Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

"David Cantrell" wrote in message
k...
On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 02:52:00PM +0100, David Walters wrote:

The older pneumatic gates should have a display on exit like the one
in http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ter-Reader.jpg

Such high contrast! So close to the eye-line! That huge text!

It's crap, isn't it

I just can't believe anyone put any thought into the usability of this
feature at all.

It looks more like - we've got this screen her to output stuff whilst we are
testing, we might as well leave it in the final product

tim

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 28/04/2014 09:42, Hils wrote:
On 2014-04-28 08:34, Graeme Wall wrote:
On 28/04/2014 07:41, Hils wrote:

It doesn't much matter, it's only a jobclub for the aristocracy's
surplus offspring. (See also banks, BBC.)

What's it like living in 1910?

Perhaps you missed the study showing that there was more social mobility
in Britain in the 12th century than there is in the 21st.

The best things that ever happened for social mobility in England were
the Black Death and the Battle of the Somme. Shall we have a rerun of them?


--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

David Cantrell wrote:

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 01:26:55AM -0500,
wrote:

Go through a gate that opens in front of you and discover the touch
hasn't been registered, giving an unresolved journey. My wife got
two out of two from King's Cross to Westminster and back in 2011.

That's happened to me twice in the last coupla weeks now. The first
time, TfL seem to have needed me to phone them, the second they seem
to have magically worked it out anyway despite it being far less
obvious what I actually did:

Thu 24 Apr
19:06 touch in, Aldgate East, cost: GBP5.10
19:23 touch out, Victoria tube, refund: GBP2.95
19:25 touch in, Victoria NR, cost: GBP2.95
[no touch out]

so my touch out at Thornton Heath went missing. But my journey history
says:

19:06 - ???? Aldgate East to [No touch-out], cost: GBP5.10

Which is apparently the right amount.

No, as you touched in after 1900, the correct fare would be £4.10.

Peter Smyth

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 28/04/2014 19:04, Arthur Figgis wrote:
On 28/04/2014 09:42, Hils wrote:
On 2014-04-28 08:34, Graeme Wall wrote:
On 28/04/2014 07:41, Hils wrote:

It doesn't much matter, it's only a jobclub for the aristocracy's
surplus offspring. (See also banks, BBC.)

What's it like living in 1910?

Perhaps you missed the study showing that there was more social mobility
in Britain in the 12th century than there is in the 21st.

The best things that ever happened for social mobility in England were
the Black Death and the Battle of the Somme. Shall we have a rerun of them?



Black Death was 14th Century, not 12th. I don't know what study Mr Hils
is referring to.

The effect of the Somme (and WW1 casualties generally) is not quite so
clear cut. Proportionally far more officers were killed than private
soldiers[1]. What did cause major social upheaval was the employment of
thousands of women in what was considered to be male only professions.
Though that is not necessarily social mobility in the class war sense.

[1] I'm just glad my grandfather wasn't posted to his regiment in France
until 1st August. On the first day of the Somme offensive a month
earlier, every single one of the junior officers of his regiment were
killed.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 13:55:20 +0100, David Cantrell
wrote:

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 07:55:11PM +0100, Richard wrote:

[...] Alternatively give us a smartphone app to do it!

When I put in the refund claim that started this thread I could have
done it through a browser, as long as that browser didn't use Webkit. So
you can already do it if you have a crappy smartphone. There are
probably Oystery apps that have this feature too, although the one I use
for checking my journey history doesn't have it.

There are places where the app can update the card directly using NFC
-- RMV in Germany are doing this. I wonder whether this is even
possible with Oyster? I suppose it won't matter soon with bank cards
and then (maybe) "dumb" Oyster... I believe it is possible with ITSO
though so we might see it done there.

Richard.

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 28/04/2014 10:56, Hils wrote:
On 2014-04-28 10:45, Graeme Wall wrote:
From a summary of Piketty's work in today's Guardian: "those who have
family fortunes are the winners, and everyone else doesn't have much of
a shot of being wealthy unless they marry into or inherit money. [...]
No one else can ever catch up."

Lovely piece of selective quoting.

I'm happy for interested readers to read the sources and make their own
conclusions, but here's a snippet from Piketty himself:

“It’s very difficult to make a democratic system work when you have such
extreme inequality” in income, he said, “and such extreme inequality in
terms of political influence and the production of knowledge and
information. One of the big lessons of the 20th century is that we don’t
need 19th-century inequality to grow.” But that’s just where the
capitalist world is heading again, he concludes. [...]

He favors a progressive global tax on real wealth (minus debt), with the
proceeds not handed to inefficient governments but redistributed to
those with less capital. “We just want a way to share the tax burden
that is fair and practical,” he said." [1]

[1]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/bu...karl-marx.html

The operative line in "Wall Street" was not "Greed is good" but "Do you
think we live in a democracy?"

--
Myth, after all, is what we believe naturally. History is what we must
painfully learn and struggle to remember. -Albert Goldman

It continues to amaze me that such problems are not more widespread.
If you are bored, desperate or just feeling in need of cheering up then stand and watch people use the barriers and Oyster.
At least 25% can't use the barrier; not holding the card on the reader long enough, trying to get it read through layers of other things, in proximity to other cards and best of all, obstructing the sensors.

Many blame the system. Mostly it's not knowing how to use a barrier.

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

In message , at 22:53:38 on Tue, 29
Apr 2014, webjunk remarked:
It continues to amaze me that such problems are not more widespread.
If you are bored, desperate or just feeling in need of cheering up then
stand and watch people use the barriers and Oyster.
At least 25% can't use the barrier; not holding the card on the reader
long enough, trying to get it read through layers of other things, in
proximity to other cards and best of all, obstructing the sensors.

Many blame the system. Mostly it's not knowing how to use a barrier.

Not that I want to join the bash-the-Norfolk-residents brigade, but
having spent several years observing seniors with smartcard-twirlies
boarding buses in another county, the failure rate was astonishing
(especially as these are very likely frequent users) when it came to
holding the card sufficiently close to the correct part of the validator
next to the bus driver.
--
Roland Perry

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 06:23:02PM +0000, Peter Smyth wrote:
David Cantrell wrote:
Thu 24 Apr
19:06 touch in, Aldgate East, cost: GBP5.10
19:23 touch out, Victoria tube, refund: GBP2.95
19:25 touch in, Victoria NR, cost: GBP2.95
[no touch out]
so my touch out at Thornton Heath went missing. But my journey history
says:

19:06 - ???? Aldgate East to [No touch-out], cost: GBP5.10

Which is apparently the right amount.
No, as you touched in after 1900, the correct fare would be ?4.10.

Are you sure? If that's the case then they're being *really* naughty,
because the website says:

" You do not currently have any incomplete journeys that are eligible
for an online refund application. "

Making things even worse, they only provide a phone number as a means of
contacting them.

--
David Cantrell | Bourgeois reactionary pig

Eye have a spelling chequer / It came with my pea sea
It planely marques four my revue / Miss Steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word / And weight for it to say
Weather eye am wrong oar write / It shows me strait a weigh.