On Jul 3, 3:16*pm, Martin Petrov wrote:
This morning I had to travel to Leyton to Ilford and needless to say,
given I haven't bought a paper ticket in London for YEARS due to
always having a monthly or annual travelcard and auto top up on my
Oystercard, it never crossed my mind that I'd have to buy a ticket to
cover me for the stretch outside of zone 3 to Ilford.

And so, since at Stratford, there's no check to prevent me making the
journey, I hopped on train with scarcely a thought.

Having arrived at Ilford, I popped out my Oystercard but couldn't get
through the barrier, at which point it stopped me and I was "kindly"
asked to see the bloke issuing penalty fares. I waited (stewing, and
was strongly considering flat out refusing to pay the £20 if they told
me that was the way it was going to be done) and was informed that "by
rights", I should be paying £20 - I argued that since I come from the
21st century, I haven't bought a ticket in years, it was a completely
honest and understandable mistake. Fortunately, (and quite seriously,
given his attitude to the Asian woman before me, I suspect probably
the fact I was white and vaguely middle class) he made a huge thing of
the fact that he'd probably made enough money for the his employer and
would sell me a single from Stratford.

They would have been well within their rights to issue a Penalty Fare.
Unfortunately the root cause of this is the fact that TOCs have been
incredibly glacial in coming round to accepting Oyster PAYG
universally across London rail routes - they don't yet, of course,
though with some luck it might happen some time next year.


I haven't been so lucky before - when I used to travel from Hackney
Central to Stratford on the way to Canary Wharf, I had forgotten that
my monthly had expired the day before, and since it was the days
before barriers at Hackney Central, I didn't have to touch in to get
through and so had no indication that I'd got an expired monthly until
I walked into a ticket check at Stratford. On that day, it was 'zero
tolerance' regardless of the fact that my Oystercard had almost
complete travelcard coverage for the previous couple of years and so
it was quite unlikely I was trying to blag my way through. The arsey
"we've got you over a barrel" attitude of the revenue collection
officer on the day REALLY REALLY got my goat.

I'm guessing that instead of simply being charged the £4 for an
unresolved journey (the so called "max cash fare"), the gates had been
set so as not to allow anyone through who didn't have a valid
Travelcard (on Oyster) or hadn't touched-in at the beginning of their
journey. I heard a story recently that would back up that notion -
i.e. that's how things work when RPIs are doing a 'zero tolerance'
check at a station.

The above scenario is an inevitable one for smartcard ticketing - at
least until someone devises a card that can display information
visually that's robust and inexpensive enough etc for it to be rolled
out for practical day to day use. If one's Oyster card is registered -
and this is necessary for monthly and longer season tickets - then the
Oyster card system sends the registered holder an email informing them
that the Travelcard (or bus pass) is due to expire shortly. In
addition the newer version of LU gates flashes up a warning in red
text (and indeed the other displays associated with Oyster readers -
e.g. on buses - do the same, but they're rather harder to read).

One quite technical point - the Oyster card itself does not hold the
whole history of what tickets have and haven't been loaded on it. I
think there are three 'slots' for season tickets (i.e. Travelcards and
bus passes), so anything before that will have been overwritten by the
new ticket. Nor do I think RPIs have any sort of data link to the
central Oyster card database either.


There. I've got all that off my chest.

And don't get me started on the behaviour of the revenue protection
officers on WAGN during the early part of this decade (when I used to
work in Hertford) - I had a number of run-ins with those a##holes.
(and never once was my ticket invalid - their general attitude was
disgusting)

I've certainly seen RPIs who seem to have attitude problems. I have,
to be fair, seen many others who don't seem to take such obvious
gratification in 'catching their prey' - taking some quiet
satisfaction is one thing, but I can certainly see how those with a
swaggering attitude can gets on people's goats. The best attitude is
just to calmly take it all in ones stride.