Another Oyster Rip-off
 

In message , at 10:33:30 on
Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Chris Tolley remarked:
TfL explained that it could not be aware of any over-charging until
the issue was reported by a passenger.

Apart, of course, from looking for cards where there were two top-up
[bank charges] on the same day.

Yes - some passengers will do that, but that doesn't actually matter.
What you are looking for is top-ups where there were two debits but only
one amount of credit added.

Not holding an Oyster card, I wouldn't know, but in many cases the
financial part of e-transactions is handled separately for security
reasons. If that is the case here, then how would TfL know in detail
about the debits?

That's potentially why you need the people handling the payments to give
you a list (presumably quite a short one) of all the Oyster cards that
requested a debit, and you could then correlate that with the credits
registered against the cards.

Also, this "double dipped" money will also be sitting in some kind of
suspense account, because the books won't balance. In simple terms,
you've got more income than the services you've supplied.
--
Roland Perry

Another Oyster Rip-off
 

Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 10:33:30 on
Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Chris Tolley remarked:
TfL explained that it could not be aware of any over-charging until
the issue was reported by a passenger.

Apart, of course, from looking for cards where there were two top-up
[bank charges] on the same day.

Yes - some passengers will do that, but that doesn't actually matter.
What you are looking for is top-ups where there were two debits but only
one amount of credit added.

Not holding an Oyster card, I wouldn't know, but in many cases the
financial part of e-transactions is handled separately for security
reasons. If that is the case here, then how would TfL know in detail
about the debits?

That's potentially why you need the people handling the payments to give
you a list (presumably quite a short one) of all the Oyster cards that
requested a debit, and you could then correlate that with the credits
registered against the cards.

Also, this "double dipped" money will also be sitting in some kind of
suspense account, because the books won't balance. In simple terms,
you've got more income than the services you've supplied.

I would have thought that the question of matching things up between TfL
and whoever holds the financial records is possibly irrelevant. All
that's needed, surely, is for the bank to trawl through the credits, and
if it finds identical amounts with identical timestamps (and possibly
identical (or consecutive) transaction-ids) then just refund one of
them.

--
http://gallery120232.fotopic.net/p9683648.html
(Class 105 twin set led by 51298, in all-over blue at Colchester, 1980)

Another Oyster Rip-off
 

On Aug 9, 9:41*am, Andy wrote:

On Aug 9, 9:31*am, MIG wrote:

On 9 Aug, 00:25, Mizter T wrote:

On Aug 9, 12:06*am, "Peter Smyth" wrote:
[snip]
The story is not clear about exactly what is happening. It could be that
people are being charged £10 for £5 of credit (which would be a serious
fault). Or it could be people are pressing the wrong button on the
machine by mistake and buying £10 of credit when they actually only
wanted £5.

Without any further information, it's hard to get a handle on what
this story might be about.

I do just wonder whether it is our old friend, the Oyster out-of-
station-interchange maximum journey time-out issue though... (no, I
can't bear to explain it again!).-

The TV was on in the background, so I should have concentrated better,
but I couldn't work out whether the story was about being overcharged
when topping up or being overcharged for journeys. *I suspect the
latter reported as if the former, by people who have a vague idea of
"buying tickets" at a particular price and can't interpret
"overcharge" in any other way.

The story in the original post clearly states that some people have
been charged twice when topping up at machines, there is no mention of
other problems with charges for actual journeys.

It was just the phrase "double charged" in the BBC news online piece
(linked to/ quoted upthread) that made me ponder, but as you say the
story seems fairly clear that this is something to do with topping up
at ticket machines.

Another Oyster Rip-off
 

On Aug 9, 9:31*am, MIG wrote:

On 9 Aug, 00:25, Mizter T wrote:

On Aug 9, 12:06*am, "Peter Smyth" wrote:
[snip]
The story is not clear about exactly what is happening. It could be that
people are being charged £10 for £5 of credit (which would be a serious
fault). Or it could be people are pressing the wrong button on the
machine by mistake and buying £10 of credit when they actually only
wanted £5.

Without any further information, it's hard to get a handle on what
this story might be about.

I do just wonder whether it is our old friend, the Oyster out-of-
station-interchange maximum journey time-out issue though... (no, I
can't bear to explain it again!).-

The TV was on in the background, so I should have concentrated better,
but I couldn't work out whether the story was about being overcharged
when topping up or being overcharged for journeys. *I suspect the
latter reported as if the former, by people who have a vague idea of
"buying tickets" at a particular price and can't interpret
"overcharge" in any other way.

Having just looked at the BBC article again it does appear to be an
issue about topping up at the ticket machines - these excepts are
fairly clear in suggesting that:

---quote---
The information also shows there have been 2,421 complaints in 2010
about being double charged when adding credit to the electronic travel
smartcard.
[snip]
Shashi Verna, from TfL, said: "We monitor the system continuously to
make sure the problems are not becoming bigger, and there is no
evidence they are becoming bigger.

"But we constantly check the screens on ticket machines and how the
ticket machines are set up to minimise these problems."
---/quote---

I did wonder whether there was any way in which auto-topup could
somehow have been muddled up with this, e.g. people getting hit with
the max fare charge 'double whammy' have auto-topup enabled, but that
doesn't really make much sense as they would only be topped up once
when their PAYG balance fell below £5 and their nominated card would
only be charged once - the except above is pretty clear in suggesting
that there's been an issue with the actual ticket machines.

So whilst I appreciate that various different issues can get muddled
together inadvertently, it doesn't appear to be a case of that
happening in this instance (hence our old friend the Oyster OSI
maximum journey time-out issue hasn't come out to play here!).

Another Oyster Rip-off
 

On Aug 9, 10:33*am, Chris Tolley (ukonline
really) wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:

In message
, at
14:11:42 on Sun, 8 Aug 2010, CJB remarked:

TfL explained that it could not be aware of any over-charging until
the issue was reported by a passenger.

Apart, of course, from looking for cards where there were two top-up
[bank charges] on the same day.

Yes - some passengers will do that, but that doesn't actually matter.
What you are looking for is top-ups where there were two debits but only
one amount of credit added.

Not holding an Oyster card, I wouldn't know, but in many cases the
financial part of e-transactions is handled separately for security
reasons. If that is the case here, then how would TfL know in detail
about the debits?

If by 'e-transactions' you are talking about an e-commerce (i.e.
online purchase) situation, then that wouldn't apply here as this
concerns people topping up their Oyster cards in person at self-
service ticket machines at LU stations.

Another Oyster Rip-off
 

"Mizter T" wrote in message

On Aug 9, 10:33 am, Chris Tolley (ukonline
really) wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:

In message
,
at 14:11:42 on Sun, 8 Aug 2010, CJB
remarked:

TfL explained that it could not be aware of any over-charging until
the issue was reported by a passenger.

Apart, of course, from looking for cards where there were two top-up
[bank charges] on the same day.

Yes - some passengers will do that, but that doesn't actually
matter. What you are looking for is top-ups where there were two
debits but only one amount of credit added.

Not holding an Oyster card, I wouldn't know, but in many cases the
financial part of e-transactions is handled separately for security
reasons. If that is the case here, then how would TfL know in detail
about the debits?

If by 'e-transactions' you are talking about an e-commerce (i.e.
online purchase) situation, then that wouldn't apply here as this
concerns people topping up their Oyster cards in person at self-
service ticket machines at LU stations.

But using chip and pin bank cards to do so. It's also not clear if it
only happens with debit cards, or credit cards as well. And I don't
quite understand whether the problem is at certain machines, or all
machines at certain stations.

But it does seem slightly suspicious that it seems mainly to happen at
large Tube+mainline stations with OSI time-out potential...

Another Oyster Rip-off
 

In message , at 11:33:50 on
Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Chris Tolley remarked:
I would have thought that the question of matching things up between TfL
and whoever holds the financial records is possibly irrelevant. All
that's needed, surely, is for the bank to trawl through the credits, and
if it finds identical amounts with identical timestamps (and possibly
identical (or consecutive) transaction-ids) then just refund one of
them.

tfl's bank, you mean? Yes, that's in effect getting tfl to do it. I
wasn't going to assume all the double-debits were identically timed
though - rather, starting off with "being on the same day" and see where
it went from there.
--
Roland Perry

Another Oyster Rip-off
 

On Aug 9, 12:44*pm, "Recliner" wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote:

On Aug 9, 10:33 am, Chris *Tolley (ukonline
really) wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:

In message
,
at 14:11:42 on Sun, 8 Aug 2010, CJB
remarked:

TfL explained that it could not be aware of any over-charging until
the issue was reported by a passenger.

Apart, of course, from looking for cards where there were two top-up
[bank charges] on the same day.

Yes - some passengers will do that, but that doesn't actually
matter. What you are looking for is top-ups where there were two
debits but only one amount of credit added.

Not holding an Oyster card, I wouldn't know, but in many cases the
financial part of e-transactions is handled separately for security
reasons. If that is the case here, then how would TfL know in detail
about the debits?

If by 'e-transactions' you are talking about an e-commerce (i.e.
online purchase) situation, then that wouldn't apply here as this
concerns people topping up their Oyster cards in person at self-
service ticket machines at LU stations.

But using chip and pin bank cards to do so. It's also not clear if it
only happens with debit cards, or credit cards as well. And I don't
quite understand whether the problem is at certain machines, or all
machines at certain stations.

Does using a hip-and-pin card qualify it to have the 'e-transactions'
label?


But it does seem slightly suspicious that it seems mainly to happen at
large Tube+mainline stations with OSI time-out potential...

Yes, that was a factor in my earlier suspicion (though I subsequently
revisited this thread and doubted whether there could any
connection... but maybe...).

Basically, more information required - we're rather stabbing in the
dark otherwise.

Another Oyster Rip-off
 

Mizter T wrote:

On Aug 9, 10:33*am, Chris Tolley (ukonline
really) wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:

In message
, at
14:11:42 on Sun, 8 Aug 2010, CJB remarked:

TfL explained that it could not be aware of any over-charging until
the issue was reported by a passenger.

Apart, of course, from looking for cards where there were two top-up
[bank charges] on the same day.

Yes - some passengers will do that, but that doesn't actually matter.
What you are looking for is top-ups where there were two debits but only
one amount of credit added.

Not holding an Oyster card, I wouldn't know, but in many cases the
financial part of e-transactions is handled separately for security
reasons. If that is the case here, then how would TfL know in detail
about the debits?

If by 'e-transactions' you are talking about an e-commerce (i.e.
online purchase) situation, then that wouldn't apply here as this
concerns people topping up their Oyster cards in person at self-
service ticket machines at LU stations.

No, I was trying to use a short form for transactions involving
electronic fund transfer. I've never been in doubt as to the nature of
the transaction - it just seems from the description as if the systems
in use are generating spurious transactions. My comment was predicated
on the idea that TfL may not have details which would identify whose
five pounds a particular five pounds is, if some other agency handles
the financial part of the transaction.

--
http://gallery120232.fotopic.net/p14515953.html
(66 531 at Hest Bank, 6 Apr 2005)

Another Oyster Rip-off
 

Mizter T wrote:

Does using a hip-and-pin card qualify it to have the 'e-transactions'
label?

Occasionally people use expressions without knowing that others reckon
they are jargon. It's a bit like spelling mistakes - astute readers can
see past them, whilst some might feel the need to point them out. ;-)
--
http://gallery120232.fotopic.net/p9633122.html
(66 095 at Bridgend, 2 Jul 1999)