Apparently, from 25th September the charge for an incomplete Oyster
pre-pay journey starting or ending at the NR termini at Marylebone,
Euston, Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street will be increased from
£1.70 to £5.00.

Furthermore, LU ticket offices will be unable to remove the £5 penalty
- if you receive one in error, you will need to phone the Oyster
helpline. Presumably this means that no reimbursement will be
available to holders of unregistered Oyster cards.

So if you're using pre-pay on NR to or from the above stations, be
extra careful, especially if your card is unregistered. Make sure the
person in front of you has passed through the gates and the gates have
closed before touching your card on the reader. If you have trouble
getting through the gates and a staff member at the side gate asks you
to touch your card on the reader there, I would refuse unless you're
sure the £5 charge would not be applied. If you're travelling to/from
an ungated station, don't forget to touch in/out - remember it's
easier to forget if you're travelling in a group.

"asdf" wrote in message ...
Apparently, from 25th September the charge for an incomplete Oyster
pre-pay journey starting or ending at the NR termini at Marylebone,
Euston, Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street will be increased from
£1.70 to £5.00.

Furthermore, LU ticket offices will be unable to remove the £5 penalty
- if you receive one in error, you will need to phone the Oyster
helpline. Presumably this means that no reimbursement will be
available to holders of unregistered Oyster cards.

So if you're using pre-pay on NR to or from the above stations, be
extra careful, especially if your card is unregistered. Make sure the
person in front of you has passed through the gates and the gates have
closed before touching your card on the reader. If you have trouble
getting through the gates and a staff member at the side gate asks you
to touch your card on the reader there, I would refuse unless you're
sure the £5 charge would not be applied. If you're travelling to/from
an ungated station, don't forget to touch in/out - remember it's
easier to forget if you're travelling in a group.

National rail stations are the worst offenders for turning the entire
gateline off including the Oyster pads outside of peak times thus creating
unresolved journeys. I wonder who "gets" the £5 penalty?

Also there is no facility to check your last journey or balance details
at NR stations as there are no Oyster ticket machines like on the tube.
If you get caught by this you would not even be able to verify it at the station.

asdf wrote:
Apparently, from 25th September the charge for an incomplete Oyster
pre-pay journey starting or ending at the NR termini at Marylebone,
Euston, Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street will be increased from
£1.70 to £5.00.

Furthermore, LU ticket offices will be unable to remove the £5 penalty
- if you receive one in error, you will need to phone the Oyster
helpline. Presumably this means that no reimbursement will be
available to holders of unregistered Oyster cards.

So if you're using pre-pay on NR to or from the above stations, be
extra careful, especially if your card is unregistered. Make sure the
person in front of you has passed through the gates and the gates have
closed before touching your card on the reader. If you have trouble
getting through the gates and a staff member at the side gate asks you
to touch your card on the reader there, I would refuse unless you're
sure the £5 charge would not be applied. If you're travelling to/from
an ungated station, don't forget to touch in/out - remember it's
easier to forget if you're travelling in a group.

The scenario where the card apparently doesn't work but then a staff
member asks you to touch the card on the reader is a significant
problem, IMO. That happened to my friend with his unregistered Oyster;
he was charged £1.70 for a journey he didn't make, and despite speaking
to ticket office staff at two different stations, both said he had to
call the helpline instead - which, of course, wouldn't refund the money
because the card was unregistered. I didn't really understand why not.

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

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 22:44:50 +0100, Dave Arquati
wrote:


The scenario where the card apparently doesn't work but then a staff
member asks you to touch the card on the reader is a significant
problem, IMO. That happened to my friend with his unregistered Oyster;
he was charged £1.70 for a journey he didn't make, and despite speaking
to ticket office staff at two different stations, both said he had to
call the helpline instead - which, of course, wouldn't refund the money
because the card was unregistered. I didn't really understand why not.

Potentially not a full enough audit trail?

Rob.
--
rob at robertwoolley dot co dot uk

asdf wrote:
Apparently, from 25th September the charge for an incomplete Oyster
pre-pay journey starting or ending at the NR termini at Marylebone,
Euston, Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street will be increased from
£1.70 to £5.00.

Furthermore, LU ticket offices will be unable to remove the £5 penalty
- if you receive one in error, you will need to phone the Oyster
helpline. Presumably this means that no reimbursement will be
available to holders of unregistered Oyster cards.

So if you're using pre-pay on NR to or from the above stations, be
extra careful, especially if your card is unregistered. Make sure the
person in front of you has passed through the gates and the gates have
closed before touching your card on the reader. If you have trouble
getting through the gates and a staff member at the side gate asks you
to touch your card on the reader there, I would refuse unless you're
sure the £5 charge would not be applied. If you're travelling to/from
an ungated station, don't forget to touch in/out - remember it's
easier to forget if you're travelling in a group.

Very interesting. Out of interest where did you pick up on this news
from?

The logic behind this change is pretty obvious - some people had become
aware that Oyster Pre-Pay was used for some NR routes into these London
termini, and also that an Oyster card would let people out of the
network through automatic gates at a station even if they hadn't
touched in when they enetered the network.

Whilst some passengers might not have touched-in at Pre-Pay NR stations
where they started their journey either through forgetful omission or
intentionally so as to save money, I reckon others had realised that
they could travel in from all over London on *non Pre-Pay NR routes*
without a ticket, starting at a non-gated station, and get through the
barriers at the London terminus at a cost of just £1.70 (i.e. less
that what a legitimate printed single/return might cost). Given that
during the evening the barriers may well be open anyway they might end
up with a free ride into town, and quite possibly a free ride out later
on that night as the barriers may well be open for the return journey.

Additionally the logic applies in the reverse direction. If travelling
from Liverpool Street to Walthamstow Central, why touch out when it
will charge you £2.50 when if you *don't* touch out it'll only cost
£1.70. This will mess up any Pre-Pay capping for that day, but if
you're just doing a couple of single journey that day that doesn't
matter. Plus if you're a fare evader you may well just want to get
through the gates at Liverpool Street and onto your train to Enfield
Town, for example.


I hope that this change will be clearly publicised both at the London
termini and on NR Pre Pay routes so as to remind honest but possibly
forgetful passengers that they must remember to touch-in at their
starting station, especially if it doesn't have automatic gates.

Robert Woolley wrote:
On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 22:44:50 +0100, Dave Arquati
wrote:


The scenario where the card apparently doesn't work but then a staff
member asks you to touch the card on the reader is a significant
problem, IMO. That happened to my friend with his unregistered Oyster;
he was charged £1.70 for a journey he didn't make, and despite speaking
to ticket office staff at two different stations, both said he had to
call the helpline instead - which, of course, wouldn't refund the money
because the card was unregistered. I didn't really understand why not.

Potentially not a full enough audit trail?

Surely there is an audit trail of all journeys and refund requests made
for that card. They don't have the card owner's name and address but
that shouldn't stop them being able to calculate if the refund request
appears genuine or a repeated attempt to scam TfL. Sounds like a policy
put in place by someone who doesn't agree with the idea of unregistered
Oyster cards.

Dave

asdf wrote:

Apparently, from 25th September the charge for an incomplete Oyster
pre-pay journey starting or ending at the NR termini at Marylebone,
Euston, Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street will be increased from
£1.70 to £5.00.


How will this work with boundary zone tickets then? I know from
experience of these at Victoria they do not open the gates (which makes
sense becuase they are valid from the zone boundary) and you have to
use your Oyster instead.

Is someone with a Boundary Zone 2 to Ilford ticket going to cop a £5
penalty at Liverpool Street? And if so, how is the helpline going to
solve it without you sending them the ticket to prove it - which could
have be collected at the destination ticket barrier?

--
Gareth Davis

wrote:
asdf wrote:


Apparently, from 25th September the charge for an incomplete Oyster
pre-pay journey starting or ending at the NR termini at Marylebone,
Euston, Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street will be increased from
£1.70 to £5.00.



How will this work with boundary zone tickets then? I know from
experience of these at Victoria they do not open the gates (which makes
sense becuase they are valid from the zone boundary) and you have to
use your Oyster instead.

Is someone with a Boundary Zone 2 to Ilford ticket going to cop a £5
penalty at Liverpool Street? And if so, how is the helpline going to
solve it without you sending them the ticket to prove it - which could
have be collected at the destination ticket barrier?

If you have a boundary ticket then you must also have an Oyster season
including Z1, which will open all gates within its appropriate zones
without recoursing to prepay, regardless of whether there is a touch-in
to go with each touch-out.

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

Dave Arquati wrote:
wrote:
asdf wrote:
Apparently, from 25th September the charge for an incomplete Oyster
pre-pay journey starting or ending at the NR termini at Marylebone,
Euston, Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street will be increased from
£1.70 to £5.00.

How will this work with boundary zone tickets then? I know from
experience of these at Victoria they do not open the gates (which makes
sense becuase they are valid from the zone boundary) and you have to
use your Oyster instead.

If you have a boundary ticket then you must also have an Oyster season
including Z1, which will open all gates within its appropriate zones
without recoursing to prepay, regardless of whether there is a touch-in
to go with each touch-out.

According to
http://www.atoc.org/traveltrade/manu...ionk-part2.pdf, I can
use a boundary zone extension with a one-day travelcard, including a
2-6 travelcard. Can't remember if these can be loaded onto Oyster.
But this combination isn't valid to zone 1, so you might end up paying
£5 instead of the difference between a 2-6 and a 1-6 travelcard.

Colin McKenzie

Dave Arquati wrote:
asdf wrote:
Apparently, from 25th September the charge for an incomplete Oyster
pre-pay journey starting or ending at the NR termini at Marylebone,
Euston, Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street will be increased from
£1.70 to £5.00.

Furthermore, LU ticket offices will be unable to remove the £5 penalty
- if you receive one in error, you will need to phone the Oyster
helpline. Presumably this means that no reimbursement will be
available to holders of unregistered Oyster cards.

So if you're using pre-pay on NR to or from the above stations, be
extra careful, especially if your card is unregistered. Make sure the
person in front of you has passed through the gates and the gates have
closed before touching your card on the reader. If you have trouble
getting through the gates and a staff member at the side gate asks you
to touch your card on the reader there, I would refuse unless you're
sure the £5 charge would not be applied. If you're travelling to/from
an ungated station, don't forget to touch in/out - remember it's
easier to forget if you're travelling in a group.

The scenario where the card apparently doesn't work but then a staff
member asks you to touch the card on the reader is a significant
problem, IMO. That happened to my friend with his unregistered Oyster;
he was charged £1.70 for a journey he didn't make, and despite speaking
to ticket office staff at two different stations, both said he had to
call the helpline instead - which, of course, wouldn't refund the money
because the card was unregistered. I didn't really understand why not.

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London
What is an unregistered card? I have resisted getting an Oyster card
but I see that they are going to be compulsary for weekly travel cards.
Does that mean I will get stung for journies that I didn't make or
unresolved journies if the equipment fails.

Kevin