On Tue, 21 Nov 2006 18:20:22 +0000, Paul Corfield wrote:

As I typed all this up for another group I thought I would relent and
provide it here. I know a proportion of readers are hostile to the
whole thing but I'm not taking any flak for that.

Thank you for this interesting and informative post.

If you exceed 2 hours between validating on entry and then
validating on exit the system will treat each validation as separate
journeys and will impose the £4 charge for each. I personally
think this is a little extreme as some trips could exceed this journey
time if there is only a slight delay on one leg (Amersham -
Upminster anyone?).

According to the TfL planner, Epping to Chesham takes 1 hour 57 mins,
even without service disruption (and that's with a 3-minute connection
into the 4tph Amersham service, followed by a 4-minute connection at
Chalfont & Latimer, where you could have to wait up to half an hour
even under Good Service).

I suppose you could mitigate the problem by using Chiltern from
Marylebone, where you need to re-validate, which presumably resets the
clock.

If the failure to touch in and out is due
to equipment failure then a ticket office can complete the journey
to the correct fare but cannot re-activate the cap against that
journey. That has to be done via the Oyster Helpdesk.

Out of interest, do you know why this is? It seems a strange rule, to
say the least.