Roland Perry wrote:
In message .com, at
08:52:08 on Thu, 4 Aug 2005, Joe remarked:
Technically if you have enetered a station without a valid ticket or
having validated your Oyster card (as you did) you are liable to a £20
penalty fare.

On TV a while ago a Tube Revenue Inspector mentioned that they almost
always report everyone they catch for fare evasion to appear in court
unless they are not resident in this country or have a reasonable
excuse.

As a long time Travelcard user who has "converted" to Oyster, I do find
it *very* difficult to remember to touch-in at places like DLR stations.
Not helped by them hiding the points. If they could be bothered to
provide gates, it wouldn't be an issue.

Of course, having failed to touch-in you wreck the capping, and end up
paying *more* than you would otherwise have done. Would they really send
someone to court for paying too much?
--
Roland Perry

It's not clear from what you say whether you are now a Pre Pay user, or
have a Travelcard loaded on your Oyster card.

I'm sure you know this already, so apologies if I'm being patronising,
but just in case you don't:

*If* you have a Travelcard loaded to your Oyster card *and* you're
travelling within the zonal validity of that Travelcard then you don't
need to touch-in and touch-out (on either the DLR or the Tube). If
you're going outside of your Travelcard's zonal validity then you'll
need to touch-in and touch-out in order to have the correct extra fare
deducted.


But I agree with your basic point regarding the potential to forget to
touch-in or indeed touch-out. This is probably why TfL has decided
that, for the moment at least, if you fail to touch out you'll only get
charged the minimum fare that applies at your starting station. Though,
as you say, should you qualify for a price cap you can still miss out
by failing to always touch-out.