Recliner wrote:

hope that makes sense. sorry if reply too long

I think this really illustrates just how complex this has all become.
You're obviously a very well-informed passenger who's just trying to do
the right thing, and yet you weren't sure what to do and had an
unnecessarily complex journey. The average passenger is unlikely to
understand the system nearly as well as you do, and is also quite likely
to forget to validate when changing between Oyster/non-Oyster trains.

Here's another one or two:

I have a zones 1-3 season ticket but last week I had a multi stage journey
starting at Forest Gate, stopping off in Stratford to nip into the shopping
centre, then going to Kew Gardens to do some work and then nipping down to
Richmond before heading home. Kew Gardens is on the zones 3/4 boundary so
for the outward trips it was season then season then PAYG with no
extensions. For the return I took the direct North London Line, touching in
at Richmond. When I got to Stratford I tried touching on the pad on the
Overground platforms and got an error, so tried again and got the same
error. I then went to platform 8 and tried on the Central Line reader and
*think* I touched out successfully but am really not 100% sure. I then
caught the train to Forest Gate.

Given the multiple platforms in use (including locals that use platforms 9 &
10), one would expect the Overground platforms to have all the relevant
readers actually on them - if I'd made the trip late at night or on a Sunday
would I have to still go to platforms 3-8? Sometimes those platforms are
sealed off - where is the interchanging Oyster user supposed to touch out
then?