"Colum Mylod" wrote in message

On Fri, 8 May 2009 15:45:12 +0100, "Recliner"
wrote:

"Martin Deutsch" wrote in message

..
I'm sure you're already aware that tube ticket offices can give you
a printout of your last 8 journeys, which should do the trick for
expenses claims.

If you can get to a ticket office when it's staffed, and don't make
new journeys in the meantime that push the unclaimed ones off the
list-of-8! Which can happen to me. I wish TfL would do an "Amsterdam"
and put a printer into the top-up machines a la OV-kaart.

I use snapper plugin in Firefox to grab the journey history and upload
it. A printout means a scan, though the printout is clearer (which can
be a disadvantage when claiming! All those £4 debits look good.)

As a matter of interest, is there anyone whose on-line Oyster journey
history contains no omissions at all?

Mine was pretty good (not noticing omissions) up to March. Delayed
maybe: from yesterday to perhaps 2 weeks delay in showing up. It turns
out that my card's balance is correct, but Bank has indeed gone
missing from the JH.

TFL are missing another trick he there's no point worrying all of
us when a simple professional status web page would suffice. It would
cause fewer calls to their call centre.

I had the opportunity to check my journey history on a ticket machine
yesterday, and as expected, all was correct. More surprisingly, the
on-line history is now also correct. I don't know if that's as a result
of my ticket machine check which perhaps caused some corrupted data
buffer to be re-set, or just that they've fixed the system for everyone.

On May 16, 11:47*am, "Recliner" wrote:

"Colum Mylod" wrote:

On Fri, 8 May 2009 15:45:12 +0100, "Recliner"
wrote:

[snip]

As a matter of interest, is there anyone whose on-line Oyster journey
history contains no omissions at all?

Mine was pretty good (not noticing omissions) up to March. Delayed
maybe: from yesterday to perhaps 2 weeks delay in showing up. It turns
out that my card's balance is correct, but Bank has indeed gone
missing from the JH.

TFL are missing another trick he there's no point worrying all of
us when a simple professional status web page would suffice. It would
cause fewer calls to their call centre.

I had the opportunity to check my journey history on a ticket machine
yesterday, and as expected, all was correct. More surprisingly, the
on-line history is now also correct. I don't know if that's as a result
of my ticket machine check which perhaps caused some corrupted data
buffer to be re-set, or just that they've fixed the system for everyone.


The latter. The issue here is not some fundamental problem with the
underlying central Oyster database, but the presentation of journey
history data in the Oyster online account system (i.e. what you see
via your web account). I've no idea on the specifics of how the online
journey history system sources its data from the central Oyster
database (could it happen on the fly? I'm not so sure that's how it
would work), but the problem is some sort of disconnect between the
definitive central Oyster database and the system that prepares the
online journey history - this may have only affected some as opposed
to all the online accounts.

If there was some sort of problem with the central Oyster database
then all head would have broken loose a long time back! The central
Oyster database system basically needs to have quasi-bank like
reliability - it's unlikely something would go wrong with it. This
online journey history problem is all about the mangled presentation
of that data - or more to the point only some of it - as opposed to
the underlying data being mangled.

"Mizter T" wrote in message

On May 16, 11:47 am, "Recliner" wrote:

"Colum Mylod" wrote:

On Fri, 8 May 2009 15:45:12 +0100, "Recliner"
wrote:

[snip]

As a matter of interest, is there anyone whose on-line Oyster
journey history contains no omissions at all?

Mine was pretty good (not noticing omissions) up to March. Delayed
maybe: from yesterday to perhaps 2 weeks delay in showing up. It
turns out that my card's balance is correct, but Bank has indeed
gone missing from the JH.

TFL are missing another trick he there's no point worrying all of
us when a simple professional status web page would suffice. It
would cause fewer calls to their call centre.

I had the opportunity to check my journey history on a ticket machine
yesterday, and as expected, all was correct. More surprisingly, the
on-line history is now also correct. I don't know if that's as a
result of my ticket machine check which perhaps caused some
corrupted data buffer to be re-set, or just that they've fixed the
system for everyone.


The latter. The issue here is not some fundamental problem with the
underlying central Oyster database, but the presentation of journey
history data in the Oyster online account system (i.e. what you see
via your web account). I've no idea on the specifics of how the online
journey history system sources its data from the central Oyster
database (could it happen on the fly? I'm not so sure that's how it
would work), but the problem is some sort of disconnect between the
definitive central Oyster database and the system that prepares the
online journey history - this may have only affected some as opposed
to all the online accounts.

If there was some sort of problem with the central Oyster database
then all head would have broken loose a long time back! The central
Oyster database system basically needs to have quasi-bank like
reliability - it's unlikely something would go wrong with it. This
online journey history problem is all about the mangled presentation
of that data - or more to the point only some of it - as opposed to
the underlying data being mangled.

Yes, I know the underlying system isn't broken, but the Web reporting
had lots of gaps. All of a sudden, it no longer has for me.

I was wondering if this meant that the Web system is now properly hooked
up for everyone, or if my checking on a ticket machine restored the
connection for my account? If that's the case, then anyone else
reporting incorrect Web reporting may have an easy way to fix the
problem -- just check the journey history on a ticket machine. Not only
will this be correct, but it should also reset any Web reporting
problems.

On Sat, 16 May 2009 11:47:45 +0100,
Recliner wrote:

I had the opportunity to check my journey history on a ticket machine
yesterday, and as expected, all was correct. More surprisingly, the
on-line history is now also correct. I don't know if that's as a result
of my ticket machine check which perhaps caused some corrupted data
buffer to be re-set, or just that they've fixed the system for everyone.

Thanks for that info, just rechecked mine and it's enormously better:
approximately 20 missing records over the last two months have now
appeared. (I've not done anything with my card at any ticket machines so
it looks like it's been "sorted" for everyone)

Still 30 missing records for April and eight for May so far but all the
missing entries are now obvious - e.g. entry but no exit or exit with
no entry rather than multiple days with nothing recorded at all.

As an aside, it appears that the online staff see the same journey
history we see on line, not the "official" one. Back on 6th January I
had an aborted journey from Euston where the overhead lines came down -
approximately three hours before we got back to Euston.

When I rang up to request a refund I had to explain that the apparent
unresolved journeys on the morning and the day before were absolutely
fine and correct (except that they weren't showing either an entry or an
exit on the journey history) and it was the real unresolved journey in
the evening that I wanted a refund for.

Tim.

--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://www.woodall.me.uk/

On Thu, 14 May 2009 07:32:00 -0700 (PDT),
Tim wrote:
Thanks muchly for your efforts on this, but I don't think it's going
to help as it's mostly gobbledygook to me!!! I just wish the online
journey history wasn't so complicated to make sense of (let alone
reflect the journey history accurately, which was the origin of this
thread!).
Regards

I've found it's very much easier than that :-)

You can import the "printer ready" version of the journey history
straight into openoffice.

I've build a spreadsheet where all you need to do is:
1. Save the printer ready journey history to a file
2. Insert-Sheet From File and select the file created in 1
3. Change Cell B1 on the "Journeys" sheet to the name of the sheet you
created in 2.

That's it. Enjoy your journey history.

http://www.woodall.me.uk/journeycalc/journeycalc.ods

http://www.openoffice.org/

(Note that I'm using version 2.4 of openoffice. I assume later versions
will open this file without any problems)

I've included two sheets of my journey history just so you can see how
it works, including what happens when there are missing items in the
journey history.

The sheet "Workings" is used for internal calculations, just ignore it
unless you want to enhance the way it calculates the start and end of
journeys. At the moment the logic is that if a row happens more than two
hours after the previous row then it's a journey start, otherwise it's
a journey continuation.

(For anyone who wants to improve this, the two critical columns are H
and I on this page. As long as these are right, everything else should
automatically be correct - bugs excepted)

Openoffice does have the option to save as an excel file but as I have
not way to test this I've not done it.

Note also that I have a very boring life on oyster. I've got no capped
journeys, no cash top-ups etc. These may not work properly. If anyone
wants to provide printer ready journey histories with these in I'll try
and enhance the spreadsheet to handle them properly

Tim.

p.s. I've protected the two critical sheets (other than cell B1 on
Journeys.) There's no password set to this can just be turned off if you
want to change things.

--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://www.woodall.me.uk/