[x-posted to uk.transport.london]

On Jan 25, 12:07*pm, "John Clausen" wrote:
On Saturday I travelled around London on tubes and National Rail using my
Oyster card instead of a paper travelcard. My advice to others thinking of
doing the same is: don't bother. Instead of capping at £7.00 it kept
charging me until there was no credit left, over £17 in total. Some credit
has been put back but I have still been charged £14.60.

There were three of us travelling together and we all got print outs at
Victoria in the afternoon. Various parts of the journey were ignored
including a trip to Harrow on the Hill where we touched out and back in
again at Marylebone and the same at Harrow. So the system thought we had
made a journey from Paddington to Vauxhall taking 95 minutes which is over
the time limit. The bloke at Victoria suggested that we hadn't been touching
in and out properly but then how would the gates have opened? The fact that
three of us had the same problem suggests that it is system failure rather
than user error. Has anyone else had similar problems? I will not be using
Oyster as a travelcard again in the near future.


If you were willing to provide the details of your journeys, then we
might be able to untangle what happened.

I think the thing that's at the root of such Oyster problems is the
out-of-station interchange (OSI) issue (which we're currently
discussing in another current utl thread).

The kinda ironic thing is that it's supposed to be beneficial for
passengers - in essence what happens is that Oyster automatically
combines journeys together, so say a Clapham Junction to Victoria
journey on NR would be combined with the subsequent Tube journey from
Victoria to Kings Cross, which could then be combined with a Kings
Cross to Alexandra Palace NR journey - in other words the whole thing
would be treated as one through journey for charging purposes.

That's great, however the problems surface because the system assumes
someone is making a through journey when they touch-in at an OSI
location (e.g. at Waterloo Underground station) within a certain time
period from touching-out (e.g. at Waterloo NR station). If they're
making a straightforward journey then that's fine. If however that
passenger spends a period of time doing something else - leaving the
station, getting some food, whatever - then the problem can be that
the overall journey 'times out', i.e. it the maximum journey time that
the system allows for the journey (which varies) is exceeded. It's at
this point that things go skew-whiff, and the system applies the
'maximum charge' which exists to discourage misuse (the exact
mechanism is a bit more complex, but that's a summary).

I've a feeling that since Oyster's coverage expanded onto NR in London
we're going to be hearing a lot more of this here (on these groups)
and also elsewhere. I dare suggest that it's more likely to hit rail
enthusiasts making atypical journeys, but it can snag others too.