On Friday, 13 February 2015 06:28:12 UTC, Roland Perry wrote:

"If you touch in on a yellow card reader to make a journey and
then decide you don't want to make it or you can't because of
service disruption and touch out again to exit your Oyster card
will be charged. We apply charges to discourage fare evasion.
However, you may be able to get a refund if this happens."

The burden here is far too much on the innocent traveller.

My journey was different to that. It was, like the OP, ENTER at Victoria NR, then a minute or so later EXIT at Victoria NR, then a few minutes after that ENTER at Victoria and finally EXIT at Balham. In that case it is clear I could not have made 2 journeys so I suppose that's why I got an automatic refund.

In message , at 09:35:41 on Fri, 13 Feb
2015, d remarked:
"If you touch in on a yellow card reader to make a journey and
then decide you don't want to make it or you can't because of
service disruption and touch out again to exit your Oyster card
will be charged. We apply charges to discourage fare evasion.
However, you may be able to get a refund if this happens."

The burden here is far too much on the innocent traveller.

Yes, I agree. They really ought to be able to tweak the algorithm to stop
charging in cases where people exit within, say, ten minutes.

Can anyone spot the teeny problem there? No?

Touch in, go through gate, touch out on exit gate to get refund but don't go
through it and happily travel for free - assuming you don't get caught by a
revenue patrol and can get out the other end of course.

In that case they need to cancel the original touch in/out if you touch
in again within say half an hour. If the disruption is so bad you decide
to change stations, they should allow you to do a pseudo touch-in on any
of the ticket machines.
--
Roland Perry

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at 09:35:41 on Fri, 13
Feb 2015, d remarked:
"If you touch in on a yellow card reader to make a journey and
then decide you don't want to make it or you can't because of
service disruption and touch out again to exit your Oyster
card will be charged. We apply charges to discourage fare
evasion. However, you may be able to get a refund if this
happens."

The burden here is far too much on the innocent traveller.

Yes, I agree. They really ought to be able to tweak the algorithm to
stop charging in cases where people exit within, say, ten minutes.

Can anyone spot the teeny problem there? No?

Touch in, go through gate, touch out on exit gate to get refund but don't
go through it and happily travel for free - assuming you don't get caught
by a revenue patrol and can get out the other end of course.

In that case they need to cancel the original touch in/out if you
touch in again within say half an hour. If the disruption is so bad
you decide to change stations, they should allow you to do a pseudo
touch-in on any of the ticket machines.

Which, according to oyster-rail.org.uk (but not TfL's own web site) is
something like what happens.

It would be nice if there was an official way of confirming what should
happen.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 05:16:19
on Fri, 13 Feb 2015, remarked:
Can anyone spot the teeny problem there? No?

Touch in, go through gate, touch out on exit gate to get refund but don't
go through it and happily travel for free - assuming you don't get caught
by a revenue patrol and can get out the other end of course.

In that case they need to cancel the original touch in/out if you
touch in again within say half an hour. If the disruption is so bad
you decide to change stations, they should allow you to do a pseudo
touch-in on any of the ticket machines.

Which, according to oyster-rail.org.uk (but not TfL's own web site) is
something like what happens.

It would be nice if there was an official way of confirming what should
happen.

Lack of transparency is a long term complaint that I (and others) have
with TfL's fares policy. Of course, this would never have happened if
they'd been re-nationalised. (Oh.. wait...)
--
Roland Perry

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 09:50:02PM +0000, Basil Jet wrote:
On 2015\02\12 12:55, David Cantrell wrote:
On Tuesday evening I touched in and got on a train at Waterloo. A few
minutes later we were told that there was no driver. So I got off,
touched out, found the next train on the departures board, touched in,
and travelled.

The result - I was charged for entering and exiting at Waterloo
Charged how much?

GBP 1.90

--
David Cantrell | semi-evolved ape-thing

One person can change the world, but most of the time they shouldn't
-- Marge Simpson

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 11:00:26PM +0000, Mizter T wrote:
On 12/02/2015 12:55, David Cantrell wrote:
The result - I was charged for entering and exiting at Waterloo, and
then charged again for my actual journey.
It's not an error, the system is operating as programmed. (You're a
programmer, no? Technology, including Oyster, doesn't just do it's own
random thing.)

Operating as programmed isn't the same as operating without error. If it
were then there would be no such thing as a bug.

Nor is operating as *specified* the same as operating without error. If
it were then specifications would never change.

The Oyster website says that they deliberately make this charge "to
avoid fare evasion". But I'm really struggling to think of a way of
evading fares that would involve touching in, and then touching out less
than ten minutes later at the same station. I might just about be able
to make a round trip from Waterloo to Vauxhall and back again in ten
minutes with a great deal of luck, but it's fairly obvious that the
potential costs of people avoiding that fare are far less than the
excess income generated.

It is clear to me that the specification is faulty in this case.

--
David Cantrell | Cake Smuggler Extraordinaire

There are two kinds of security, the one that keeps your sister
out, the one that keeps the government out and the one that
keeps Bruce Schneier out.

In message , at 12:03:34
on Fri, 13 Feb 2015, David Cantrell remarked:
The result - I was charged for entering and exiting at Waterloo, and
then charged again for my actual journey.
It's not an error, the system is operating as programmed. (You're a
programmer, no? Technology, including Oyster, doesn't just do it's own
random thing.)

Operating as programmed isn't the same as operating without error. If it
were then there would be no such thing as a bug.

Nor is operating as *specified* the same as operating without error. If
it were then specifications would never change.

The Oyster website says that they deliberately make this charge "to
avoid fare evasion". But I'm really struggling to think of a way of
evading fares that would involve touching in, and then touching out less
than ten minutes later at the same station. I might just about be able
to make a round trip from Waterloo to Vauxhall and back again in ten
minutes with a great deal of luck, but it's fairly obvious that the
potential costs of people avoiding that fare are far less than the
excess income generated.

It is clear to me that the specification is faulty in this case.

The failure mechanism would appear to be someone touching in, and then
touching out on a gate but failing to go through the gate. So they are
still "airside", and capable of catching a train somewhere.

This is such a fundamental fraud vector that whoever designed the system
to allow it (while penalising innocent passengers whose platform was
changed at the last minute) should be hung out to dry.
--
Roland Perry

In article ,
(David Cantrell) wrote:

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 09:50:02PM +0000, Basil Jet wrote:
On 2015\02\12 12:55, David Cantrell wrote:
On Tuesday evening I touched in and got on a train at Waterloo. A few
minutes later we were told that there was no driver. So I got off,
touched out, found the next train on the departures board, touched in,
and travelled.

The result - I was charged for entering and exiting at Waterloo
Charged how much?

GBP 1.90

The off-peak single fare to Vauxhall, Charing Cross or London Bridge?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(David Cantrell) wrote:

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 11:00:26PM +0000, Mizter T wrote:
On 12/02/2015 12:55, David Cantrell wrote:
The result - I was charged for entering and exiting at Waterloo, and
then charged again for my actual journey.
It's not an error, the system is operating as programmed. (You're a
programmer, no? Technology, including Oyster, doesn't just do it's
own random thing.)

Operating as programmed isn't the same as operating without error. If it
were then there would be no such thing as a bug.

Nor is operating as *specified* the same as operating without error. If
it were then specifications would never change.

The Oyster website says that they deliberately make this charge "to
avoid fare evasion". But I'm really struggling to think of a way of
evading fares that would involve touching in, and then touching out less
than ten minutes later at the same station. I might just about be able
to make a round trip from Waterloo to Vauxhall and back again in ten
minutes with a great deal of luck, but it's fairly obvious that the
potential costs of people avoiding that fare are far less than the
excess income generated.

It is clear to me that the specification is faulty in this case.

The explanation has been given in this group. You touch out but don't exit
the station, then travel to an ungated station.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Doesn't Waterloo have an "airside" subway, allowing passengers to change platform without having to touch out and back in? Admittedly the passenger information down there isn't as good as on the main concourse. Or, rather than touching out, just ask the barrier staff to let you out and back in - offer them your Oyster card to check with a handheld scanner, or at that point they may well just trust you as the easiest option. An automated system like Oyster is going to have to involve some assumptions in the programming, with a fine balancing act between trust and mistrust.