MIG wrote:

On Feb 16, 12:42�pm, Mizter T wrote:
On 16 Feb, 11:57, "tim \(not at home\)"
wrote:

"MIG" wrote:

On Feb 15, 10:06 pm, "tim \(not at home\)"
wrote:

(snip)

(I have assumed that you were wanting to 'collect' an online purchase of a
new season ticket by touching the validator. But as I have never had an
Oyster season I really have no idea if it works like this).

tim

For online purchases it does indeed work like this. Notionally one
needs to make a journey to do this, i.e. touch-in at one station and
touch-out at the other. One is certainly required to do that when
collecting a PAYG top-up or (setting up auto top-up), however given
that Travelcard users are not penalised for not touching-in/out I
expect that this doesn't matter - however I will endeavour to confirm
my expectation and report back here when I do.

Presumably (or perhaps I shouldn't presume) if you touch in at an NR
station that's got Oyster readers but no Oyster selling (like Putney I
think) with a zone 1 - 2 travelcard, and then, I dunno, do some kind
of trip via West Brompton and get off at Acton Town, it will record
you as having touched in at Putney (despite PAYG not being valid) and
charge the Oyster fare from the boundary at Turnham Green? Or would
it require a separate touch in at some intermediate point where your
travelcard was still valid?


Well, first off I would probably choose a less roundabout route
starting from East Putney but never mind that! (One could of course be
accompanying friends etc for part of the route.)

AIUI your Oyster card would not get electronically 'marked' at Putney
whatsoever - the NR gates at locations where PAYG is *not* valid are
dumb, all they do is check for the presence of a valid Travelcard
(i.e. does it cover the zone the station is in, and is it in date?).

Beyond that, to be honest I'm not actually totally sure what happens
in such a situation. I certainly used to be sure in thinking that
passengers needed to touch-in before they joined a PAYG route - in
this case at Clapham Junction or West Brompton - so as to register a
start point with the system for the PAYG journey that they were about
to undertake, otherwise how would the Oyster system know where you had
started from. Also if you had your ticket checked when outside your
Travelcard's zones then surely there would be a presumption that you
had never touched-in.

I certainly read the advice to passengers from TfL as recommending
they do that - "Oyster Pay-as-you-go users much touch-in" the signs
say, and a passenger combining a Travelcard and PAYG in one journey is
thus a Pay-as-you-go user. However I can absolutely see the potential
for passenger confusion - they had already touched-in at Putney, they
may well think.

A recent post here however led me to think that *perhaps* the system
is configured differently, and that if a passenger exits the LU
network (e.g. through gates or touches-out elsewhere) without having
touched-in, but holds a valid Travelcard on their Oyster that
*doesn't* cover the zone their exit station is in, then the passenger
will be given the benefit of the doubt and merely charged the extra
for the zones beyond their Travelcard's validity.

However I'm not sure about whether this really is the case. If it was,
then it could mean that a passenger with a zones 2&3 Travelcard could
join an FCC Thameslink train at an ungated station in south London,
for example Herne Hill - or indeed a passenger with a zones 2-6
Travelcard could enter through the dumb (non-PAYG enabled) gates at
East Croydon - and they could then travel direct to Farringdon (PAYG
being valid on Thameslink north of Elephant & Castle), exit anywhere
in zone 1 and merely be charged the extra for zone 1. That might make
some sense in itself, but it would thus mean there could be passengers
travelling around without validated Oyster cards - which would be a
problem if they encountered an RPI (whether from FCC or LU).

*If* it is the case - and that is a big if - then I would suggest it
merely gives the passenger the benefit of the doubt rather than
legitimises their actions. I will certainly look into it this, though
when I do I'll make sure that I'm holding another unquestionably valid
ticket separately.