On Jan 30, 1:16*pm, "Recliner" wrote:

"John Swallow" wrote:

Unless you have a very tight connection, why not just wait for a
minute on the Marylebone concourse before passing through the
Chiltern gateline (in any case, you're supposed to do that unless
your train is departing quite soon)?

Why should he, just to serve the random whims of a computer system?
The fault should be reported, and the clocks corrected.

I thought the clocks were all supposed to be synchronised? *But even if
they're not quite accurate, I'd rather wait for a minute on the
concourse than go through all the hassle (and much longer time) of
dealing with the Oyster helpline.

I also thought all the the clocks were supposed to be in sync too.

Re dealing with the Oyster customer service bods - filling out the
secure online form on the TfL website - here http://www.tfl.gov.uk/
helpandcontact - is probably less painful than calling them up.

Of course one might hope that if you call up the helpline, you might
be able to explain the repeated nature of the problem, hough I suppose
you could say this in the online form submission too. The problem is
getting the message through to the right people - i.e. the back room
techies, rather than the front line CS staff (who might well be
hamstrung somewhat by having a rigid proceedure they have to follow).
However If one was to report it often enough and get a refund, then
one would hope the issue would get flagged up eventually because it's
a repetitive problem.


But I've also noticed it can be a bit generous -- sometimes, I've been
charged the off-peak PAYG fare when my (precisely accurate) watch showed
I'd touched in just inside peak time. There was also an occasion when I
reckoned I'd exceeded the allowed two-hour time (because I changed my
mind about going to an event as my journey had been so slow that I'd be
late), and wasn't penalised.

As you go on to say later, it's quite possible - likely, even - that
there's a degree of tolerance in the system w.r.t. the peak/ off-peak
period shift.

Regarding the maximum journey time limit - this changed from two hours
to two and a half hours some time ago (a year or two ago), and was
subsequently changed again - it's now no longer a unilaterally fixed
limit but is now variable - the variables being the length of the
journey (that is, how many zones you pass through), and also the time
and day of the journey (e.g. journeys on sundays are allowed more time
because of the less frequent service).

Peter Smyth put in an FOI request for this info last year, and posted
the results here on utl - see (via gg):
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.tr...4747db850d431f

(Of course I suppose these time limits might have changed since then,
but I haven't come across anything to suggest they have.)