On Wed, 22 Mar 2006 16:04:38 -0600, "Tristán White"
wrote:

"John B" wrote in news:1143043547.888482.166630
:

kytelly wrote:
Are you still supposed to beep in on the bendibuses if you have an
Oyster travelcard or do you only need to do this if your using pre-pay?

The latter. Ditto the Tube (assuming you don't need to do so to open
the barriers), DLR and rail.

Sometimes an inspector may suggest otherwise, as once happened to my
flatmate. In this case you should - while remaining polite throughout -
point out the real situation, ask for the inspector's details, and
write a formal letter of complaint to TfL about employing staff who
don't know how to do their jobs.

[snip tale of woe]

I'm not sure though whether your advice about not having to beep on the
Tube either is particularly safe. Surely, if you have £20 extra on top of
your season ticket (in case you ever go out of zone) then if you don't
beep, the system will assume you have come from or are going to zone 6 and
will charge you accordingly? I'd always assumed that, and hence always
beeped, even when the barriers were open or out of order.

You are entirely correct if you are making a journey that will involve
an extension beyond your zonal availability and you need to use Pre-Pay
to cover the extra trip.

While everyone is exhorted to touch in and out in order to make sure the
extension ticket from pre-pay is automatic I would have had a right old
argument with the ticket inspector in your case where you demonstrably
had a valid Travelcard for the whole of the DLR network. The fact he
could not use his hand held reader properly is not your problem.

Furthermore, if an inspector came on and you hadn't beeped to get through
the barriers on your original station, would his handheld device not query
it and could he not suggest you are trying to come from a zone further out?

The answer to this is very simple. He might have a suspicion but he
could not prove it. There are a number of places where passengers can
enter the LU network from National Rail by crossing between platforms.
There are no gates. There are validators but are there signs to demand
that *everyone* with an Oyster card validates? - no there are not. There
*are* signs saying that if you use Pre-Pay on Oyster cards that you
should do so. There is NO requirement for a Travelcard user to do so
unless they are making a Pre-Pay trip as an extension to the Travelcard.
In such cases they are rather obviously using Pre-Pay!

The big issue here is that TfL are trying to present Oyster as something
that is very simple. In essence it is but the fact that two ticket
products can work together on one card and that there are several very
important exceptions to the normal rules means that detailed information
is needed. It is not unlike mobile phone tariffs - on the face of it
they look simple but then you look in detail at the call cost tables,
bundles, add ons etc etc and then you lose the will to live. The
difference being that you can at least get at all of that information.

It is virtually impossible to get all the information as what needs to
be done to avoid falling foul of some rule that applies somewhere on the
network. The volume of Oyster related questions to this newsgroup proves
that point beyond doubt. I wish TfL would sort this out as there are a
lot of very fed up passengers and staff trying to wrestle with the
system.

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!