Paul Corfield wrote in message . ..

PS. Does anyone know whether the bus passes actually store zone
information, and whether this is checked by the buses? I have a
single-zone pass and I'm curious to know whether it would work in
other zones.

So why don't you simply attempt to board a bus in a zone outside the
validity of your card and see what happens? This is far easier than
divulging the coding and interrogation details of a secure system in a
public forum.

Well at the moment the system seems to let you travel on buses quite
happily without charging you the full fa

I bought a weekly travelcard on an oyster. When the travelcard
expired I went to an LU ticketmachine to see what else, if anything, I
could do with this Oystercard. Review journey history - quite
interesting. Buy another season ticket - later maybe. Top up pre-pay
- oh what's this? I topped up £2.50 and checked the card and sure
enough it now showed a balance of £2.50.

I leave the station and decide to take a bus. It's a DOO bus so it
has a card reader by the driver. I blip the card onto the reader, it
lights up green, the driver acknowledges the fare and I make my
journey. I go into another tube station to check what has happened on
the card's journey history; bus fare deducted 1p, balance £2.49. I
did the same again later that evening from my local tube station to
home so the first journey was clearly not an isolated incident. This
happened about a week ago and checking the journey history yesterday
indicates that LU haven't adjusted the balance on the card to deduct
the bus fares at their proper amount.

Now, I appreciate that pre-pay hasn't gone live officially yet, but it
is possible to store value on the cards and use that value to buy
single tube tickets - the machine prints you a paper one rather than
loading the ticket onto the oyster. And you are charged the full fare
for these tickets. Even so - being able to get an apparently valid[1]
ride on a bus for a penny must surely be a bit of a bug?

I'm not going to take the **** by making millions of bus journeys for
a penny all over town, but the £1.68 I appear to have saved will count
as some small recompense for the time and energy London Transport have
stolen off me over the years through their failure to run a proper
service.

[1] Yes, yes I know it's probably not /really/ valid, but
- a) the LED shows green and indicates a fare has been paid
- b) the drivers and/or conductors don't really give a monkeys about
collecting the correct fare or have the knowledge/training to
appreciate what has just happened
- c) I've lived in London for over 8 years and travelled extensively
on tube, train and bus and I have seen a ticket check probably less
that half a dozen times
- d) even if an inspector did check your oyster card - would it tell
him anything other than a valid fare had been paid?

--
Cheers
-sandy