London Banter - View Single Post - Oyster charging for journeys that don't happen

[email protected] · February 13th 15, 11:26 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(David Cantrell) wrote:

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 11:00:26PM +0000, Mizter T wrote:
On 12/02/2015 12:55, David Cantrell wrote:
The result - I was charged for entering and exiting at Waterloo, and
then charged again for my actual journey.
It's not an error, the system is operating as programmed. (You're a
programmer, no? Technology, including Oyster, doesn't just do it's
own random thing.)

Operating as programmed isn't the same as operating without error. If it
were then there would be no such thing as a bug.

Nor is operating as *specified* the same as operating without error. If
it were then specifications would never change.

The Oyster website says that they deliberately make this charge "to
avoid fare evasion". But I'm really struggling to think of a way of
evading fares that would involve touching in, and then touching out less
than ten minutes later at the same station. I might just about be able
to make a round trip from Waterloo to Vauxhall and back again in ten
minutes with a great deal of luck, but it's fairly obvious that the
potential costs of people avoiding that fare are far less than the
excess income generated.

It is clear to me that the specification is faulty in this case.

The explanation has been given in this group. You touch out but don't exit
the station, then travel to an ungated station.

--
Colin Rosenstiel