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Someone Somewhere · February 4th 16, 02:23 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On 04/02/2016 15:03, d wrote:
On Thu, 4 Feb 2016 14:17:39 -0000
"Robin" wrote:
d wrote:
On Thu, 4 Feb 2016 03:58:29 -0800 (PST)
Offramp wrote:
The RID, the new Revenue Inspection Device, checks only that the
contactless card has been used to enter the system. It says PASSED
or FAILED and gives a

But how does it know? Does it have a 3G or wifi link to head office?
This information certainly won't be stored on the bank card.

AIUI there's an overnight reconciliation. The revenue inspector records
the card. Back office checks overnight that that card was used to tap
in. If not then they take a maximum Oyster fare from the card.

Hmm. I don't like the idea of a company being able to extract money from
someones card without permission because there's always the danger of an error
which goes unnoticed by the owner or if the card has been nicked. It would be
far better if they just blocked it so it couldn't be used again until the owner
paid the fare.

How is this worse than someone losing their card, and some perp finding
it and ordering a round in the nearest pub? In fact it's better as the
owner in this case has a far longer window to notice and block the card.
I presume that once TfL have been unable to extract money from the
card it would be barred until the situation had been resolved (mostly in
the case of a stolen card, never).

I assume that the machines read the card electronically, and this has
all sorts of checks and balances to avoid misreading and hence errors
are very unlikely to occur.