On May 10, 8:13*pm, Martin Deutsch wrote:
On May 8, 1:59*pm, Martin Deutsch wrote:

I noticed lately that White City has been missing from my online
journey history since April 19th. Wood Lane hasn't shown up for a
recent entry, but the auto top-up did register there.
I emailed Oyster Online support to ask if they knew what the problem
was, but they took six weeks to reply to me last time, so I'm not
holding my breath.

TfL's response has been to, er, send me a PDF of my complete journey
history for the past three months. Useful all the same, but not
exactly answering my question!

and to reply to myself yet again - I should mention that the White
City touches in and out are showing up on the full listings.

On Thu, 7 May 2009 22:35:08 +0100,
Recliner wrote:
"Mizter T" wrote in message


I'd be prepared to bet that if you were to do this you wouldn't find
that you'd been overcharged - in other words, the problem is with the
online journey history.

I'm wondering if it's possibly connected to the upgrade of the PAYG
system, and thus a resulting upgrade of the online journey history
system. Note that I'm not making any excuses though - it's certainly
not good enough, not least because it just ends up leaving punters
confused.

Yes, I thought it must be something like that. But given that this is
possibly a common fault, perhaps there should be an on-line warning of
potential errors, together with a simple way of reporting them?

Certainly, my first reaction was that there must have been some
expensive unresolved journeys, but it appears not. But I needed to do
some spreadsheet work to be sure.

I don't think I've had a correct day on the journey history since end of
March. Below is the current mess that it has for my journey history.

Currently it appears that Euston is not registering at all except for
Auto top-up. Also the pricing appears to have gone weird - why I'm being
debited 1.50 when I exit at Watford - which implies I'm being charged
2.00 at entry at Euston. I think it should be 5.00 debit at Euston
followed by 1.50 credit at Watford.

Previously to that it was Watford Junction that stopped registering at
all.

It's extremely hard confirm it's correct because there are days missing
- e.g. nothing has registered from Moorgate entry on 17/04 to Watford
Junction entry on 22/04 but there must have been at least 15GBP of
journeys for the Auto top-up to have triggered. Because I sometimes
travel before 06:30, sometimes don't do a normal journey - e.g. that
17/04 day where I did WJ-Moorgate; Moorgate-Euston - and I don't keep
a record of exactly when I travel where.

I know for a fact that occasionally exits can fail to register (I
believe it has happened on entry as well but I can only be 99% sure).
It's happened to my girlfriend the very first journey she made on PAYG.
I was explaining to her how it all worked and how you had to make sure
you always touched in and out. On that particular journey she exited via
the barriers at Watford Junction - I watched her open them with her
oyster card and walk through - but she ended up with an unresolved
journey. And because she's not that often in London and credits can only
be put back onto your card when you use an oyster gate, LUL "stole" that
money because she couldn't get her credit back within 8 weeks.

Tim.

*
Date Time Location Action Fare Price cap Balance
*
08/05/09 06:12 Watford Junction Entry - £4.00 £31.10
07/05/09 21:11 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £35.10
06:09 Watford Junction Entry - £4.00 £38.10
06:09 Watford Junction Auto top-up £40.00 £42.10
06/05/09 21:10 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £2.10
06:02 Watford Junction Entry - £4.00 £5.10
05/05/09 21:55 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £9.10
07:34 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £12.10
01/05/09 21:59 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £18.60
07:35 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £21.60
30/04/09 20:44 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £28.10
07:37 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £31.10
29/04/09 22:47 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £37.60
22:03 Euston NR Auto top-up £40.00 £41.10
07:36 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £0.60
28/04/09 21:55 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £7.10
07:36 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £10.10
27/04/09 22:18 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £16.60
24/04/09 05:58 Watford Junction Entry - £4.00 £19.60
22/04/09 19:28 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £33.10
07:36 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £36.10
07:36 Watford Junction Auto top-up £40.00 £42.60
17/04/09 18:22 Moorgate Entry - £4.00 £19.20
08:29 Moorgate Exit £0.50 £23.20
07:38 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £23.20
15/04/09 19:38 Euston NR Auto top-up £40.00 £42.70
09/04/09 19:55 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £16.70
08:07 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £21.70
08/04/09 20:11 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £26.20
08:10 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £31.20
07/04/09 22:49 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £35.70
22:49 Euston NR Auto top-up £40.00 £40.70
08:09 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £0.70
06/04/09 20:43 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £5.20
08:55 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £10.20
03/04/09 21:12 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £14.70
08:13 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £19.70
02/04/09 19:00 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £24.20
08:11 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £29.20
01/04/09 18:59 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £33.70
08:09 Euston NR Exit £0.50 £38.70
31/03/09 21:08 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £3.20
08:18 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £8.20
30/03/09 19:00 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £12.70
08:12 Euston NR Exit £0.50 £17.70
07:35 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £17.20

--
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 May 11, 9:10*am, Tim Woodall wrote:

On Thu, 7 May 2009 22:35:08 +0100,
* * Recliner wrote:

[snip]

Certainly, my first reaction was that there must have been some
expensive unresolved journeys, but it appears not. But I needed to do
some spreadsheet work to be sure.

I don't think I've had a correct day on the journey history since end of
March. Below is the current mess that it has for my journey history.

Currently it appears that Euston is not registering at all except for
Auto top-up. Also the pricing appears to have gone weird - why I'm being
debited 1.50 when I exit at Watford - which implies I'm being charged
2.00 at entry at Euston. I think it should be 5.00 debit at Euston
followed by 1.50 credit at Watford.

Previously to that it was Watford Junction that stopped registering at
all.

It's extremely hard confirm it's correct because there are days missing
- e.g. nothing has registered from Moorgate entry on 17/04 to Watford
Junction entry on 22/04 but there must have been at least 15GBP of
journeys for the Auto top-up to have triggered. Because I sometimes
travel before 06:30, sometimes don't do a normal journey - e.g. that
17/04 day where I did WJ-Moorgate; Moorgate-Euston - and I don't keep
a record of exactly when I travel where.

Tim, the problem here is with the *online* journey history display -
as displayed via Oyster online - as opposed to the underlying Oyster
central database being incorrect.

In other words what's being displayed doesn't make a lot of sense
because some exits and entries are missing on the online journey
history - however the definitive record, as held by the central Oyster
database, is correct. You should therefore find that you have not been
overcharged - you can ask the Oyster help desk for a PDF of all the
journeys you've done in the past three months, which won't have any
gaps in it (unlike the online journey history).


I know for a fact that occasionally exits can fail to register (I
believe it has happened on entry as well but I can only be 99% sure).
It's happened to my girlfriend the very first journey she made on PAYG.
I was explaining to her how it all worked and how you had to make sure
you always touched in and out. On that particular journey she exited via
the barriers at Watford Junction - I watched her open them with her
oyster card and walk through - but she ended up with an unresolved
journey. And because she's not that often in London and credits can only
be put back onto your card when you use an oyster gate, LUL "stole" that
money because she couldn't get her credit back within 8 weeks.

I have never come across this issue before. It's worth noting that
when you touch-in or touch-out on a gate (or standalone Oyster reader)
a transaction occurs there and then between the validator and the
smartcard - this means that the fare is debited from the card
immediately, i.e. without any recourse to the Oyster central database
(which just keeps tabs on all the transactions).

In this particular instance I'm not sure what happened - perhaps the
validators on the gates at Watford Jn were not functioning correctly
(it was early days of PAYG at Watford Jn) and so let her out but
somehow didn't properly conduct the transaction with her Oyster card.
Otherwise I wonder if she inadvertently walked through on someone
else's ticket, though from your account that sounds unlikely. The
other thing that comes to mind was whether this was a problem of the
whole journey 'timing out' - which could perhaps happen if she had
started the journey from a Tube station, then made the interchange at
Euston, then travelled on to Watford Jn and the total time of the
whole journey was over 2 hours (this limit has now been raised to 2
1/2 hours, and is in the process of being changed again so that it
reflects the distance a passenger has travelled).


Tim.

* * **
* * *Date * * Time *Location * * * * Action * * * * Fare Price cap Balance
* * **
[snip list]

Sorry Tim, I'm not going to provide a free consultancy service on this!

On Mon, 11 May 2009 03:06:23 -0700 (PDT),
Mizter T wrote:

On May 11, 9:10*am, Tim Woodall wrote:


you can ask the Oyster help desk for a PDF of all the
journeys you've done in the past three months, which won't have any
gaps in it (unlike the online journey history).


That's very useful to know. Thanks. I'll do that.

I keep a detailed spreadsheet of my oyster PAYG expenses because it's
(currently) slightly cheaper for me to use PAYG than a Watford Junction
- London Euston season. (Prior to this years vicious price hikes from
Watford Junction it was very much cheaper). I don't necessarly expect
that this state of affairs will last and I want to make sure I swap back
to a season ticket as/when it makes financial sense.

But it's not trivially easy to calculate because, for example, my
occasional Watford Junction-Zone 1 rather than WJ-Euston cost an extra
50p currently but would cost 1.60 extra if I had a season ticket. So my
spreadsheet is setup with some quite complicated rules to try and
estimate my annual expenditure. Missing entries/exits, of course,
completely break those calculations.


I know for a fact that occasionally exits can fail to register (I
believe it has happened on entry as well but I can only be 99% sure).
It's happened to my girlfriend the very first journey she made on PAYG.
I was explaining to her how it all worked and how you had to make sure
you always touched in and out. On that particular journey she exited via
the barriers at Watford Junction - I watched her open them with her
oyster card and walk through - but she ended up with an unresolved
journey. And because she's not that often in London and credits can only
be put back onto your card when you use an oyster gate, LUL "stole" that
money because she couldn't get her credit back within 8 weeks.

I have never come across this issue before. It's worth noting that
when you touch-in or touch-out on a gate (or standalone Oyster reader)
a transaction occurs there and then between the validator and the
smartcard - this means that the fare is debited from the card
immediately, i.e. without any recourse to the Oyster central database
(which just keeps tabs on all the transactions).

In this particular instance I'm not sure what happened - perhaps the
validators on the gates at Watford Jn were not functioning correctly
(it was early days of PAYG at Watford Jn) and so let her out but
somehow didn't properly conduct the transaction with her Oyster card.
Otherwise I wonder if she inadvertently walked through on someone
else's ticket, though from your account that sounds unlikely. The
other thing that comes to mind was whether this was a problem of the
whole journey 'timing out' - which could perhaps happen if she had
started the journey from a Tube station, then made the interchange at
Euston, then travelled on to Watford Jn and the total time of the
whole journey was over 2 hours (this limit has now been raised to 2
1/2 hours, and is in the process of being changed again so that it
reflects the distance a passenger has travelled).

In this particular case I'm 100% sure it was a failure somewhere in the
Oyster system because I was watching exactly what she did. I cannot be
100% certain that there wasn't a message displayed on the barrier as
well because I was standing outside the barrier line but I can be sure
that her card opened the barrier. She was standing at the barrier
wondering what to do with her card - I said "touch it on the yellow
pad." The gates opened, she walked though and said "He, he. It works!"
(On this particular day the card was brand new in its own wallet away
from all other cards so it cannot even be some freak interference. IIRC
on the way in at Euston she came through the manual barrier with me so
if it had been a missing entry then I could have better understood what
might have gone wrong)

I've had one case where I think I had a missed entry. Normally I use the
manual gate because I have my Brompton with me but I had a failure on a
day when I didn't have my bike. If I don't have my bike then I
invariably use the automatic gates but I cannot be 100% sure that either
the gates weren't all open or I didn't use the manual gate anyway. If
the gates were all open then I'm not exprienced enough at using them to
have necessarily been looking in the right direction to see any error
message if the card didn't register for any reason. (IIRC I've had one
other missed entry at Euston - I noticed when I exited at Watford
Junction and it registered as an entry but I'll assume that that was
user error. I couldn't be bothered to claim back the extra 50p it cost
me)

I've also had a case where it has opened the gates for me but beeped
ominously and said "seek assistance"[1]. (Can't remember where but it
was a station I'd never used before). When I asked at the window they
said "Don't worry, it does that sometimes" but they did check my journey
history there and then and the exit had registered properly so maybe it
was something I did...

[1] This might not have been the exact message, I cannot remember now
but it was something like that.

One thing that would be very useful is a reader somewhere that just
displays whether the card thinks it is "in" or "out" of the system.
I've had times when I've been sitting on the train at Euston and thought
"Did I touch in?" I always have but there's no way to actually check
AFAIAA. Or sometimes I've been distracted while touching in or out and
not actually managed to read the message on the display before it has
gone again.

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 Fri, 8 May 2009 02:09:39 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:


Certainly, my first reaction was that there must have been some
expensive unresolved journeys, but it appears not. But I needed to do
some spreadsheet work to be sure.

I've also suffered missing entries, but with a correct overall
balance. Am I alone in thinking that the online display is
unnecessarily confusing? The "Fare" column doesn't actually show the
fare for a journey (except for a bus) - it shows debits and credits.
I'm interested in your spreadsheet - does anyone have anything that
you can just paste the journey history into and it actually shows the
fares charged??

(Sorry this is rather specific to unix and open office users but maybe
someone can adapt it for microsoft tools)

I use the following:

1. Save the "printer friendly version" of the journey history.

2. Run it through a script to turn the saved html in 1 into a csv file
(see end of this post for the script)

3. Import the CSV into open office.

Then (I think) adding the following columns will give you what you want:

Column I: row 94: =IF(A95+B95+2/24A94+B94;I95+E94;E94)
Column J: row 94: =IF(A95+B95+2/24A94+B94;"";I94)

Copy and paste into the other rows.

This fails in two cases: 1, if you have auto top-up that will be added
to your journey "cost" and 2, if you make two journeys the second of
which starts less than two hours after the first finished it will be
consolidated into one journey.

1 is fairly easy to fix - just create a new column that zeros out any
auto top-up entries and then change the column I formula to reference
your new column instead of column E. 2 is harder to fix - you can tweak
the 2/24 parameter - that's the number of hours for the next entry to be
added to your journey (not the total journey time)

I don't know how well this will play with capping - I've never reached a
cap - or season tickets plus extensions.

Tim.


$ cat ppv2csv
cat $1 |
sed -n '
/tr/ {
h
}
/\/tr/ {
H
x
//g s/
s/\n//g
s/\t//g
s/ *//g
s/ *//g
s/tr//g
s|/tr||g
s/td//g
s|/td|$ $|g
s/^.*$//
s/[^]*//g
s/£//g
s/- /-/g
p
}
{
H
}
' |
while read d r; do
if [[ "$d" = '$' ]]; then
d=$oldd;
else
oldd=$d
fi
echo $d $r
done |
grep -v '^$' |
sed 's/\$ \$/\t/g'

--
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 Mon, 11 May 2009 12:22:16 +0000 (UTC), Tim Woodall wrote:

I've also had a case where it has opened the gates for me but beeped
ominously and said "seek assistance"[1]. (Can't remember where but it
was a station I'd never used before). When I asked at the window they
said "Don't worry, it does that sometimes" but they did check my journey
history there and then and the exit had registered properly so maybe it
was something I did...

I see this happen to people all the time. I think it happens when you
hold the card against the reader for slightly longer than necessary -
it reads the card and opens the gate, then attempts to read the card a
second time, and this time rejects the transaction as a duplicate.

On 11 May, 09:10, Tim Woodall wrote:
On Thu, 7 May 2009 22:35:08 +0100,
* * Recliner wrote:



"Mizter T" wrote in message


I'd be prepared to bet that if you were to do this you wouldn't find
that you'd been overcharged - in other words, the problem is with the
online journey history.

I'm wondering if it's possibly connected to the upgrade of the PAYG
system, and thus a resulting upgrade of the online journey history
system. Note that I'm not making any excuses though - it's certainly
not good enough, not least because it just ends up leaving punters
confused.

Yes, I thought it must be something like that. But given that this is
possibly a common fault, perhaps there should be an on-line warning of
potential errors, together with a simple way of reporting them?

Certainly, my first reaction was that there must have been some
expensive unresolved journeys, but it appears not. But I needed to do
some spreadsheet work to be sure.

I don't think I've had a correct day on the journey history since end of
March. Below is the current mess that it has for my journey history.

Currently it appears that Euston is not registering at all except for
Auto top-up. Also the pricing appears to have gone weird - why I'm being
debited 1.50 when I exit at Watford - which implies I'm being charged
2.00 at entry at Euston. I think it should be 5.00 debit at Euston
followed by 1.50 credit at Watford.

Previously to that it was Watford Junction that stopped registering at
all.

It's extremely hard confirm it's correct because there are days missing
- e.g. nothing has registered from Moorgate entry on 17/04 to Watford
Junction entry on 22/04 but there must have been at least 15GBP of
journeys for the Auto top-up to have triggered. Because I sometimes
travel before 06:30, sometimes don't do a normal journey - e.g. that
17/04 day where I did WJ-Moorgate; Moorgate-Euston - and I don't keep
a record of exactly when I travel where.

I know for a fact that occasionally exits can fail to register (I
believe it has happened on entry as well but I can only be 99% sure).
It's happened to my girlfriend the very first journey she made on PAYG.
I was explaining to her how it all worked and how you had to make sure
you always touched in and out. On that particular journey she exited via
the barriers at Watford Junction - I watched her open them with her
oyster card and walk through - but she ended up with an unresolved
journey. And because she's not that often in London and credits can only
be put back onto your card when you use an oyster gate, LUL "stole" that
money because she couldn't get her credit back within 8 weeks.

Tim.

* * **
* * *Date * * Time *Location * * * * Action * * * * Fare Price cap Balance
* * **
* * *08/05/09 06:12 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £4.00 * * * * * *£31.10
* * *07/05/09 21:11 Watford Junction Exit * * * *- £1.50 * * * * * *£35.10
* * * * * * * 06:09 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £4.00 * * * * * *£38.10
* * * * * * * 06:09 Watford Junction Auto top-up *£40.00 * * * * * *£42.10
* * *06/05/09 21:10 Watford Junction Exit * * * *- £1.50 * * * * * * £2.10
* * * * * * * 06:02 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £4.00 * * * * * * £5.10
* * *05/05/09 21:55 Watford Junction Exit * * * *- £1.50 * * * * * * £9.10
* * * * * * * 07:34 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £6.50 * * * * * *£12.10
* * *01/05/09 21:59 Watford Junction Exit * * * *- £1.50 * * * * * *£18.60
* * * * * * * 07:35 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £6.50 * * * * * *£21.60
* * *30/04/09 20:44 Watford Junction Exit * * * *- £1.50 * * * * * *£28.10
* * * * * * * 07:37 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £6.50 * * * * * *£31.10
* * *29/04/09 22:47 Watford Junction Exit * * * *- £1.50 * * * * * *£37.60
* * * * * * * 22:03 Euston NR * * * *Auto top-up *£40.00 * * * * * *£41.10
* * * * * * * 07:36 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £6.50 * * * * * * £0.60
* * *28/04/09 21:55 Watford Junction Exit * * * *- £1.50 * * * * * * £7.10
* * * * * * * 07:36 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £6.50 * * * * * *£10.10
* * *27/04/09 22:18 Watford Junction Exit * * * *- £1.50 * * * * * *£16.60
* * *24/04/09 05:58 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £4.00 * * * * * *£19.60
* * *22/04/09 19:28 Watford Junction Exit * * * *- £1.50 * * * * * *£33.10
* * * * * * * 07:36 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £6.50 * * * * * *£36.10
* * * * * * * 07:36 Watford Junction Auto top-up *£40.00 * * * * * *£42.60
* * *17/04/09 18:22 Moorgate * * * * Entry * * * - £4.00 * * * * * *£19.20
* * * * * * * 08:29 Moorgate * * * * Exit * * * * *£0.50 * * * * * *£23.20
* * * * * * * 07:38 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £6.50 * * * * * *£23.20
* * *15/04/09 19:38 Euston NR * * * *Auto top-up *£40.00 * * * * * *£42.70
* * *09/04/09 19:55 Euston NR * * * *Entry * * * - £5.00 * * * * * *£16.70
* * * * * * * 08:07 Euston NR * * * *Exit * * * *- £0.50 * * * * * *£21.70
* * *08/04/09 20:11 Euston NR * * * *Entry * * * - £5.00 * * * * * *£26.20
* * * * * * * 08:10 Euston NR * * * *Exit * * * *- £0.50 * * * * * *£31.20
* * *07/04/09 22:49 Euston NR * * * *Entry * * * - £5.00 * * * * * *£35.70
* * * * * * * 22:49 Euston NR * * * *Auto top-up *£40.00 * * * * * *£40.70
* * * * * * * 08:09 Euston NR * * * *Exit * * * *- £0.50 * * * * * * £0.70
* * *06/04/09 20:43 Euston NR * * * *Entry * * * - £5.00 * * * * * * £5.20
* * * * * * * 08:55 Euston NR * * * *Exit * * * *- £0.50 * * * * * *£10.20
* * *03/04/09 21:12 Euston NR * * * *Entry * * * - £5.00 * * * * * *£14.70
* * * * * * * 08:13 Euston NR * * * *Exit * * * *- £0.50 * * * * * *£19.70
* * *02/04/09 19:00 Euston NR * * * *Entry * * * - £5.00 * * * * * *£24.20
* * * * * * * 08:11 Euston NR * * * *Exit * * * *- £0.50 * * * * * *£29.20
* * *01/04/09 18:59 Euston NR * * * *Entry * * * - £5.00 * * * * * *£33.70
* * * * * * * 08:09 Euston NR * * * *Exit * * * * *£0.50 * * * * * *£38.70
* * *31/03/09 21:08 Euston NR * * * *Entry * * * - £5.00 * * * * * * £3.20
* * * * * * * 08:18 Euston NR * * * *Exit * * * *- £0.50 * * * * * * £8.20
* * *30/03/09 19:00 Euston NR * * * *Entry * * * - £5.00 * * * * * *£12.70
* * * * * * * 08:12 Euston NR * * * *Exit * * * * *£0.50 * * * * * *£17.70
* * * * * * * 07:35 Watford Junction Entry * * * - £6.50 * * * * * *£17.20

--
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/- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Tim

\What makes you think that TFL will not send you a cheque for oyster
refunds if you a) have a registered card and b) ask very nicely
explaining why there is a problem?
If doing so I suggest that you ask the person Do they work for TFL or
are thay a subcontractor?
HTH Phil

On Wed, 13 May 2009 00:51:44 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

Tim

\What makes you think that TFL will not send you a cheque for oyster
refunds if you a) have a registered card and b) ask very nicely
explaining why there is a problem?

Indeed. Despite using 1 tube station daily, I was sent a cheque for a
system failure in 2005. The person on the other end of the line was in
a hurry to quit so her manager waded through her stuff and sorted out
debts by cheque as there was no record made of preferred refund means.

I was surprised but all that was explained in a cover letter. Not
quite as I phrased it (didn't keep the letter - wasn't a regular to
utm in those days).

--
Old anti-spam address cmylod at despammed dot com appears broke
So back to cmylod at bigfoot dot com

On Wed, 13 May 2009 23:36:07 +0100,
Colum Mylod wrote:
On Wed, 13 May 2009 00:51:44 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

Tim

\What makes you think that TFL will not send you a cheque for oyster
refunds if you a) have a registered card and b) ask very nicely
explaining why there is a problem?

Indeed. Despite using 1 tube station daily, I was sent a cheque for a
system failure in 2005. The person on the other end of the line was in
a hurry to quit so her manager waded through her stuff and sorted out
debts by cheque as there was no record made of preferred refund means.


It obviously depends on who you get on the phone. She was told it was
_IMPOSSIBLE_ to do a refund other than by her visiting a nominated
station to pick it up. As that would, best case, have involved a 20GBP
round trip train fare to collect about 2GBP it wasn't worth it.

It's a common problem with railway staff (it happens in other industries
as well but the railways seem to be worse than most) deciding that
something can't be done.

Some years ago when I had an annual season ticket it had faded to the
point of almost complete unreadability. The guards at the barrier at
Euston kept telling me to get it replaced and pointing me to the window.
But _every_ time the person on the window said it was _IMPOSSIBLE_ and I
had to post off my ticket and, in the mean time, buy daily ticket and
then get a refund once I got my ticket back. On about the sixth or
seventh time (This time I was arguing with the guards rather than
joining the queue AGAIN to achieve nothing) their
manager/supervisor/whatever got involved and came with me to the ticket
window. Lo and behold, suddenly, what had been impossible took about
three minutes. I cannot comprehend why I had been given the runaround
before. It really didn't seem difficult at all, the only minor issue
seemed to be that the teller didn't have any gold card stock immediately
to hand and had to fetch it from somewhere else.

In future years when my ticket faded I _knew_ that the tellers could do
it and I wouldn't leave the ticket window until they sorted it out.

Bank Holiday weekend I was told there were "no tickets at all from
Victoria to Horsham." If I hadn't known to say "Try London Terminals to
Horsham" then I don't know what would have happened (probably been
forced to queue for hours at Victoria to buy my ticket instead of
getting it in advance)

Likewise with these oyster refunds. What do you do when you're told it
is _IMPOSSIBLE_? One of my US collegues was told that because he'd
topped up his card using both cash and credit card, the _ONLY_ way to
get a refund on the remaining balance was to fill in a form and then,
several weeks later, get a GBP denominated cheque posted to his home
address. I can see why a cash refund might not be allowed but surely it
could be refunded to the credit card? (Instead he found someone in the
office willing to buy it off him.)

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/

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
Tim

On 11 May, 18:41, Tim Woodall wrote:
On Fri, 8 May 2009 02:09:39 -0700 (PDT),
* * wrote:

Certainly, my first reaction was that there must have been some
expensive unresolved journeys, but it appears not. But I needed to do
some spreadsheet work to be sure.

I've also suffered missing entries, but with a correct overall
balance. Am I alone in thinking that the online display is
unnecessarily confusing? The "Fare" column doesn't actually show the
fare for a journey (except for a bus) - it shows debits and credits.
I'm interested in your spreadsheet - does anyone have anything that
you can just paste the journey history into and it actually shows the
fares charged??

(Sorry this is rather specific to unix and open office users but maybe
someone can adapt it for microsoft tools)

I use the following:

1. Save the "printer friendly version" of the journey history.

2. Run it through a script to turn the saved html in 1 into a csv file
(see end of this post for the script)

3. Import the CSV into open office.

Then (I think) adding the following columns will give you what you want:

Column I: row 94: =IF(A95+B95+2/24A94+B94;I95+E94;E94)
Column J: row 94: =IF(A95+B95+2/24A94+B94;"";I94)

Copy and paste into the other rows.

This fails in two cases: 1, if you have auto top-up that will be added
to your journey "cost" and 2, if you make two journeys the second of
which starts less than two hours after the first finished it will be
consolidated into one journey.

1 is fairly easy to fix - just create a new column that zeros out any
auto top-up entries and then change the column I formula to reference
your new column instead of column E. 2 is harder to fix - you can tweak
the 2/24 parameter - that's the number of hours for the next entry to be
added to your journey (not the total journey time)

I don't know how well this will play with capping - I've never reached a
cap - or season tickets plus extensions.

Tim.

$ cat ppv2csv
cat $1 |
sed -n '
/tr/ {
* * * * * h
* * * * }
/\/tr/ {
* * * * * H
* * * * * x
//g * * * s/
* * * * * s/\n//g
* * * * * s/\t//g
* * * * * s/ *//g
* * * * * s/ *//g
* * * * * s/tr//g
* * * * * s|/tr||g
* * * * * s/td//g
* * * * * s|/td|$ $|g
* * * * * s/^.*$//
* * * * * s/[^]*//g
* * * * * s/£//g
* * * * * s/- /-/g
* * * * * p
* * * * }
{
* * * * H
* * * * }
' |
while read d r; do
* if [[ "$d" = '$' ]]; then
* * d=$oldd;
* else
* * oldd=$d
* fi
* echo $d $r
done |
grep -v '^$' |
sed 's/\$ \$/\t/g'

--
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/