"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...
On 19 Oct 2006 05:25:10 -0700, "Andy" wrote:


Mizter T wrote:
asdf wrote:

On 18 Oct 2006 15:21:33 -0700, Mizter T wrote:

I've thought about this a bit more and my above explanation (with the
Tottenham Hale via Highbury & Islington to Camden Road example)
could've been a bit clearer.

The critical point is that if you're using PAYG for any portion of
your
Tube journey you must touch in and out at the place where you move
from
PAYG territory to non-PAYG territory.

Are you sure about this? This is a long-standing question on this
group (at least for those who care about such things, of whom I'm
perhaps the only one), and is still mentally filed in my "unanswered"
category. IIRC it was originally raised by someone who wanted to
travel from Ilford to Liverpool Street (both have barriers with
validators) on a Z34 Travelcard on Oyster, and wanted to know if the
extension would be deducted correctly or if they'd have to leave the
train at Stratford and use a platform validator there, but no one
seemed to know the answer.

I'm 99.9% certain about it.

I've just has a look into the Ilford to Liverpool Street query you were
wondering about. My two sources for information are the list of NR
routes where Oyster PAYG is accepted [1], and also the new map that
illustrates which NR routes accept Oyster PAYG [2]. Basically my
conclusion is that the passenger needs to touch-in on the platform
reader at Stratford. I'm 99.9% certain about this as well (because I'm
annoying like that).

I'll presume that the passenger, Mr X, has a zones 3&4 Travelcard
loaded on their Oyster card.

~~~~~
The Ilford to Stratford NR portion of the journey is an NR route where
PAYG is *not accepted*. However Mr X has a Z34 Travelcard for that part
of the journey, which is fine. The gates at Ilford (if there are any)
will let Mr X through as he has a valid Travelcard on his Oyster - but
they don't provide an entry point or onto the PAYG system and
electronically 'mark' his Oyster card , because PAYG *isn't accepted*
from Ilford.

The Stratford to Liverpool Street portion of the journey is a NR route
where PAYG *is accepted*. However Mr X has not yet entered onto the
PAYG system - the Ilford to Stratford journey has been carried out
under the auspices of his Z34 Travelcard. He thus needs to enter onto
the PAYG system - by touching-in on the platform reader at Stratford
he's 'marked' his Oyster card with an entry point and can then continue
to Liverpool Street.

On exiting the gates at Liverpool Street the system will adjust his
balance to ensure the correct fare for Stratford to Liverpool Street is
from his card - in the case of Mr X that'll be a zones 1&2 single
journey, as his Travelcard already covers zone 3.
~~~~~

The critical thing is to 'mark' your Oyster card when you enter and
leave the PAYG system (in this case at Stratford). Merely using an
Oyster card to pass through automatic gates at an NR station that
*doesn't accept PAYG* (such as Ilford) is no good - said gates merely
check to see if you have a valid Travelcard on your Oyster, they don't
do anything else whatsoever.


Hope that's cleared things up.



Actually, I don't think that the system works like this. I have a Zone
1-2 Annual Oyster Travelcard and on occasion I travel to Moor Park. If
I look at the pre-pay journeys, on the website, my 'touching in' in
Zone 2 doesn't appear and I just see the correct amount (GBP1.00 on a
Saturday) deducted upon exiting at Moor Park. Going the other way, GBP
1.00 is deducted on entry at Moor Park and the Exit (in Zone 1) is
marked up as GBP 0.00. The systems seems to be assuming that I have
started the journey within my Travelcard zones and the pre-pay only
comes into play when I touch in/out outside the Travelcard validity.

So, for the Ilford - Liverpool Street journey, if it is all on Oyster,
the extension to Liverpool Street should be charged upon exiting, using
the travelcard validity as 'start' point. The Oystercard helpline have
confirmed that this is how the prepay works for extensions out of Zones
1-2, I'd assume that it works the same going in as well.

My head hurts!

There is a big difference between the two examples being discussed. The
Liv St - Ilford example is a composite journey where there is part
interavailability at LU fares and then the remaining part is at NR fares
/ validity.

Liv St - Stratford is LU fares / interavailable with the Central Line /
Oyster PAYG is valid.
Stratford - Ilford is NR fares / no interavailability / Oyster PAYG is
not valid.

There is no way that the gates at Ilford (yes there are some there) can
do anything to the PAYG part of an Oyster card. It can only process
Travelcard / OAP / Blind / Disabled validity in Oyster format.

On ALL gates the gate will always read and write to the card or the
magnetic ticket if it is valid. Invalid tickets or cards or not written
to. While the gate at Ilford can write to the Oyster card to say "Entry
at Ilford" or "Exit at Ilford" it cannot make a deduction or add back to
PAYG value because that product is not valid at that location. At
Liverpool Street the gates will only ever expect to see a LU or DLR
origin (if someone has changed at Stratford to the main line to Liv St),
Stratford or Seven Sisters or Tottenham Hale or Walthamstow Central
(given the PAYG validity that works there). I do not know if the
validators at the above places have a special code for PAYG or whether
they use the standard designation that is normally encoded as the
origin.

On the LU station to Moor Park example the crucial difference is that
this is a journey wholly and completely at LU fares with LU Oyster and
PAYG functionality at the start and end of the trip. Therefore the
system can apply the rules successfully as you have experienced.

You are correct in that if you use part PAYG and part Travelcard
validity on your Oyster card for a journey that depending on where you
start and end then you may only value deducted on exit (when out of
zone) or deduction on entry (entering out of zone) and possibly added
back when exiting (inside travelcard validity) or further deducted if
you have travelled across London and gone back outside your Travelcard
validity.

Hopefully that is partly (!) answers this mini debate. On ASDF's
question I think Mizter T is right but I can fully understand why there
is confusion about needing to leap off, validate, leap on again at
Stratford.


An interesting oyster journey cropped up for one of my work colleagues a few
months ago.

He had Z2-3 Monthly and always has a pre-pay amount on his oyster if he need
to go into / via zone 1.

He did a journey as follows :
Entered (Swiped in) at Hampstead Northern Line,
travelled to Moorgate,
changed to circle line,
Exited (Swiped out) at Liverpool Street and met someone for an airport train
Entered Liverpool Street (BR / One) and swiped in
Exited at Tottenham Hale, but forgot to swipe out.

He asked me what would happen to his oyster as he did not swipe out. I said
he would get an incomplete journey and be charged £1.50 for the Hampstead to
Liv St journey. And then a £5 penalty fare from Liv St to Tott Hale.

I advised to him to check his journey history at his station and see the
ticket office. When he checked this, he had no money deducted at all. The
Hampstead to Liv St section was listed but not charged. The Liv.St BR
section had incomplete journey.

Any thoughts ? I thought the least he would get would be the £5 BR charge.

On 19 Oct 2006 16:22:53 -0700, Mizter T wrote:

First time I've ever heard that - are you sure? A £5 minimum balance
on an Oyster card would be very unpopular (and possibly lacking in
proper legal backing) - which is why I find such a move somewhat
unlikely.

Again been sitting here bored and found some more info on this. The
current Fares and Tickets leaflet clearly states what changes are
coming and can be found here
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/fares-tick...fares-2006.pdf

Specifically on pages 2 and 3 - "Failure to touch in and out correctly
will result in a penalty fare."

AND "when you touch in at the start of your journey a charge of up to
£5 will be deducted from your balance. When you touch out at the end
of your journey the charge will be adjusted so that you only pay the
correct Oyster single fare for your journey. If you fail to touch in
and touch out the charge will be applied to your card and the journey
will not count towards your daily cap." Hence the £5 minimum top up.

This is probably referring to the £5 deducted when you touch in at the
NR gatelines at Marylebone, Euston, Liverpool Street, and Fenchurch
Street. This has been in place for around a year.

This wording is new to the September 2006 Fares booklet - to my eyes it
appears to cover both the already implemented £5 charge for
incompleted (i.e. unresolved) journeys that involve passing through
gatelines at NR termini *and* the new £4 charge that will be applied
across the rest of the network from November 19.

Indeed - but it's probably not referring to any £5 minimum PAYG
balance, which was my point.

asdf wrote:

On 19 Oct 2006 16:22:53 -0700, Mizter T wrote:

First time I've ever heard that - are you sure? A £5 minimum balance
on an Oyster card would be very unpopular (and possibly lacking in
proper legal backing) - which is why I find such a move somewhat
unlikely.

Again been sitting here bored and found some more info on this. The
current Fares and Tickets leaflet clearly states what changes are
coming and can be found here
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/fares-tick...ares-2006..pdf

Specifically on pages 2 and 3 - "Failure to touch in and out correctly
will result in a penalty fare."

AND "when you touch in at the start of your journey a charge of up to
£5 will be deducted from your balance. When you touch out at the end
of your journey the charge will be adjusted so that you only pay the
correct Oyster single fare for your journey. If you fail to touch in
and touch out the charge will be applied to your card and the journey
will not count towards your daily cap." Hence the £5 minimum top up.

This is probably referring to the £5 deducted when you touch in at the
NR gatelines at Marylebone, Euston, Liverpool Street, and Fenchurch
Street. This has been in place for around a year.

This wording is new to the September 2006 Fares booklet - to my eyes it
appears to cover both the already implemented £5 charge for
incompleted (i.e. unresolved) journeys that involve passing through
gatelines at NR termini *and* the new £4 charge that will be applied
across the rest of the network from November 19.

Indeed - but it's probably not referring to any £5 minimum PAYG
balance, which was my point.

In that case I agree with your point absolutely. To be blunt the whole
notion of Oyster card holders being required to maintain a £5 minimum
PAYG balance is something that I don't find at all credible whatsoever.
I think that somewhere along the line the upcoming changes (i.e. the
£4 charge for unresolved journeys) have been misconstrued, and after a
round of chinese-whispers what emerged was this new £5 minimum
balance "rule". It's just not going to happen though, for so many
reasons.

Mizter T wrote:
In that case I agree with your point absolutely. To be blunt the whole
notion of Oyster card holders being required to maintain a £5 minimum
PAYG balance is something that I don't find at all credible whatsoever.
I think that somewhere along the line the upcoming changes (i.e. the
£4 charge for unresolved journeys) have been misconstrued, and after a
round of chinese-whispers what emerged was this new £5 minimum
balance "rule". It's just not going to happen though, for so many
reasons.

I've just finished a training course, a small part of which involved
discussions on this very matter. The £4 charge is definite, and the
best reason we came up with for it was to quickly teach people a lesson
(aimed particularly at those who skip fares on purpose, but obviously
its also good, in the long run, for everyone who regularly has
incomplete journeys).

We all had some trouble stomaching the £5 minimum too - at current an
Oyster deducts the minimum fare for the station you enter, and charges
any extra required when you leave the network. As of 19th Nov, it will
charge essentially the maximum, and refund the difference when you
exit. Whilst this is obviously controversial, hopefully it is clear
enough that this is simply designed to avoid anyone trying to cheat the
system by walking around with a negative balance until they need to
travel again (say by putting £1 on, then travelling from Amersham back
home in zone 1), Perhaps the £3 deposit will be adjusted to go
towards this...

As to whether it'll work... we'll see I guess. Considering its a
"pre-pay" ticket though, I guess it should be used as such. After all,
no-one complains that they have to put £10 minumum on a mobile phone,
when the call they want to make might cost 10p. Doesn't make it right
by any means, but there's a similar idea behind it.

Anyway to answer one of your points - there's no chinese whispers. The
£4 penalty is coming, and will be enforced as of 19th November (a
sunday) upon anyone who fails to touch in or out properly with pre-pay.
The big question I and my colleagues would like answered is how this
affects users of child oysters...

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 11:55:02 +0100, "Sam" wrote:

An interesting oyster journey cropped up for one of my work colleagues a few
months ago.

He had Z2-3 Monthly and always has a pre-pay amount on his oyster if he need
to go into / via zone 1.

He did a journey as follows :
Entered (Swiped in) at Hampstead Northern Line,
travelled to Moorgate,
changed to circle line,
Exited (Swiped out) at Liverpool Street and met someone for an airport train
Entered Liverpool Street (BR / One) and swiped in
Exited at Tottenham Hale, but forgot to swipe out.

He asked me what would happen to his oyster as he did not swipe out. I said
he would get an incomplete journey and be charged £1.50 for the Hampstead to
Liv St journey. And then a £5 penalty fare from Liv St to Tott Hale.

I advised to him to check his journey history at his station and see the
ticket office. When he checked this, he had no money deducted at all. The
Hampstead to Liv St section was listed but not charged. The Liv.St BR
section had incomplete journey.

Any thoughts ? I thought the least he would get would be the £5 BR charge.

I'm not 100% certain but Liverpool Street will have acted like an out of
station interchange on this trip. The fact his trip was a composite will
have meant that the gate on exit from LU Liverpool St will have deducted
the pre-pay due but then the gate at "ONE" Liverpool St will have added
it back on! Only at final exit will the gate or validator be able to
look through the entire history for that trip and decide to deduct the
Z1 only fare for that journey.

He was only able to do this because he interchanged within the defined
time parameter at Liverpool St. If that had taken longer then it is
possible that he would have had the LU Z1 fare deducted for the LU Liv
St exit, then had £5 deducted on entry to "One" Liv St and then no value
add back if he had failed to validate on exit at Tottenham Hale.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

wrote:

Mizter T wrote:
In that case I agree with your point absolutely. To be blunt the whole
notion of Oyster card holders being required to maintain a £5 minimum
PAYG balance is something that I don't find at all credible whatsoever.
I think that somewhere along the line the upcoming changes (i.e. the
£4 charge for unresolved journeys) have been misconstrued, and after a
round of chinese-whispers what emerged was this new £5 minimum
balance "rule". It's just not going to happen though, for so many
reasons.

I've just finished a training course, a small part of which involved
discussions on this very matter. The £4 charge is definite, and the
best reason we came up with for it was to quickly teach people a lesson
(aimed particularly at those who skip fares on purpose, but obviously
its also good, in the long run, for everyone who regularly has
incomplete journeys).

We all had some trouble stomaching the £5 minimum too - at current an
Oyster deducts the minimum fare for the station you enter, and charges
any extra required when you leave the network. As of 19th Nov, it will
charge essentially the maximum, and refund the difference when you
exit. Whilst this is obviously controversial, hopefully it is clear
enough that this is simply designed to avoid anyone trying to cheat the
system by walking around with a negative balance until they need to
travel again (say by putting £1 on, then travelling from Amersham back
home in zone 1), Perhaps the £3 deposit will be adjusted to go
towards this...

As to whether it'll work... we'll see I guess. Considering its a
"pre-pay" ticket though, I guess it should be used as such. After all,
no-one complains that they have to put £10 minumum on a mobile phone,
when the call they want to make might cost 10p. Doesn't make it right
by any means, but there's a similar idea behind it.

Anyway to answer one of your points - there's no chinese whispers. The
£4 penalty is coming, and will be enforced as of 19th November (a
sunday) upon anyone who fails to touch in or out properly with pre-pay.
The big question I and my colleagues would like answered is how this
affects users of child oysters...


wrote:

Mizter T wrote:
In that case I agree with your point absolutely. To be blunt the whole
notion of Oyster card holders being required to maintain a £5 minimum
PAYG balance is something that I don't find at all credible whatsoever.
I think that somewhere along the line the upcoming changes (i.e. the
£4 charge for unresolved journeys) have been misconstrued, and after a
round of chinese-whispers what emerged was this new £5 minimum
balance "rule". It's just not going to happen though, for so many
reasons.

I've just finished a training course, a small part of which involved
discussions on this very matter. The £4 charge is definite, and the
best reason we came up with for it was to quickly teach people a lesson
(aimed particularly at those who skip fares on purpose, but obviously
its also good, in the long run, for everyone who regularly has
incomplete journeys).

We all had some trouble stomaching the £5 minimum too - at current an
Oyster deducts the minimum fare for the station you enter, and charges
any extra required when you leave the network. As of 19th Nov, it will
charge essentially the maximum, and refund the difference when you
exit. Whilst this is obviously controversial, hopefully it is clear
enough that this is simply designed to avoid anyone trying to cheat the
system by walking around with a negative balance until they need to
travel again (say by putting £1 on, then travelling from Amersham back
home in zone 1), Perhaps the £3 deposit will be adjusted to go
towards this...

As to whether it'll work... we'll see I guess. Considering its a
"pre-pay" ticket though, I guess it should be used as such. After all,
no-one complains that they have to put £10 minumum on a mobile phone,
when the call they want to make might cost 10p. Doesn't make it right
by any means, but there's a similar idea behind it.

Anyway to answer one of your points - there's no chinese whispers. The
£4 penalty is coming, and will be enforced as of 19th November (a
sunday) upon anyone who fails to touch in or out properly with pre-pay.
The big question I and my colleagues would like answered is how this
affects users of child oysters...

I understand the £4 maximum fare absolutely - read my post again and
you'll see I wasn't disputing that. I was disputing the notion that
there'll be a new rule that requires a £5 minimum balance to be
maintained on the card by Oyster PAYG users - *that's* the bit that I
was suggesting was the result of chinese whispers.

If anyone can absolutely definitely and authoritatively confirm this
then I'll get annoyed about it - but until that point I ain't gonna get
worked up about a rumoured new rule that would appear to be so absurd I
simply can't believe it's going to happen.

On 20 Oct 2006 09:02:42 -0700, wrote:

We all had some trouble stomaching the £5 minimum too - at current an
Oyster deducts the minimum fare for the station you enter, and charges
any extra required when you leave the network. As of 19th Nov, it will
charge essentially the maximum, and refund the difference when you
exit.

I don't have a problem with the last bit, per se. It doesn't bother me
if my balance temporarily drops to minus £1 or whatever when I make a
local journey, as long as once I exit the system it's correct.

Whilst this is obviously controversial, hopefully it is clear
enough that this is simply designed to avoid anyone trying to cheat the
system by walking around with a negative balance until they need to
travel again (say by putting £1 on, then travelling from Amersham back
home in zone 1), Perhaps the £3 deposit will be adjusted to go
towards this...

OK, I can see there's a loophole that needs to be addressed here.
Currently, if you're travelling from Amersham to Z1, you can go to the
ticket office, hand over £4 for a PAYG Oyster containing £1 of credit,
go through the barriers (which will let you through as the fare to
Chalfont & Latimer is £1), then travel to Z1, where the fare of £5.50
will be deducted. This leaves you with an Oyster with a balance of
minus £4.50, which you then might as well throw away, having saved
£1.50 on your fare.

However, as you suggest, this loophole could be closed simply by
raising the deposit for new cards to £5. (Holders of existing cards
wouldn't need to place an extra £2 in deposit - it's only the price of
new cards that matters.)

As to whether it'll work... we'll see I guess. Considering its a
"pre-pay" ticket though, I guess it should be used as such. After all,
no-one complains that they have to put £10 minumum on a mobile phone,
when the call they want to make might cost 10p. Doesn't make it right
by any means, but there's a similar idea behind it.

Bad analogy. The correct analogy would be not being allowed to make a
10p phone call even though you have £4.90 of credit remaining.

Anyway to answer one of your points - there's no chinese whispers. The
£4 penalty is coming, and will be enforced as of 19th November (a
sunday) upon anyone who fails to touch in or out properly with pre-pay.

I don't have too much of a problem with this. What concerns me about
the confirmed part of the change is that TfL are deliberately going to
make it a PITA, and costly (in terms of time and money), to get an
unresolved journey resolved.

Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

wrote:

A bit of advance warning for those who haven't heard - from November,
if you use pre-pay Oyster, and you fail to touch in or out at any point
of your travels where you're supposed to do so, you will find yourself
being charged £4.00 for the incomplete journey.

All the signs up say this came in on October 10th.


As promised a photo of one of the aforementioned posters - this one was
at New Cross:

http://mizter.t.googlepages.com/Oyst...ber_poster.JPG

Note there's no information stating that this is a trial, and therefore
there's obviously no list of the participating stations.

Also whilst at New Cross I witnessed a slightly exasperated guy in the
ticket office trying to explain to two very vain Italian girls that
Oyster PAYG was no good for their mainline journey into Charing Cross.
They left saying "I don't want to buy a ticket, I pay at Charing Cross,
I pay at Charing Cross". He had tried.

I overhear such conversations on a very regular basis. And I often find
myself involved in such conversations with people I know one way or the
other where I have to correct their multiple misconceptions on how the
Oyster system works - and this state of confusion exists in the minds
of 'thoroughbred' Londoners as well as those less familiar with the
city.

Mizter T wrote:
this state of confusion exists in the minds
of 'thoroughbred' Londoners as well as those less familiar with the
city.

Too true, and unfortunately there's not enough simple instruction
available in laymans' terms to overcome this problem. That, and a lot
of people don't read the posters or leaflets, because they (obviously)
want to be on their way!

I've had problems a few times with gate readers and pre-pay. I've
exited at Limehouse DLR station and the reader said "closed" on it.
Absoutely nothing I could do but have an unresolved journey. I've
entered Kings Cross late at night during development works and all the
gates were set to exit mode and had an unresolved jounrey at my exit
because I had no entry! Lastly Southwark station is a nightmare if
using it as a walk through from Waterloo East to the main exit as it
doesn't let you through the gates at the other end and gives you an
unresolved journey. Admitely I haven't done the Southwark jounrey for
other a year so does may have been resolved by now....

wrote:
asdf wrote:
Since then, I've always waited for the gates to close before touching
my card on the reader, and I haven't had a problem since.

Thats perhaps the best advice. Well, you don't have to wait til the
gates CLOSE, but its a good idea to make sure the person in front is
already walking through them before your Oyster goes near the
validator!

Less haste more speed as they say.