asdf wrote:
On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:47:16 -0400, David of Broadway wrote:

Very interesting. Examples?
I was thinking of this:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....305d52b01c0c2a
Ah! I read that when it was first posted, found it very interesting
back then, and promptly forgot about it.

And if this is all perfectly legal, then the next logical question is:

Say I'm in Z6 and I have some time to kill. If I ride into Z1 and back
out to the station I started at (within 2 hours), the Oyster system
won't know that I ever left Z6 and will charge me the intra-Z6 fare.
But is such a ride legal?

I don't think the system would like you finishing at the same station
you started at - I imagine either the gates would reject your card on
exit (this happens if you enter and then try to leave immediately), or
you'd be charged £8 for two unresolved journeys (one starting at the
station, the other finishing there).

Really? What if you enter the station and then realize that you forgot
something important at home or in the office?

BART (in the San Francisco area) explicitly penalizes this sort of usage
with a so-called excursion fare for exiting from the same station you
entered at, which is IIRC higher than the highest normal fare in the
system. Of course, flat-fare systems neither know nor care -- if I had
lots of money to throw away, I could spend all day in New York entering
and exiting and reentering and reexiting the same station.

But let's suppose instead that
you end your journey one station from where you started, and walk
home.

There seems to be nothing in the TfL Conditions of Carriage
specifically saying you can't do this. They say: "You can use any of
our services if you have [...] sufficient money on your Oyster card to
pay as you go." The only requirements are to touch in at the start of
the journey and touch out at the end. You are liable to a Penalty Fare
or prosecution if (and, I assume, only if) you cannot produce "an
Oyster card showing a record of the start of your trip".

The main sticking point is this:
"10.2. If we believe that you have used or tried to use any ticket or
Oyster card to defraud us we may cancel and not re-issue it. If this
happens, we will not give you a refund of the remaining value of the
ticket, or refund any money or deposit paid for the Oyster card."

So it's worth keeping your PAYG balance low if doing this, in case you
run into an unsympathetic ticket inspector.

But that begs the question, IMO. Is the above behavior fraudulent?

(An obvious example of fraud would be using an Oyster-based Travelcard
and not touching out at a station outside your zones where the gates are
open or where there are no gates at all. But if you simply turn around
and return to your zones without exiting the station, it's not so clear
to me.)
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA