On Mar 1, 6:58*pm, "Michael R N Dolbear" wrote:

wrote

Note that many other TOCs, including the also First-owned Great
Western, have lower travelcard premia so it is still a no-brainer to
get one, e.g. from Oxford where the premium is £3.50 on the
same £21 day return fare to London Terminals and £5 (FCC &
super off-peak only) from Brighton (CDR £15).

Checking some more locations I see the premium from Winchester
is £9.80. With a zones 1-6 day travelcard at £8, what is the point
of selling an out-of London day travelcard at that price other than
to rip people off to avoid a queue at Waterloo? This is especially
odd given that the premium from Basingstoke (also SWT) is only
£4.80 (via Woking).

The Basingstoke (and Reading) oddity is due, I think, to the existence
of the other route to London via Reading and GWR. The differential
between SOP and OP has a similar distribution.

The premium from Winchester is just weirdness. A SWT ticket office will
sell me a 1-6 day travelcard at £8 - I ask for a ODTC "from Surbiton" -
so you buy two tickets with no need to queue at Waterloo even to use a
machine (but you can't buy it from a machine /at Winchester/ so you may
have a longer queue there).

Good strategy - a Day Travelcard "from Surbiton" is of course simply a
z1-6 Day Travelcard (Surbiton being in zone 6), but to issue it on a
rail ticket issuing system I think an appropriate origin station had
to be specified, where 'appropriate' is I would imagine any station in
zones 1-6.

Some of the online booking websites (though notably not East Coast)
can be coaxed into offering Day Travelcards too, but you need to ask
for the right thing - an off-peak return from a station in the
appropriate zone to 'London' normally seems to do the trick. (Worth
bearing in mind that purchases from WebTIS based-sites such as
Southern appear to be available for collection almost immediately -
potentially helpful if the station one is travelling from doesn't have
an open ticket office, or else has staff that aren't willing to do
play along.)

"Michael R N Dolbear" wrote in message
news:01cbd83b$0d0088c0$LocalHost@default...
wrote

The premium from Winchester is just weirdness.

Not quite as weird as Weymouth, (if you've seen my more recent post)...

Paul

In article
,
(Mizter T) wrote:

Excessive premiums being charged for the Travelcard add-on is solely
the responsibility of the TOC in question - they're the ones who are
messing up the old concept of integration. If they point the finger at
TfL for this they are talking out of their backside, end of - make
sure your justifiable ire is aimed at the right target and don't be
deflected by any attempt to shift the blame elsewhere, because it
rests with the TOC who sets the fare.

How is the amount the TOCs are charged by TfL determined?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article 01cbd83b$0d0088c0$LocalHost@default, (Michael
R N Dolbear) wrote:

The Basingstoke (and Reading) oddity is due, I think, to the existence
of the other route to London via Reading and GWR. The differential
between SOP and OP has a similar distribution.

That is also true of Winchester. I'm confused!

--
Colin Rosenstiel

wrote
(Michael R Dolbear) wrote:

The Basingstoke (and Reading) oddity is due, I think, to the
existence
of the other route to London via Reading and GWR. The differential
between SOP and OP has a similar distribution.

That is also true of Winchester. I'm confused!

For Reading and Basingstoke via Reading to London I assume GWR gets to
set the fares ?

All fares from Winchester to London are probably set by SWT, you could
however buy a ticket from Winchester to Basingstoke and a combined ODTC
from Basingstoke to London..

Who sets Weymouth to London fares ?

--
Mike D

On Mar 1, 9:36 pm, wrote:

In article
,
(Mizter T) wrote:
Excessive premiums being charged for the Travelcard add-on is solely
the responsibility of the TOC in question - they're the ones who are
messing up the old concept of integration. If they point the finger at
TfL for this they are talking out of their backside, end of - make
sure your justifiable ire is aimed at the right target and don't be
deflected by any attempt to shift the blame elsewhere, because it
rests with the TOC who sets the fare.

How is the amount the TOCs are charged by TfL determined?

It's not charged "by TfL" - the Travelcard is a joint product offered
together by the relevant TOCs, administered through ATOC's London
Schemes Council, and TfL.

The prices for inboundary Travelcards are jointly set by TfL and ATOC.
I can't give you chapter and verse about how this happens, but I think
the default position is for prices to rise by RPI unless TfL and the
TOCs agree otherwise (i.e. lower or higher) - I recall Ken coming out
with some spiel about how he'd have liked to cut Travelcard prices but
the TOCs wouldn't agree to that, so the best he could do with his
powers was to only allow for an RPI increase (obviously he was
politicking, but in doing so outlined the basis to how things worked).

I'm not clear as to whether inboundary Travelcards are subject to any
further fares regulation, i.e. the standard rail fares regulation that
applies elsewhere, what with the fares baskets and all that (possibly
they're not). Essentially the money from Travelcard sales (minus sales
commission) goes into the 'Travelcard pot'.

For outboundary Travelcards, my assumption is that there is an agreed
sum from each outboundary Travelcard (Day - whether Anytime or off-
peak - or season) which gets paid into the 'Travelcard pot' to cover
the Travelcard element of the ticket. I'd imagine this sum is rather
less than the price of an inboundary z1-6 Day Travelcard (let's ignore
seasons for the moment). However I find it hard to imagine that
different TOCs pay different amounts into the 'Travelcard pot' - i.e.
I reckon an outboundary Day Travelcard from Brighton, Cambridge,
Reading, Southend and Winchester all result in an identical payment
into the 'Travelcard pot' for the Travelcard element of the ticket.
(Bear in mind it's not TfL charging the TOCs, it's the TfL and the
TOCs collectively charging the TOCs.)

Therefore it comes down to what a TOC can extract from a punter -
albeit in the context of the rail fares regulatory regime, inc. the
fares baskets and RPI limits on fare increases and all that. Some TOCs
only charge a small premium for the Travelcard add-on - presumably
they think it's worthwhile doing so in order to attract punters to
travel with them (thinking here of off-peak Day Travelcards, which are
aimed at leisure pax), and perhaps they might actually end up netting
less than a CDR to London (?) - other TOCs, such as FCC, seem to
regard it as a way of milking punters. (The chunk of the ticket price
that doesn't go into the 'Travelcard pot' will go into the railway's
complex ORCATS system for allocating revenue amongst the appropriate
operators - from Cambridge, say, the predominant chunk of ticket sales
income for any permitted tickets to London and Travelcards to London
will go to FCC, who provide the fastest service with lots of
capacity.)

The 'Travelcard pot' is then divvied up by what I can only imagine is
a mindbendingly complicated formula as agreed by TfL and the TOCs
(through the ATOC London Schemes Council), based on all sorts of usage
data.

Which is a long way of saying that this is not a case of TfL deciding
they don't like FCC because they smell and charging them lots, whilst
being nice to say c2c because they bring cakes along. FCC or any other
TOC claiming its all TfL's fault would simply be talking nonsense
(though I wouldn't be remotely surprised if that's what you get from
the lower echelons of a TOCs customer service bods - though to be fair
it's a complex issue, and inevitably, they'll have been told f-all
about it, and so will just be following the line to take - though if
you come across the more senior TOC managers, don't let them brush you
off with the lame blame game).

In article ,
Mizter T wrote:

"Roy Badami" wrote:
Well, I imagine that when they implement weekly capping they will
still take the money daily (not weekly). So it will be the sum of
lots of daily totals, none of which will exceed the daily cap, of
course.


But why do you imagine that?

Well, apart from the fact that there's no discrete weekly cycle for
7 dayy Travelcards and it remains to be seen just how flexible the
weekly capping implementation will be, I really can't see TfL
switching to a system where they don't make a charge against your card
until 7 days after you travel - it massively increases the credit risk
thatn TfL is taking for little-to-no benefit that I can see.

-roy

On Mar 2, 1:08*am, (Roy Badami) wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

"Roy Badami" wrote:
Well, I imagine that when they implement weekly capping they will
still take the money daily (not weekly). *So it will be the sum of
lots of daily totals, none of which will exceed the daily cap, of
course.

But why do you imagine that?

Well, apart from the fact that there's no discrete weekly cycle for
7 day Travelcards and it remains to be seen just how flexible the
weekly capping implementation will be, I really can't see TfL
switching to a system where they don't make a charge against your card
until 7 days after you travel - it massively increases the credit risk
thatn TfL is taking for little-to-no benefit that I can see.

Yes, I acknowledge the credit risk issue, but I wonder if there
couldn't be some sort of way of dealing with this e.g. an initial
deposit payment or some such, until a person is regarded as being
trusted.

Also, for weekly capping, my solution would be to simply set a
discrete cycle that starts say on a Monday - if there was no such
cycle it'd become horrendously, unmanageably complicated I'd think, if
not simply unworkable. (Another option I suppose could be each punter
being able to specify their own cycle which applied to their own
account.)

For outboundary Travelcards, my assumption is that there is an agreed
sum from each outboundary Travelcard (Day - whether Anytime or off-
peak - or season) which gets paid into the 'Travelcard pot' to cover
the Travelcard element of the ticket. I'd imagine this sum is rather
less than the price of an inboundary z1-6 Day Travelcard (let's ignore
seasons for the moment). However I find it hard to imagine that
different TOCs pay different amounts into the 'Travelcard pot' - i.e.
I reckon an outboundary Day Travelcard from Brighton, Cambridge,
Reading, Southend and Winchester all result in an identical payment
into the 'Travelcard pot' for the Travelcard element of the ticket.
(Bear in mind it's not TfL charging the TOCs, it's the TfL and the
TOCs collectively charging the TOCs.)

Therefore it comes down to what a TOC can extract from a punter -
albeit in the context of the rail fares regulatory regime, inc. the
fares baskets and RPI limits on fare increases and all that. Some TOCs
only charge a small premium for the Travelcard add-on - presumably
they think it's worthwhile doing so in order to attract punters to
travel with them (thinking here of off-peak Day Travelcards, which are
aimed at leisure pax), and perhaps they might actually end up netting
less than a CDR to London (?) - other TOCs, such as FCC, seem to
regard it as a way of milking punters. (The chunk of the ticket price
that doesn't go into the 'Travelcard pot' will go into the railway's
complex ORCATS system for allocating revenue amongst the appropriate
operators - from Cambridge, say, the predominant chunk of ticket sales
income for any permitted tickets to London and Travelcards to London
will go to FCC, who provide the fastest service with lots of
capacity.)

The 'Travelcard pot' is then divvied up by what I can only imagine is
a mindbendingly complicated formula as agreed by TfL and the TOCs
(through the ATOC London Schemes Council), based on all sorts of usage
data.

Which is a long way of saying that this is not a case of TfL deciding
they don't like FCC because they smell and charging them lots, whilst
being nice to say c2c because they bring cakes along. FCC or any other
TOC claiming its all TfL's fault would simply be talking nonsense
(though I wouldn't be remotely surprised if that's what you get from
the lower echelons of a TOCs customer service bods - though to be fair
it's a complex issue, and inevitably, they'll have been told f-all
about it, and so will just be following the line to take - though if
you come across the more senior TOC managers, don't let them brush you
off with the lame blame game).

I wonder whether these differentials are historic - maybe they go right back
to NSE days?

In message , at 14:43:17 on Mon, 28 Feb
2011, Roland Perry remarked:
And I have to contact TfL in order to transfer the Oyster Credit to a
new card (or to otherwise rescue the credit if Barclaycard cancel the
card because I've been naughty, or indeed withdraw the Oyster-ness for
no reason whatsoever).

And I see that Tfl have a (very long) webpage about this:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/15541.aspx

Here's what they say about "PAYG only" OnePulse cards:

1. Simply continue travelling until your credit is used up. Your
original Barclaycard OnePulse card will still work as an Oyster
card after the credit card expiry date. Be careful to keep your
original card separate from the new one when you travel to avoid
the wrong card being charged.
or
2. Transfer the balance to your new Barclaycard OnePulse card online.
or
3. Request a refund at a Tube station. If you can't reach a station
easily, you can send your Barclaycard OnePulse card in to us at:
Oyster helpline, 1st Floor, Albany House, 55 Broadway, London
SW1H 0BD.

If autotopup is enabled, they in effect offer only (2), with several
extra hoops to jump through during the period between the new credit
card arriving and the ols one expiring.

It's all a huge palaver, and miles away from the potential "best case",
which would be for the old card's Oyster component to be frozen at the
same time as the credit card expires, but be transferred automatically
to the new card the first time you touch in with it.
--
Roland Perry