"John" wrote in message
...
I only use my PAYG card very infrequently, but think I've been overcharged.
I've registered the card online and checked all the details of journeys I
made on one day recently - and they are correct. The problem from my point
of view relates to a journey where I didn't touch in but did touch out
resulting in a further £4 charge for that day. Not living within the Tfl
area I've only just found out they are allowed to do this i.e. charge more
than the daily price cap, which I consider sharp practice to say the least,
as this means the cap is in fact not the max you can pay. Is this fact
widely known?


Its on page 3 of the fares guide - you did pick a copy up?

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloa...s-08-01-02.pdf

"Failure to touch in and out correctly will result
in you paying a maximum cash fare. This will
not count towards your daily price cap"

I guess TfL would argue that the regular warnings about touching in and out
are enough though, and the cap is the max you can pay if you use the system
properly.

The 'max cash fare' wasn't part of the system originally, but PAYG users
quickly discovered the benefits of only touching in at one end of a journey,
so that loophole got closed pretty quickly...

Paul S

On 15 Feb, 15:59, "Paul Scott" wrote:
"John" wrote in message

...

I only use my PAYG card very infrequently, but think I've been overcharged.
I've registered the card online and checked all the details of journeys I
made on one day recently - and they are correct. The problem from my point
of view relates to a journey where I didn't touch in but did touch out
resulting in a further £4 charge for that day. Not living within the Tfl
area I've only just found out they are allowed to do this i.e. charge more
than the daily price cap, which I consider sharp practice to say the least,
as this means the cap is in fact not the max you can pay. Is this fact
widely known?

Its on page 3 of the fares guide - you did pick a copy up?

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloa...nd-tickets-08-...

"Failure to touch in and out correctly will result
in you paying a maximum cash fare. This will
not count towards your daily price cap"

I guess TfL would argue that the regular warnings about touching in and out
are enough though, and the cap is the max you can pay if you use the system
properly.

The 'max cash fare' wasn't part of the system originally, but PAYG users
quickly discovered the benefits of only touching in at one end of a journey,
so that loophole got closed pretty quickly...

Paul S

I strongly suspect that implementing the 'max cash fare' was always
part of the Oyster gameplan, it just wasn't implemented at first so as
to give users unfamiliar with the whole idea of smartcard ticketing
some time to get used to the system.

On 15 Feb, 15:59, "Paul Scott" wrote:
"John" wrote in message

...

I only use my PAYG card very infrequently, but think I've been overcharged.
I've registered the card online and checked all the *details of journeys I
made on one day recently - and they are correct. The problem from my point
of view relates to a journey where I didn't touch in but did touch out
resulting in a further £4 charge for that day. Not living within the Tfl
area I've only just found out they are allowed to do this i.e. charge more
than the daily price cap, which I consider sharp practice to say the least,
as this means the cap is in fact not the max you can pay. Is this fact
widely known?

Its on page 3 of the fares guide - you did pick a copy up?

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloa...nd-tickets-08-...

"Failure to touch in and out correctly will result
in you paying a maximum cash fare. This will
not count towards your daily price cap"

I guess TfL would argue that the regular warnings about touching in and out
are enough though, and the cap is the max you can pay if you use the system
properly.

The 'max cash fare' wasn't part of the system originally, but PAYG users
quickly discovered the benefits of only touching in at one end of a journey,
so that loophole got closed pretty quickly...

Paul S

The "benefit" for me was that I paid the correct fare without having
to get off the train and touch in/out at the point where I crossed
into the area covered by my paper travelcard. Now I get ripped off if
I don't go through that ridiculous exercise.

On 15 Feb, 18:29, MIG wrote:

On 15 Feb, 15:59, "Paul Scott" wrote:

"John" wrote:

I only use my PAYG card very infrequently, but think I've been overcharged.
I've registered the card online and checked all the details of journeys I
made on one day recently - and they are correct. The problem from my point
of view relates to a journey where I didn't touch in but did touch out
resulting in a further £4 charge for that day. Not living within the Tfl
area I've only just found out they are allowed to do this i.e. charge more
than the daily price cap, which I consider sharp practice to say the least,
as this means the cap is in fact not the max you can pay. Is this fact
widely known?

Its on page 3 of the fares guide - you did pick a copy up?

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloa...nd-tickets-08-...

"Failure to touch in and out correctly will result
in you paying a maximum cash fare. This will
not count towards your daily price cap"

I guess TfL would argue that the regular warnings about touching in and out
are enough though, and the cap is the max you can pay if you use the system
properly.

The 'max cash fare' wasn't part of the system originally, but PAYG users
quickly discovered the benefits of only touching in at one end of a journey,
so that loophole got closed pretty quickly...

Paul S

The "benefit" for me was that I paid the correct fare without having
to get off the train and touch in/out at the point where I crossed
into the area covered by my paper travelcard. Now I get ripped off if
I don't go through that ridiculous exercise.


I have to say that if I regularly travelled outside the zones of my
Travelcard (on Oyster PAYG routes) I would just get my Travelcard on
Oyster.

I am well aware of the worries about surveillance that Oyster
potentially brings (and that you share) - however thus far there
haven't been any properly justified allegations (as opposed to
conspiracy theory talk) that travel data is being misused or widely
used for surveillance purposes by TPTB. However let's look at some
facts...

* "The usage history of each card is retained on an eight week rolling
basis".
* After eight weeks, "anonymised journey information is retained for
research purposes".
* Only "a limited number of authorised individuals within TfL can
access Oyster card data and no external organisations have direct
access to the data".
* Requests for such information are "assessed strictly in accordance
with the requirements of the Data Protection Act on a case by case
basis".
* Police requests for data are "submitted in accordance with guidance
from the Association of Chief Police Officers and are coordinated by
TfL's Information Access and Compliance Team."


The quotes are from TfL's responses to a letter from 'Coofer Cat' (who
actually appears to be a gent named Richard Bolton) - the questions he
had about Oyster were dealt with by TfL under the Freedom of
Information Act. You can read more on his website, the page concerning
all this is he
http://www.coofercat.com/wiki/OysterCardRFI

Note that the comments at the bottom are not his but those of readers.
Some contain unfounded allegations - in particular the notion that
"lots of people at EDS or Cubic Transportation Systems [...] have
access to the details" - read on for more on that.


I wish to make clear that I am certainly not one of these people who
sit back and say 'the authorities know best' or some such - however I
am pretty confident that Oyster travel data is well controlled, and
isn't leaking out here there and everywhere nor being used by the
police to monitor our every movement. TfL will be very keen to ensure
this remains the case, as they will wish to ensure that the public
retains confidence in the system.

If anyone has worries about their Oyster data then perhaps they might
wish to look closer to home first - e.g. a suspicious spouse, who
could physically take an Oyster card to a Tube ticket machine to see
the journey history (last 10 journeys at most).

Otherwise - and the following can only be done with a registered
Oyster card - they could gain access to the online Oyster account to
query the journey history there (though only PAYG journeys, not those
covered by Travelcards or Bus Passes), or get a print out of the
complete Journey History sent by post from TfL by calling the Oyster
helpline and giving them your details including your security answer.

Someone aware of these possibilities could of course take suitable
precautions.


All in all I really don't see Oyster as a spectacularly malevolent
tool of surveillance. Using an unregistered Oyster might quell some of
these concerns.

All that said, if I was heavily involved in the campaign against the
arms trade for example, I might think twice about using Oyster - but I
suspect that would merely be paranoia at work, unless something I was
planning (e.g. barricading a Saudi diplomat inside an arms fair) was
perceived as a genuine thread to the state/public order etc.

However I would be more inclined to focus my concern on the issues
surrounding how data might be handled by ATOC and the private train
and bus companies in the upcoming ITSO smartcard schemes (which
presumably will all work together - though there's no guarantee of
that). Will they all be as rigorous as TfL appear to be when it comes
to handling sensitive data, could they attempt to milk it for
marketing purposes, will each company have extensive access to a co-
ordinated national database if there is to be one etc etc?

much snippage

The 'max cash fare' wasn't part of the system originally, but PAYG users
quickly discovered the benefits of only touching in at one end of a journey,
so that loophole got closed pretty quickly...

Paul S

The "benefit" for me was that I paid the correct fare without having
to get off the train and touch in/out at the point where I crossed
into the area covered by my paper travelcard. *Now I get ripped off if
I don't go through that ridiculous exercise.

I have to say that if I regularly travelled outside the zones of my
Travelcard (on Oyster PAYG routes) I would just get my Travelcard on
Oyster.

It's still not the easiest thing in the world if you are south of the
Thames. I noticed recently that a major station like Lewisham has
only just started offering Oyster in the last few weeks, despite being
on the DLR (apart from a single machine that was often out of order).
In the period referred to, Oyster was even less available than it is
now.

When the machine is out of order, one doesn't want to spend fifteen
minutes finding a shop and missing trains, one just goes to the
counter for a paper ticket. Oyster stops are not always on the way to
the station.

My main point was that the extent of not touching in/out, before the
punitive rates were brought in, is inferred to be proof of fraud,
which is a totally false assumption.

I never touched in/out at boundary stations, but I always paid the
correct fare. For example, I got on at Acton Town when I had a zone 1
-2 travelcard and didn't choose to jump out at Turnham Green. No
fraud was committed and the correct revenue was collected.

(The stuff about surveillance is interesting and worthy of a longer
read and separate thread, because I've referred to it in the past, but
it wasn't in my bonnet at this point.)

MIG wrote:

much snippage

The 'max cash fare' wasn't part of the system originally, but PAYG users
quickly discovered the benefits of only touching in at one end of a journey,
so that loophole got closed pretty quickly...

Paul S

The "benefit" for me was that I paid the correct fare without having
to get off the train and touch in/out at the point where I crossed
into the area covered by my paper travelcard. �Now I get ripped off if
I don't go through that ridiculous exercise.

I have to say that if I regularly travelled outside the zones of my
Travelcard (on Oyster PAYG routes) I would just get my Travelcard on
Oyster.

It's still not the easiest thing in the world if you are south of the
Thames. I noticed recently that a major station like Lewisham has
only just started offering Oyster in the last few weeks, despite being
on the DLR (apart from a single machine that was often out of order).
In the period referred to, Oyster was even less available than it is
now.

When the machine is out of order, one doesn't want to spend fifteen
minutes finding a shop and missing trains, one just goes to the
counter for a paper ticket. Oyster stops are not always on the way to
the station.


I'll address these points in a reply to your post upthread in which
you raise similar points so as to avoid duplication (sorry, yesterday
evening I hadn't noticed this post hence I raised some similar points
in another branch of the thread).


My main point was that the extent of not touching in/out, before the
punitive rates were brought in, is inferred to be proof of fraud,
which is a totally false assumption.


I never intended to infer that this was a proof of fraud. However nor
do I think it is OK to make the counter-assumption - i.e. that all
those who failed to touch-in *and* touch-out were all acting in a
legitimate and honest manner.


I never touched in/out at boundary stations, but I always paid the
correct fare. For example, I got on at Acton Town when I had a zone 1
-2 travelcard and didn't choose to jump out at Turnham Green. No
fraud was committed and the correct revenue was collected.


(Incidentally I've looked up the appropriate fares for 2006 for the
examples I shall give, as it was in November 2006 that the 'max cash
fare' began to be applied - you can see the relevant fares PDF here -
http://snipurl.com/tfl_fares_1july_2006 )

In the particular example you gave there wouldn't have been a problem
- if you merely touched-in at Acton Town (zone 4) and then failed to
touch out, the fare charged would have been the minimum from that
station, so £1 (at any time) - and the zones 3&4 fare was also £1 (at
any time). So, as a holder of a Travelcard covering zones 1&2 you
certainly weren't leaving TfL out of pocket, and at no point in that
journey could you have been accused of travelling without a valid
ticket (though the Oyster T&Cs do clearly state that users must touch-
in and touch-out so technically you weren't complying with them).

But let's extend this logic a bit - if someone, holding a z1&2 paper
Travelcard, had started their journey from Heathrow using Oyster PAYG
then their card would have been debited £1 upfront on entry, which is
the minimum fare from a zone 6 station. However, during weekday
daytimes (7am-7pm) the zones 3-6 fare was £1.80 - thus if that person
had travelled into central London and then exited the network using
their paper z1&2 Travelcard they would not have paid the correct fare
and would have left TfL 80p out of pocket. Of course the problem for
TfL is that it would have been virtually impossible to catch someone
doing this, as if they were checked en-route outside z1&2 they could
simply present a validated Oyster and that would be fine - hence the
need to provide an incentive to users to touch-out, and a 'penalty'
for those who don't.

One last example, going back to Acton Town - literally. If someone did
the reverse of the Acton Town example you gave above, i.e. travelled
from central London to Acton Town whilst holding a z1&2 paper
Travelcard then that person would *undoubtedly* have been breaking the
rules, *even* if they intended to pay the extra using their Oyster
card. On the District line the z1&2 Travelcard would cover them up to
Turnham Green, but from Turnham Green to Acton Town they would have
been travelling without a valid ticket - and thus if ticket checked by
an RPI would have been liable to a Penalty Fare or prosecution. They
could even have been checked as they exited the ticket gates at Acton
Town - I saw RPIs who were very specifically only checking those who
had used Oysters to exit the gates from the SSL platforms at KXSP, and
then 'doing' those who hadn't touched-in before they began their
journey (perhaps on the extremities of the Met line).

(The same situation of course applies if they had travelling on a
westbound Piccadilly line train beyond Hammersmith - the last zone 2
station on the Pic - unless it was one of the few Pic line trains that
stopped at Turnham Green.)

The above provides a few ideas about the clues I'm sure the revenue
protection people would have been looking out for when trying to
identify people who were travelling fraudulently, before the max cash
fare 'penalty' was introduced.

Just to be absolutely clear, I wish to make it very plain that I am
not attempting to accuse you of any wrongdoing whatsoever, nor do I
want my comments to be taken as an inference to that effect. And I do
mean that.


(The stuff about surveillance is interesting and worthy of a longer
read and separate thread, because I've referred to it in the past, but
it wasn't in my bonnet at this point.)


I've expanded a bit on it elsewhere on this thread, but as you say it
is an interesting issue and one that shouldn't be dismissed out of
hand, but one that is worthy of a more level-headed approach than the
black helicopter conspiracy crowd provides.

Mizter T wrote:

I am well aware of the worries about surveillance that Oyster
potentially brings (and that you share) - however thus far there
haven't been any properly justified allegations (as opposed to
conspiracy theory talk) that travel data is being misused or widely
used for surveillance purposes by TPTB. However let's look at some
facts...

* "The usage history of each card is retained on an eight week rolling
basis".
* After eight weeks, "anonymised journey information is retained for
research purposes".
* Only "a limited number of authorised individuals within TfL can

Putting on my tin foil hat, is this limited to 10 or 200 people, or 3000
plus the cleaners?

access Oyster card data and no external organisations have direct
access to the data".

They have to phone up and ask for it to be e-mailed over each they want
it :-)




--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

On 16 Feb, 08:29, Arthur Figgis wrote:
Mizter T wrote:
I am well aware of the worries about surveillance that Oyster
potentially brings (and that you share) - however thus far there
haven't been any properly justified allegations (as opposed to
conspiracy theory talk) that travel data is being misused or widely
used for surveillance purposes by TPTB. However let's look at some
facts...

* "The usage history of each card is retained on an eight week rolling
basis".
* After eight weeks, "anonymised journey information is retained for
research purposes".
* Only "a limited number of authorised individuals within TfL can

Putting on my tin foil hat, is this limited to 10 or 200 people, or 3000
plus the cleaners?


I have no idea but would be interested to know. I presume that the
information must be available to those who work on the Oyster
helpdesk, otherwise they can hardly do their job can they! I would
also presume that it's basically not available to those who do not
administer the day-to-day workings of the Oyster system, so for
example Peter Hendy and Tim O'Toole can't sit at their desk looking up
people with stupid names in the database. I would also strongly expect
that when any particular record is accessed, the details of the
operator/agent who accessed them are logged, as is standard procedure
for such systems. I would also hope that there are a number of other
checks and balances in place.

Incidentally I understand that the Oyster helpdesk is based within TfL
in London, though I think things may have been slightly different in
the early days where it may have been based outside TfL but still
within London - bearing in mind that Oyster is part of the Prestige
contract for ticketing services that is provided by the Transys
consortium. What the status is of the staff that work directly on day-
to-day administration of the Oyster system I don't know, but whether
they be employees of TfL, Transys or of one of the Transys consortium
members I would still expect the same rigorous data handling
procedures to apply, and I'm pretty confident that TfL is very tight
in ensuring that everyone complies by the rules - after all, public
confidence in the system is at stake.

Also, I don't think that taking a concern in these issues should
really be limited to the tin foil hat brigade, not least since it has
recently become clear how spectacularly competently (not) some public
bodies handle our data, as evidenced by the HMRC lost discs scandal
and subsequent revelations of similar failings. I have to say that I
wasn't especially shocked by many of those stories, though I think
they all demonstrated a bang out of order lackadaisical approach to
data security - the HMRC scandal in particular appeared to show just
how many staff seem to have unfettered access to a database of
millions of people's personal details (and at least some had the
subsequent ability to burn these details to disc to take away).

In addition one needs to consider how large databases, in particular
those of telecoms companies, are leaky - not because information in
electronic form gets carried away en masse, nor because external
organisations have access to it (though I wouldn't be outrageously
surprised to hear that GCHQ could directly access such databases), but
because a few insiders - I'm thinking call centre agents particularly
- are crooked, and take money from private investigators (whether
working on behalf of suspicious spouses or partners, newspapers or
something more malevolent) to look up details on the system, such as
call records (and possibly make a print out of them). The larger the
number of staff who have such access the higher the risk, obviously,
so this needs to be considered as well. Telecoms companies partly deal
with this by having a segregated VIP database and staff (so I wonder
if Oyster has anything similar), but ensuring that rigorous procedures
and monitoring are in place can help deal with such a threat.



access Oyster card data and no external organisations have direct
access to the data".

They have to phone up and ask for it to be e-mailed over each they want
it :-)


Ho ho! Thankfully the procedures do appear to ensure that any external
organisation has to properly justify their need for the data, plus
needs to have the statutory authority to make such a request, and all
requests are then assessed by TfL on a case-by-case basis. I've a
feeling that these aren't just well meant words.