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[email protected] · April 9th 15, 07:43 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 12:17:17 -0500,
wrote:

In article ,
() wrote:

I took the precaution of looking at the card balance and journey
history on a ticket machine at T5 before letting it near a gate. It
showed the journey to Heathrow, £2.05 charge and £5.60 balance all
correctly. I took the precaution of photographing the ticket machine
screen. When I touched in at the barrier it told me my balance was
£5.60 (and showed the correct amounts at KXStP). We'll see what
Oyster Online has to say later.

It seems like there's a significant communications problem somewhere
between T5 and TfL Central. Is this possible, Paul?

My wife used her contactless credit card both ways. That worked fine
outwards which I why I know my touch out time which failed to register
but her touch in on the inward journey failed to get through to the
central computer though her exit at King's Cross was OK. In both cases
there were no gate issues such as following or being followed by someone
else. She was charged £5.20 for an unstarted journey instead of £3.10 for
which we have now had to claim a refund.

I see only one refund a month is allowed. With such unreliable
communications is that reasonable?

I am not up to date on the precise nature of the comms network for the
ticketing system. I understand it was substantially upgraded and
reconfigured to remove the possibility of a single comms line failure
between any station and the central system. There should always be an
alternative route for data to reach the centre.

Whatever the problem we know it's intermittent as each time only one of two
cards' gate records were missed.

Now it's possible that something else has caused data loss or delay. I
would expect such faults to be known to the customer services centre
or at least the status info could be checked. I also would not expect
the daily transaction record to be closed out if data has not been
received from certain locations - especially for contactless payment
card transactions. If your wife's credit card is registered with TfL
in an account I would expect the missing transaction to be fixable via
the internet via the TfL account. This is what Youtube videos
produced by TfL show is possible.

It is registered on my account so claiming a refund is easy once I realised
what the screen was telling me. I was looking for the 7th April journey
history of which there was none but it was hidden behind a "maybe claim a
refund" (or something like that) message. Only later did I realise I had to
click a little chevron next to the message to find out more and even then it
was easier to find the help pages on claiming a refund than to find the link
to click to actually claim it. After claiming it is in the journey history
with a "we have no record of where you touched in/out" warning.

I do not see how TfL could refuse a refund if it is clear their
equipment is at fault. To refuse would be wholly unreasonable in those
circumstances.

They don't seem to be refusing but they are very coy about the cause of the
fault. Given that it is at Heathrow I fear they are fleecing rather a lot of
tourists who won't realise it's happening to them.

--
Colin Rosenstiel