Odd one this - I expected the overcharge, didn't expect that they
couldn't fix it or that I couldn't subsequently work out how it was
calculated.

Basics - rushing back for a train at Waterloo I got through the gates
before it left but just missed it (it left a minute early, I reckon). I
then went back out through the gates (touching out on the way) and took
the Tube back to Z2 rather than wait inside the barriers for the next train.

This should have cost Z1-Z2 tube (£1.80) but I was instead charged
£3.20, the remaining amount on my daily cap. On querying this with the
ticket clerk, he said that he couldn't put the money back on because the
system was claiming I still owed £1.10 somehow. Here's the printout he
handed me:

* 14:31 Chiswick – Waterloo NR12-19 £0.00
* 14:40 Chiswick – Leicester Square £3.10
* 17:36 Pre Pay Exit Waterloo NR12-19 £0.00
* 18:18 Waterloo NR12-19 – Turnham Grn £3.20
* 18:18 *** cap applied ***

Z1-Z3 cap is £6.30, so £3.10 + £3.20 covers it. My bus home was duly
zero-rated.

Now, can anyone explain how the system came to work like this? I must
say I'm rather baffled by it.

Tom

On 20 Feb, 22:43, Tom Barry wrote:
Odd one this - I expected the overcharge, didn't expect that they
couldn't fix it or that I couldn't subsequently work out how it was
calculated.

Basics - rushing back for a train at Waterloo I got through the gates
before it left but just missed it (it left a minute early, I reckon). *I
then went back out through the gates (touching out on the way) and took
the Tube back to Z2 rather than wait inside the barriers for the next train.

This should have cost Z1-Z2 tube (£1.80) but I was instead charged
£3.20, the remaining amount on my daily cap. *On querying this with the
ticket clerk, he said that he couldn't put the money back on because the
system was claiming I still owed £1.10 somehow. *Here's the printout he
handed me:

* * ** 14:31 Chiswick – Waterloo NR12-19 £0.00
* * ** 14:40 Chiswick – Leicester Square £3.10
* * ** 17:36 Pre Pay Exit Waterloo NR12-19 £0.00
* * ** 18:18 Waterloo NR12-19 – Turnham Grn £3.20
* * ** 18:18 *** cap applied ***

Z1-Z3 cap is £6.30, so £3.10 + £3.20 covers it. *My bus home was duly
zero-rated.

Now, can anyone explain how the system came to work like this? *I must
say I'm rather baffled by it.

Tom

How did you get from Leicester Square to Waterloo? I am guessing that
it's not all showing up on the history yet, but that the £3.20 is a
combined LU NR fare from Leicester Square to Turnham Green, involving
mutliple OSI at Waterloo and no actual distance travelled on NR.

On Feb 20, 10:43*pm, Tom Barry wrote:
Odd one this - I expected the overcharge, didn't expect that they
couldn't fix it or that I couldn't subsequently work out how it was
calculated.

Basics - rushing back for a train at Waterloo I got through the gates
before it left but just missed it (it left a minute early, I reckon). *I
then went back out through the gates (touching out on the way) and took
the Tube back to Z2 rather than wait inside the barriers for the next train.

This should have cost Z1-Z2 tube (£1.80) but I was instead charged
£3.20, the remaining amount on my daily cap. *On querying this with the
ticket clerk, he said that he couldn't put the money back on because the
system was claiming I still owed £1.10 somehow. *Here's the printout he
handed me:

* * ** 14:31 Chiswick – Waterloo NR12-19 £0.00
* * ** 14:40 Chiswick – Leicester Square £3.10
* * ** 17:36 Pre Pay Exit Waterloo NR12-19 £0.00
* * ** 18:18 Waterloo NR12-19 – Turnham Grn £3.20
* * ** 18:18 *** cap applied ***

Z1-Z3 cap is £6.30, so £3.10 + £3.20 covers it. *My bus home was duly
zero-rated.

Now, can anyone explain how the system came to work like this? *I must
say I'm rather baffled by it.

£3.20 is the combined peak NR+LU fare for a zones 1&2 journey - I
would contend that regardless of the fact you didn't travel on NR in
the end, the system regarded your exit from Waterloo NR and entry at
Waterloo LU as an out-of-station interchange, and therefore your
journey from Waterloo to Turnham Green was regarded as the
continuation of an existing journey (i.e. the LU part of an NR+LU
journey) and you were charged as such.

I also dare say that entering and then exiting at Waterloo does incur
a charge even if one doesn't travel - this is how it works on the
Tube, for example - it's kind of like a platform ticket, though I
think one actually gets charged for the minimum fare from that station
[1]. I've never read an official explanation for this, but my
supposition is that this is to stop people simply using Oyster to get
in through the gates, then tapping their Oyster on an exit gate to get
a zero-cost non-journey then turning around and travelling anyway
(i.e. not exiting through the exit gate). You know some people would
do this if they could (well, I do!)

I might volunteer myself to donate some money to SWT or another TOC by
confirming this is what happens if one passes in and then almost
immediately out of a NR terminus' gateline. A further test would then
be to travel on the Tube and confirm this results in a combo NR+LU
fare being charged, as opposed to just an LU fare.


-----
[1] Though at Vauxhall tube station (on the z1/2 borderlands) when I
entered and then exited moments later I was charged a z1 fare, as
opposed to a z2 fare.

On Feb 21, 12:13*am, MIG wrote:

On 20 Feb, 22:43, Tom Barry wrote:

Odd one this - I expected the overcharge, didn't expect that they
couldn't fix it or that I couldn't subsequently work out how it was
calculated.

Basics - rushing back for a train at Waterloo I got through the gates
before it left but just missed it (it left a minute early, I reckon). *I
then went back out through the gates (touching out on the way) and took
the Tube back to Z2 rather than wait inside the barriers for the next train.

This should have cost Z1-Z2 tube (£1.80) but I was instead charged
£3.20, the remaining amount on my daily cap. *On querying this with the
ticket clerk, he said that he couldn't put the money back on because the
system was claiming I still owed £1.10 somehow. *Here's the printout he
handed me:

* * ** 14:31 Chiswick – Waterloo NR12-19 £0.00
* * ** 14:40 Chiswick – Leicester Square £3.10
* * ** 17:36 Pre Pay Exit Waterloo NR12-19 £0.00
* * ** 18:18 Waterloo NR12-19 – Turnham Grn £3.20
* * ** 18:18 *** cap applied ***

Z1-Z3 cap is £6.30, so £3.10 + £3.20 covers it. *My bus home was duly
zero-rated.

Now, can anyone explain how the system came to work like this? *I must
say I'm rather baffled by it.

How did you get from Leicester Square to Waterloo? *I am guessing that
it's not all showing up on the history yet, but that the £3.20 is a
combined LU NR fare from Leicester Square to Turnham Green, involving
mutliple OSI at Waterloo and no actual distance travelled on NR.

I dare say Tom didn't in fact travel on the tube from Leicester Sq to
Waterloo, but that doesn't matter - entering and then exiting Waterloo
NR meant he was going to be charged the combined NR+LU fare on entry
to Waterloo LU regardless (given the Waterloo NR and Waterloo LU OSI).
See my other reply.(and Boltar's upcoming angry denunciation of it!).

MIG wrote:


Tom

How did you get from Leicester Square to Waterloo?

Walked across Hungerford Bridge, it was a nice day and we'd ended up in
a pub behind the Strand anyway. My reasoning was that this would save
£1.10 and get me some fresh air and exercise...

I am guessing that
it's not all showing up on the history yet, but that the £3.20 is a
combined LU NR fare from Leicester Square to Turnham Green, involving
mutliple OSI at Waterloo and no actual distance travelled on NR.

That shows all the trips I took on the day, it's not obvious that I
spent about 45 seconds inside the NR barriers at Waterloo though.

Tom

Mizter T wrote:


£3.20 is the combined peak NR+LU fare for a zones 1&2 journey - I
would contend that regardless of the fact you didn't travel on NR in
the end, the system regarded your exit from Waterloo NR and entry at
Waterloo LU as an out-of-station interchange, and therefore your
journey from Waterloo to Turnham Green was regarded as the
continuation of an existing journey (i.e. the LU part of an NR+LU
journey) and you were charged as such.



The Waterloo NR exit gate did show '£5.00' on touching out, which is
presumably to deter the quick double tapper fraternity. As for £3.20
being Z1-Z2 NR/TfL, that's the peak fare - off-peak is £2.80 and in any
case there's apparently no fare between Waterloo NR and Turnham Green*.
It's more likely to be the £5.00 maximum charge for the double tap
minus £1.80 because I only had £3.20 remaining to my Z1-Z3

I also dare say that entering and then exiting at Waterloo does incur
a charge even if one doesn't travel

Speaking without my Oyster PAYG geek hat on, Joe Public would expect
that the system would consider that 'travelling by tube from Waterloo'
and 'travelling by train from Waterloo' would be treated the same -
there was no intent to defraud or cheat the system, so there's no
justification for the system penalising me £1.40.

Tom

* You might try Waterloo-Vauxhall-Victoria-Turnham Green or
Waterloo-Richmond-Turnham Green and see where that gets you. Former
should be £2.80, latter should be £3.40, an odd case where touching the
pink validator would see you charged more. I suspect for that reason
(and because the ticket clerk mentioned pink validators) that the system
might always assume you'd gone via Z4 and charge you £3.40, which in my
case would get rounded down to £3.20. What's needed is to treat the
touch-in at Waterloo LU as a pink validator, really, plus an end to the
stupid differential farescales.

On 21 Feb, 09:59, Tom Barry wrote:
Mizter T wrote:

£3.20 is the combined peak NR+LU fare for a zones 1&2 journey - I
would contend that regardless of the fact you didn't travel on NR in
the end, the system regarded your exit from Waterloo NR and entry at
Waterloo LU as an out-of-station interchange, and therefore your
journey from Waterloo to Turnham Green was regarded as the
continuation of an existing journey (i.e. the LU part of an NR+LU
journey) and you were charged as such.

The Waterloo NR exit gate did show '£5.00' on touching out, which is
presumably to deter the quick double tapper fraternity. *As for £3.20
being Z1-Z2 NR/TfL, that's the peak fare - off-peak is £2.80 and in any
case there's apparently no fare between Waterloo NR and Turnham Green*.
* It's more likely to be the £5.00 maximum charge for the double tap
minus £1.80 because I only had £3.20 remaining to my Z1-Z3

I doubt it, because anything unresolved wouldn't count towards the
cap, and you'd continue to be charged up to the cap for the remainder
of journeys.

I think that it is the combined LU/NR fare of £3.20 that I suggested,
which Mizter T explains could be triggered by touching at Waterloo NR,
even though you didn't travel.



* I also dare say that entering and then exiting at Waterloo does incur
* a charge even if one doesn't travel

Speaking without my Oyster PAYG geek hat on, Joe Public would expect
that the system would consider that 'travelling by tube from Waterloo'
and 'travelling by train from Waterloo' would be treated the same -
there was no intent to defraud or cheat the system, so there's no
justification for the system penalising me £1.40.

It doesn't though, like it or not.



Tom

* You might try Waterloo-Vauxhall-Victoria-Turnham Green or
Waterloo-Richmond-Turnham Green and see where that gets you. *Former
should be £2.80, latter should be £3.40, an odd case where touching the
pink validator would see you charged more. *I suspect for that reason
(and because the ticket clerk mentioned pink validators) that the system
might always assume you'd gone via Z4 and charge you £3.40, which in my
case would get rounded down to £3.20. *What's needed is to treat the
touch-in at Waterloo LU as a pink validator, really, plus an end to the
stupid differential farescales.