On Jul 9, 9:43 am, wrote:

On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:02:55 +0100

Commuter wrote:

I mentioned this in another thread here (which I can't find), but it's
happened again...

Just back from a recent trip to London, I noticed the balance was £8
less than it should have been. Looked on a ticket machine which stated
I'd done the journey:
"Heron Quays DLR - Unfinished
Unstarted - Woolwich Arsenal"

Every single trip to London I have done something similar to this has
happened and on every occasion it has involved the DLR at Canary Wharf
or Heron Quays.

Oyster is little more than a money making exercise. If they can get away
with stiffing you for a shed load of cash and with flimsey excuse to back
it up they will.

Which is the standard moronic response when someone encounters an
issue with Oyster. There will be an explanation for this - likely to
do with Out-of-Station-Interchange (OSI) issues - but as the OP hasn't
provided any detailed information it's nigh-on impossible to make a
diagnoses.


You may be interested to know that if you enter a station, but have to leave
again for whatever reason, you'll be charged 1.10 for the priviledge even
though you haven't travelled anywhere. Nice eh? They could easily program
the gates not to take money if its obvious the person has been nowhere,
but no, they decided to extract the cash because they can, probably hoping
most people won't notice its been taken. I did and went to the ticket office
and complained until they refunded it.

And there's a very simple explanation for this - it stops people
working the system. If the gates were configured so as to charge
nothing when this happened (more precisely, refund the entry charge in
its entirety), then people would touch-in to enter through a gate,
then touch-out on an exit gate but instead of exiting they'd continue
on and catch a train - voila, they've got into the system for nothing.
The same could happen on the way out, though they'd need to reach over
and touch-in on an entry gate before touching-out on an exit gate.

Don't think that this wouldn't happen - especially when one bears in
mind that one or the other end of their journey might not be gated at
all (e.g. a National Rail station on a line that offers in-station
interchange with the Underground).

And if it was configured as you suggest, and you saw people scamming
it, you'd be the first to come on here and rant about 'the idiots at
TfL who couldn't see this coming' (you just know you would be!).

It's perhaps worth comparing this situation to that if you were using
a paper Tube ticket, which you would have had to buy before you
entered the gate to get into the station. (FWIW, I'm sure I read
somewhere that Tube ticket offices do/ are permitted to/ are supposed
to refund the fare should a passenger enter and then exit the station
without travelling.)