it and he said that my Oyster was clean. He told me that
there are occassionally propagation delays in the system and that I
should try again.

Trying again yielded the same error; I asked the guy manning the gate
to let me through, and after showing him that it didn't work, he let me
past.

When I finally touched out at Richmond, my balance was 6.80GBP!

What could have caused this rather unusual anomaly?

On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 09:19:12 -0800, TheOneKEA wrote:
What could have caused this rather unusual anomaly?

The fact prepay relies on a computer system, and all government computer
systems are inherrently shoddy. Buy a paper ticket, and you have proof of
travel. Buy oyster and you're hoping that it works lest you get charge a
penalty fare, or even end up in court.
--
Everything I write here is my personal opinion, and should not be taken as fact.

Whilst taveling around London today, I ended up at Tottenham Court Road
with what I assumed to be a Zone 1-4 PrePay ODTC on my Oyster, as well
as a remaining balance of 1.80GBP. Upon trying to touch in however, I
was confronted with an error. I checked my balance and found that I had
only 50p left. After adding 5GBP to the card I tried again.

Interesting :-) I can imagine you being charged £1.30 if you hadn't in
fact been in zone 4 yet (the cap for 1-3 is the same price as 1-4) and it
was charging you for a single covering zones 4,5 and 6 to be refunded later.
However I don't understand why it would charge you but not let you enter.
Surely it should do one or the other?

Trying again yielded the same error; I asked the guy manning the gate
to let me through, and after showing him that it didn't work, he let me
past.

I can understand why you'd get more errors after the first one if it had
already recorded you entering the system. I guess the question is really
what the error numbers were as someone on here would be able to interpret
them.

When I finally touched out at Richmond, my balance was 6.80GBP!

Well that makes sense at least. You would have had the cost of the last
journey refunded.


G.

Graham J wrote:
Whilst taveling around London today, I ended up at Tottenham Court Road
with what I assumed to be a Zone 1-4 PrePay ODTC on my Oyster, as well
as a remaining balance of 1.80GBP. Upon trying to touch in however, I
was confronted with an error. I checked my balance and found that I had
only 50p left. After adding 5GBP to the card I tried again.


Interesting :-) I can imagine you being charged £1.30 if you hadn't in
fact been in zone 4 yet (the cap for 1-3 is the same price as 1-4) and it
was charging you for a single covering zones 4,5 and 6 to be refunded later.
However I don't understand why it would charge you but not let you enter.
Surely it should do one or the other?

Was any of the travelling before 0930? The difference between a Z12 peak
and off-peak travelcard is £1.30... although I have no idea why that
would make a difference, it's just an observation!

Trying again yielded the same error; I asked the guy manning the gate
to let me through, and after showing him that it didn't work, he let me
past.


I can understand why you'd get more errors after the first one if it had
already recorded you entering the system. I guess the question is really
what the error numbers were as someone on here would be able to interpret
them.


When I finally touched out at Richmond, my balance was 6.80GBP!


Well that makes sense at least. You would have had the cost of the last
journey refunded.


G.



--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

Dave Arquati wrote:

Was any of the travelling before 0930? The difference between a Z12
peak and off-peak travelcard is £1.30... although I have no idea
why that would make a difference, it's just an observation!

No, all travelling was done after 0930.


I can understand why you'd get more errors after the first one if
it had already recorded you entering the system. I guess the
question is really what the error numbers were as someone on here
would be able to interpret them.

The gates at TCR don't have LEDs on the entry validators, so I don't
know what the error code was.

Interesting :-) I can imagine you being charged £1.30 if you hadn't in
fact been in zone 4 yet (the cap for 1-3 is the same price as 1-4) and
it
was charging you for a single covering zones 4,5 and 6 to be refunded
later.
However I don't understand why it would charge you but not let you
enter.
Surely it should do one or the other?

Was any of the travelling before 0930? The difference between a Z12 peak
and off-peak travelcard is £1.30... although I have no idea why that
would make a difference, it's just an observation!

Unless I've got confused the OP was travelling on a Sunday anyway so that
wouldn't make a difference.

If it was charging for 4,5,6 then it would have been charging the maximum
possible fare when touching in which is of interest because I believe in the
past it has been charging the minimum possible fare.