Phil Clark wrote:
I think I have an unresolved journey on my Oyster card.

I was travelling from work to Waterloo and missed my stop, getting off
at Southwark. I decided to walk back to the mainline platforms via
Waterloo East. However, I don't think there is an "out" barrier
between the Tube platforms at Southwark and the entrance to Waterloo
East. At Waterloo East, as it is a mainline station, I automatically
used my London Stations season ticket to get through the barrier (the
barrier wouldn't accept the ticket but the ticket inspector let me
through). In retrospect maybe I should have used my Oyster to
register an "out", but I didn't want to register an "in" when I wasn't
going to be travelling from Waterloo East.

Anyway, will this be an unresolved journey and what do I do about it?
Unaccountably, I don't seem to be able to check my Oyster card usage
online. Can I do so at a Tube station, or is phone or email the best?

The short answer is a) yes and b) nothing, probably.

The longer answer is that if your Oyster is a Travelcard, then you
certainly don't need to do anything. You will in no way be penalised
for unresolved journeys where any touching in or out has been in the
zones where your Travel card is valid.

If your Oyster is a PAYG, you probably don't need to do anything
either. There are certain London Terminals where you'll be charged a
fiver for unresolved PAYG journeys on the National Rail side (IIRC
Liverpool Street, Euston and Fenchurch Street) to deter fare-dodgers
from using PAYG Oyster as a cheap way to get through the barriers.

If you have an unresolved PAYG journey from anywhere else, TfL reserve
the right to charge you the maximum fare, but in practice they charge
you the minimum - ie the fare from the zone you touched in to another
station in that zone. The only incentive to avoid unresolved PAYG
journeys on LUL is that they do not count towards daily capping.

Apologies if there have been lots of similar queries, but there's not
really a lot of information on the LUL website.

They don't want scallies to know that the system will only charge them
the minimum if they can get away with dodging the barriers. Hopefully
the scallies aren't reading u.t.l...

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org