In message , at
23:11:50 on Wed, 17 Sep 2014, Arthur Figgis
remarked:
On 17/09/2014 19:56, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at
19:32:32 on Wed, 17 Sep 2014, Arthur Figgis
remarked:
If I can by a coffee at Starbucks by waving a CPC, and it ends up on my
bill at the end of the month, it does seem as if waving a CPC at a gate
ought to register my presence with enough information to bill me
overnight once I've also registered a touch-out. But clearly it's all a
lot more complicated than that, given the kerfuffle to get it all in
place.

Because Starbucks knows how much to charge you before you wave your
card, but TfL doesn't know whether you will make more journeys today.

You've missed the point. The TfL gates "know" to charge you £0, and send
that message along with your location back to HQ. At the end of the day
someone looks at all the £0 charges and works out where you've been and
what non-zero charge to apply to the cardholder.

Which is only possible because TfL et al sat down and devised a system
of charging people £0.

That was done ages ago (long enough ago for people to expect to be able
to roll it out on buses in time for the Olympics). So having to work on
such a scheme is no reason for delays in tube rollout two years later.

Coffee shops don't tend to do that, they charge per transaction. I
rarely use Starbucks, but I'd be surprised if it tells a database
somewhere what drinks you have had each day and then the database
calculates the price at the end of the week.

I'm fairly sure there's a scheme they can subscribe to which is for want
of a better description a "stealth loyalty card" so they can track their
customers' behaviour. They might then use that data to help decide where
to open a new shop.

the terminals just have to desist from asking for a PIN if
they don't have a keyboard. That was sorted for acceptance on buses in
2012.

The Oyster terminals have presumably never been told to ask for PINs,

Obviously, that's part of the package that VISA (and others) agreed to.

but the contactless system apparently needed them.

For fraud prevention when people are buying mainly tangible assets.

TfL also controls all(?) the buses (and carries revenue risk?),

The financial impact of one person travelling for a day, for free, is
pretty low. It's not as if it costs TfL more to have one more bum on a
sea.

while DfT controls (most of) the trains and has to agree to the
contracts.

It's impossible to comprehend that DfT weren't in on the scheme from the
start.
--
Roland Perry