On 2017-10-06, David Cantrell wrote:
As is normal, I made my monthly refund claim a few days ago for Oyster
cock-ups. On Tuesday I entered Thornton Heath station and picked up the
refund at the gate-line. I can see it on my journey history:

18:08 Oyster helpline refund, Thornton Heath [National Rail]

then I got on a train, and touched out at the other end:

???? - 18:39 [No touch-in] to Victoria (platforms 9-19) [National Rail]

so I managed to both touch in (and pick up the refund) and not touch in
at the same time. That's pretty impressively messed up.


I've seen something similar "touching in and opening the gate" but not
touching in on oyster happen before - which showed up when a maximum
fare was charged on exit. For that one it was the very first time the
card had been used - and I was watching the person who was touching in
and touching out to make sure they did it all correctly so I know they
didn't enter on someone else's card by accident.

I've had problems where journeys have been "joined together" leading to
two unresolved journeys - Shorditch High Street - Whitechapel then
W-SHS got turned into SHS-W W(continue)-SHS which got turned into
SHS-[no touch out] [no touch in]-SHS (and, IIRC cost something like
£15). I have absolutely no idea how a touch out followed by a touch in
could be joined together at Whitechapel - they were only about 20
minutes apart but even so it shouldn't happen.

I've been bitten by this at other places too - Liverpool Street -
Oxford Circus and back when I was only at OC for a few minutes. I don't
know why Oyster can't be intelligent about that - why it invents two
unresolved journeys instead of having two resolved journeys is beyond
me (or even one journey A-A).

I've had a couple of other times over the years where I suspect a touch
in or touch out has opened the barrier without registering but by the
time I find out about the problem I cannot be 100% certain that
something else didn't go wrong without me noticing - in particular, when
you're entering/leaving during the rush hour it's so easy to exit on
someone elses card or let someone exit on your own card when the person
in front's touch doesn't work and the person behind is already reaching
to touch the pad although in other cases when the touch doesn't work
the person for whom it failed has to move right back from the gate
before they will work again. No idea why there's this inconsistency.

Tim.