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Mizter T · July 5th 11, 11:11 AM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote:

In article ,
(Paul Scott) wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote:

The most direct route from H&I to Putney is undoubtedly via the
Vic line and Vauxhall, but a non-zone 1 H&I to Putney fare
wouldn't be a completely ludicrous addition to the system.

Indeed if Colin was determined to cut his costs on the journey he
could travel to East Putney on the District Line, and use the pink
validator at West Brompton to 'prove' his route. Confirming your
point that pink validators only work for a subset of possible
journeys, and also suggesting (perhaps) that only the West Brompton
pink validator is relevant to this journey, not those at Willesden
Jn.

It also shows how mad it all is, because it is perfectly feasible
to get to West Brompton via zone 1...

I wanted to grice the whole of the bits of the NLL and ELL I've not been
on before so I wanted to go all the way to Clapham Junction.

Just talked to the Oyster Helpline who ended up ringing me back too. They
say the £1.90 was correct, because of the Clapham Junction to Putney leg
being charged at NR rates.

However, they decided I shouldn't have been charged £1.25 for the King's
Cross to Highbury leg so have refunded that money. As collecting at an
Oyster gate requires an overnight transaction and I won't be using Oyster
tomorrow they have made the refund direct to my bank account. Is that a
new option? Jolly useful if so.

I see *absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever* with the £1.25 charge for your
KXSP to H&I leg - that's how much an off-peak single for a Railcard holder
costs for this journey - look it up if you don't believe me, it's on this
page:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14416.aspx#tkt-tab-panel-8

Also there's no reason whatsoever why the KXSP to H&I journey should be
conjoined together with the H&I to Putney journey (given that you exited and
then re-entered at H&I)- and indeed no such conjoining of these two separate
journeys occurred.

Therefore there's *no need* to refund you - so I will draw a further
conclusion from this (which you won't like at all) which is that just
because the Oyster helpline proffers a punter a refund, that doesn't
actually mean that anything actually went wrong with how the system charged
you. I'll state this clearly now lest you or others point to this incident
as proof that the system gets it wrong - rather I'm saying that you were
charged correctly and the Oyster Helpline got it wrong by offering you a
refund.

Lastly (as you seem to acknowledge) there's nowt wrong with the H&I to
Putney fare being £1.90 - that's the cost of a Railcard-discounted, off-peak
zones 1&2 TfL+NR through fare, as can be seen here (see the second table for
"through fares"):
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14414.aspx#tkt-tab-panel-9

As an aside, it does feel like you're being a bit petty about what are
really rather small sums of money - now if the system had charged you
incorrectly, that would be a different matter as I'd agree it'd be about the
principle of the matter, but as the system has charged you correctly I can't
see what the problem is, apart from your apparent desire to do a bit of
'gricing' for the absolute bare minimum outlay - my take on it is simply
that if someone wants to take a completely roundabout route (and KX to
Putney via Whitechapel, the ELL, NLL and WLL is just that), then really they
shouldn't be too miffed about it setting them back two single fares instead
of one.

However, I guess it's been one way of demonstrating that the Oyster system
does charge people correctly, even if the charging system is so complex that
some of the Oyster Helpline cs bods aren't quite on top of it all. (A
slightly alternative take on that is that the Oyster Helpline is pretty free
and easy when it comes to giving out refunds, and perhaps it's sometimes
more a case of getting a customer off their back than working through the
charges with them - the point however would remain the same, that just
because a refund is given, it doesn't inherently prove that the original
charges were wrong.)

One thing that would of course help in making it all that bit more
comprehensible would be if there was a single Oyster PAYG tariff rather than
the current arrangement of there being separate TfL (i.e. Tube & DLR), NR
and TfL+NR 'through' journey tariffs. However getting to that point isn't
likely to be remotely easy (see how long it took for the TOCs to adopt
Oyster PAYG universally in London).

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