Phil Clark wrote:
On 11 Apr 2006 12:59:41 -0700, "MIG"
wrote:

Therefore, the barrier that you were trying to get through with your
season was the LU exit barrier.

I realise this isn't answering your question, but it's background
information.

Well in retrospect that make some sort of sense I suppose... in which
case, why was I allowed through with a London Stations only ST? I
suppose it's a case of flash a Gold Card and they just let you
through... but the guy had a reasonably good look at the ticket. If
he'd told me that it was a Tube barrier and my ST wasn't valid, I'd
have realised I needed to use the Oyster.


I think that's the answer. The machine wouldn't let you through, but
your determination that that ticket ought to get you through obviously
convinced the LU person.

In answer to the other point, it's actually an LU ticket office. I
don't think there is a ticket office for Waterloo East any more, and
when there was it was on the bridge to Waterloo Main, where there are
still machines and an almost permanent squad of checkers (far more than
it would take to staff a ticket office).

I can't quite remember, but I think that there may now be a lift where
the old ticket office was.

MIG wrote:
the bridge to Waterloo Main, where there are still machines and an almost permanent
squad of checkers

In peak hours perhaps, I rarely see any checkers.

Paul Weaver wrote:
MIG wrote:
the bridge to Waterloo Main, where there are still machines and an almost permanent
squad of checkers

In peak hours perhaps, I rarely see any checkers.

Which really chimes in with what others have said about the train
companies only checking tickets of people who are likely to pay, rather
than actually doing the difficult stuff of checking tickets in the
evenings and at weekends, when you're more likely to get irregular
travellers who are more likely not to have a ticket and more likely to
be violent/aggressive.

Waterloo East is a classic example; there are always squads of
inspectors in the morning peak, and never at any other time. Ditto
Feltham, where I complete my journey - inspectors in the morning and
evening peaks, but travel at any other time and the gates are wide
open.

Patrick

On 13 Apr 2006 01:44:12 -0700, wrote:

Waterloo East is a classic example; there are always squads of
inspectors in the morning peak, and never at any other time. Ditto
Feltham, where I complete my journey - inspectors in the morning and
evening peaks, but travel at any other time and the gates are wide
open.

I've used it on Saturdays a couple of times - mainly so I can use my
London Stations season ticket to get to London Bridge rather than pay
for the tube - and on both recent occasions there have been
inspectors.

One thing that occurs to me is - why don't they make different sorts
of season tickets more obviously different? If you wave something
vaguely gold coloured at them they don't tend to look closer. If mine
had RAIL ONLY stamped on it in big letters it would help ticket
checkers, you could do something similar with zonal tickets.

Well, to answer my own question I do seem to have an unresolved
journey but it isn't yet recorded as that on my Oyster - I took my
Oyster to the Tube ticket office and obtained a printout. For Tuesday
it records "Pre Pay Entry Green Park" and has charged me £1.50.
However, the bloke didn't seem to be able to do anything about it - he
suggested I try in a few days and see if the journey description
and/or cost had changed.

I did have an unresolved journey on my ticket for 15 October last year
- it recorded "Unstarted - Oxford Circus" but again only charged me a
single Tube fare, £1.70. I got this resolved, I have a sneaking
suspicion that this should be a day when all my tube journeys were
capped at an ODTC but of course this long ago, nothing other than my
£20 top-ups and the unresolved journey are shown on the Oyster Usage
Statement. It's only £1.70 so what the hell - but if you could read
your Oyster statement online, it would help keep on top of thee
things.

So presumably, at some time the description for Tuesday's journey will
change to "Green Park - Unfinished" and I can ask to have it resolved
- but I'm slightly surprised that it doesn't seem to charge you a
default ODTC price on an unresolved journey.

On Thu, 13 Apr 2006 08:18:26 GMT, Phil Clark
wrote:

So presumably, at some time the description for Tuesday's journey will
change to "Green Park - Unfinished" and I can ask to have it resolved
- but I'm slightly surprised that it doesn't seem to charge you a
default ODTC price on an unresolved journey.

I can see why they still only charge the minimum fare - pre-pay is
still in a fairly introductory phase, and it's very easy to pick up an
unresolved journey (or even two unresolved journeys per one real
journey) until you learn from your mistakes and get a better idea of
how the system works. Plus there's the fact that they refuse point
blank to fix unresolved journeys on unregistered cards[1], so if
people were stuck with large penalties they couldn't have refunded, it
would create negative publicity that they could do without.

[1] Except at Tube ticket offices, but they can only resolve the most
recent journey on the card.