"MIG" wrote in message

On Jan 7, 11:12 pm, eastender wrote:
Am I missing something in the storm today over the £58m of so that
Oyster users are 'overcharged'? I can't see anything saying what the
default position should be for people who fail to touch out. There's
not been any barriers on most of the DLR in any case.

E.

I think it's the wrong scandal, as usual, given that it is usually
possible to avoid, with a bit of alertness.

No focus on all the people who are charged when they do touch in and
out correctly, but hit timeout issues.

I had a case recently where there was a signal failure on the route
home, which severely delayed numerous trains (at least a dozen) on the
Picc and District. They eventually got the trains moving again, and I
got to my home station over an hour later than I'd have expected. I
touched out correctly, and guessing that I'd have been timed out, I went
to the ticket machine and confirmed that I had indeed been charged
2x£4.30 for the journey, rather than the £2.40 it should have been. I
suspect most other pax wouldn't have thought to do this. I went straight
to the ticket office, which had someone in it, who instantly agreed that
I was due a full refund, but said he couldn't do it immediately as the
office was officially closed by then.

I hoped the system would automatically cancel the overcharge (after all,
it had all the data to do so), but of course it didn't. I couldn't find
a direct way of reporting this on the TfL Web site, so used the
complaint option. A couple of days later I got an apology email, but no
refund. I eventually found an open ticket office without a long queue,
and after some discussion, persuaded the lady that I was due a refund.
After lots of button pushing, she managed to get one of the overcharges
refunded. I then tried the Oyster helpline, which was distinctly
unhelpful. Only when I reminded the operator that the call was probably
being recorded did he suddenly decide to offer the refund I was owed. It
still took a long discussion with his supervisor to sort it out.

I was only so persistent because I was peeved -- the relatively trivial
amount of money involved certainly didn't warrant so much effort -- and
I suspect that very few of the others affected that night would have
even bothered to try. So the net effect is that TfL probably netted
several thousand pounds of Oyster penalty fares that evening, thanks to
its unreliable signalling and inability to get the trains moving again
quickly. So what's the incentive for TfL to fix its wonky systems, given
that it would lose money by doing so?