On Mon, Sep 08, 2014 at 10:09:46PM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:

Inevitably there will be false positives [a penalty fare charged when
not warranted] which should make a good story in the next day's Evening
Standard. Assuming that anyone notices, which I'm sure TfL will be
hoping they won't.

I've been using Oyster PAYG instead of a paper travelcard for the last
few months. I don't trust it, so check my journey history every morning.
I find that it has screwed up, on average, once a week. And only once
has it screwed up in my favour by completely missing a journey. Every
other time it overcharged me.

I can pretty much guarantee you that there will be *lots* of false
positives. Probably more than with plain old Oyster, because if people
are paying with their bank card they won't think it necessary to sign up
for an account in an obscure corner of the TfL website and to check it
religiously.

--
David Cantrell | even more awesome than a panda-fur coat

I hate baby seals. They get asked to all the best clubs.

In message , at 12:25:34
on Tue, 9 Sep 2014, David Cantrell remarked:
Inevitably there will be false positives [a penalty fare charged when
not warranted] which should make a good story in the next day's Evening
Standard. Assuming that anyone notices, which I'm sure TfL will be
hoping they won't.

I've been using Oyster PAYG instead of a paper travelcard for the last
few months. I don't trust it, so check my journey history every morning.
I find that it has screwed up, on average, once a week. And only once
has it screwed up in my favour by completely missing a journey. Every
other time it overcharged me.

You've confirmed what a lot of people only suspected.

I can pretty much guarantee you that there will be *lots* of false
positives. Probably more than with plain old Oyster, because if people
are paying with their bank card they won't think it necessary to sign up
for an account in an obscure corner of the TfL website and to check it
religiously.

And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your
balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for
the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's
no such facility for the contactless cards.
--
Roland Perry

David Cantrell wrote on 09 September 2014
12:25:34 ...
On Mon, Sep 08, 2014 at 10:09:46PM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:

Inevitably there will be false positives [a penalty fare charged when
not warranted] which should make a good story in the next day's Evening
Standard. Assuming that anyone notices, which I'm sure TfL will be
hoping they won't.

I've been using Oyster PAYG instead of a paper travelcard for the last
few months. I don't trust it, so check my journey history every morning.
I find that it has screwed up, on average, once a week. And only once
has it screwed up in my favour by completely missing a journey. Every
other time it overcharged me.

Can you give some examples of how this happened? Did the system fail to
register a touch-in/out, or has it miscalculated the fare for the time
of day that you travelled, or what?
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)

In message , at 15:00:40 on
Tue, 9 Sep 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
The idea of somehow recording card holder name, card number and expiry
date and then restrospectively applying some sort of charge to the
account doesn't feel feasible to me. I can't think of a situation,
other than via crime / fraud, where charges can be made to a bank
account without the account holder having authorised this (at the time
of transaction or granting authority to the bank when starting the
account in respect of any charges / penalties they can levy).

The T&C posted earlier specifically allow that (assuming that T&C that
weren't brought to your specific attention have any force in law).

3.1 When you touch your contactless payment card on a yellow
card reader, or a portable card reader held by staff, you are
authorising TfL to charge the cost of your journey, including
any unpaid fares, to your card account.
--
Roland Perry

On Tue, 9 Sep 2014 13:00:11 +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your
balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for
the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's
no such facility for the contactless cards.

I'm a member of the contactless pilot and on my journey home this
evening both gates gave me red lights while opening but the exit gate
also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online version and that
is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown on the gate.

I'm not really sure how that happened. I'll have to look more closely
at the displays next time and perhaps try and get a picture.

In message , at 23:44:13 on
Tue, 9 Sep 2014, David Walters remarked:
And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your
balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for
the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's
no such facility for the contactless cards.

I'm a member of the contactless pilot and on my journey home this
evening both gates gave me red lights while opening

What is the significance of a red light - it sounds like a "reject" (but
never underestimate the ability of hardware designers to mix their
metaphors).

but the exit gate also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online
version and that is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown
on the gate.

I'm not really sure how that happened.

If the gates are online to the "back office" it could be possible to
calculate and display the fare since the last 'touch', but this isn't
the same as a running total for the day.

I'll have to look more closely
at the displays next time and perhaps try and get a picture.

Wouldn't you need two people for that?
--
Roland Perry

On Wed, 10 Sep 2014 08:14:18 +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 23:44:13 on
Tue, 9 Sep 2014, David Walters remarked:
And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your
balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for
the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's
no such facility for the contactless cards.

I'm a member of the contactless pilot and on my journey home this
evening both gates gave me red lights while opening

What is the significance of a red light - it sounds like a "reject" (but
never underestimate the ability of hardware designers to mix their
metaphors).

It is a reject and I wouldn't expect the gates to open with a red light,
rather than green, but they did. I thought I'd had a red light about
a week ago but hadn't been sure but last night I'm fairly sure that is
what happened.

I was using wide gates that were set for entry and exit and seem to
alternate between directions every second or so and perhaps the red light
was due to the card read time being slow and it switching directions
while reading but then opening because the read was successful?

but the exit gate also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online
version and that is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown
on the gate.

I'm not really sure how that happened.

If the gates are online to the "back office" it could be possible to
calculate and display the fare since the last 'touch', but this isn't
the same as a running total for the day.

I think another number was displayed in the space I would expect to see
remaining Oyster balance but I didn't get a proper look and was surprised
to see anything at all.

The journey was unusual for me as I normally start or end at a station
without gates and use a validator. I did that this morning and the exit
gate didn't display a fare.

I'll have to look more closely
at the displays next time and perhaps try and get a picture.

Wouldn't you need two people for that?

I just need two hands, not to be carrying anything and the station to
be not too busy.

In message , at 10:12:00 on
Wed, 10 Sep 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your
balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for
the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's
no such facility for the contactless cards.

I'm a member of the contactless pilot and on my journey home this
evening both gates gave me red lights while opening but the exit gate
also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online version and that
is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown on the gate.

I'm not really sure how that happened. I'll have to look more closely
at the displays next time and perhaps try and get a picture.

Hmmm interesting. I wonder if TfL have responded to the trial
feedback about people not liking the absence of the fare to the paid
being shown on the exit gate display.

Once you take into account any OSIs that might be in play for the
current journey, then it becomes more complicated than just a case of
"where did you last touch in, and here's the single fare from there to
here".

It suggests (I'll put it no more strongly than that) that something is
written to the bank card.

I've been corresponding today with an acquaintance who is very much into
a range of Card technology (and is a 'Member of ITSO' - whatever that
implies) and he assures me that nothing can be written to a CPC
(Contactless Payment Card).

On the other hand he says that ITSO cards *are* designed to be read, and
written back to, whenever they are 'touched', to do things like mark a
ticket it's carrying as 'active' or 'expired'.

I cannot see how else an exit gate could calculate and display a fare
within the few hundred millisecond processing time parameter. I can't
see there being contact with the "back room" system in that time
parameter.

And a displayed fare for just "the current journey" won't alert you to
issues with unresolved journeys earlier in the day, so perhaps it should
really be your "fare for everything so far today", but that would
require the back-office to run its reconciliation/capping program every
time someone touches out. And how would it deal with bus trips where the
"back room" won't have that information yet.
--
Roland Perry

On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 10:39:28AM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 10:23:21 on
Tue, 9 Sep 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
Inspectors request a print out from the ticket machine on boarding the
bus. This has a list of any CPCs used on that trip which the
inspectors then use to check against any cards presented by a
passenger.
A wonderfully manual way of implementing an e-ticket system!

It's not a particularly stupid way of doing occasional ticket
inspections.

As bad as
MegaTrain, where they check off your P@H tickets from a manual list at
the gateline.

No, it's completely different. What you describe for Megatrain (who
dat?) sounds like something they do all the time, for all journeys. What
Mr. Corfield describes is something that will happen occasionally, for a
tiny minority of journeys.

"TfL is starting to issue inspectors with portable card readers which
will be able to read the card???s recent journey history."

Which contradicts what I thought I'd read about contactless card
technology and the ability to store recent transactions on the card
...

That could be a poor description of a device that reads the card's
number from the card and checks that it has been used to pay for a
fare on that bus.

--
David Cantrell | London Perl Mongers Deputy Chief Heretic

Are you feeling bored? depressed? slowed down? Evil Scientists may
be manipulating the speed of light in your vicinity. Buy our patented
instructional video to find out how, and maybe YOU can stop THEM

In message , at 12:05:19
on Wed, 10 Sep 2014, David Cantrell remarked:
"TfL is starting to issue inspectors with portable card readers which
will be able to read the card???s recent journey history."

Which contradicts what I thought I'd read about contactless card
technology and the ability to store recent transactions on the card
...

That could be a poor description of a device that reads the card's
number from the card and checks that it has been used to pay for a
fare on that bus.

That makes it sound like the device can read the paper printout too, so
it has something to compare the cards with
--
Roland Perry