Barry Salter wrote:
On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 20:47:27 +0000 (UTC), "Steve"
wrote:

[Paying twice due to buses turning early]

This is one hell of a f**king scam as far as I can see. Why should the
passenger be forced to be out of pocket just because the bus decides to stop
early. I understand that occasioanlly a vehicle is taken out of service for
whatever reason, but in the past the driver would usually wait until an
alternative came and we couuld board that without making a further purchase,
now we are penalised.

There's no difference between Oyster and cash in cases like that. The
correct procedure, as I understand it, is for the driver on the bus
that's being turned early to issue the affected passengers with a
"Transfer Ticket", which you then show to the driver on the other bus.

The more "usual" procedure, where another bus on the same route is just
behind/in front, seems to be that everyone just transfers to the other
bus, and the two drivers have a quick chat, and that's about it.

Cheers,

Barry

Buses being turned early happens on occasions on bendy bus route I
frequent, I just wait for the next one and figure that if I get
inspected I'll tell them what happened. I wonder if inspectors even
match up the specific bus you're on to the record held on your Oyster
card though, as from what I've seen of the display of handheld Oyster
readers carried by inspectors, they merely show the time the card was
last scanned on a bus and the route number of that bus (along with the
Pre Pay balance) - so my card would be fine as it'd show I'd scanned
and thus paid on route 567 within the past hour even if I hadn't done
so on the specific bus I was on.

Anyway, if driver of an early-turning bendy bus were to give out
transfer tickets then those fare evaders on-board who hadn't got a
valid ticket would get given a legitimate ticket for onward travel. And
every time I've been on a bendy bus and inspectors have boarded someone
has got done for not having a (valid) ticket. So I doubt if the
transfer ticket system has been instituted on bendy buses.