On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 01:06:59 +0100, asdf
wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:20:10 +0100, Paul Corfield wrote:

A bit of advance warning for those who haven't heard - from November,
if you use pre-pay Oyster, and you fail to touch in or out at any point
of your travels where you're supposed to do so, you will find yourself
being charged £4.00 for the incomplete journey.

All the signs up say this came in on October 10th.

consults briefing material

The date of introduction is Sunday 19th November 2006.

If you don't mind Paul, could you confirm whether ticket offices won't
be able to fix incomplete journeys any more? (The OP reported it as
something of a rumour.)

I can't see any advantage whatsoever in making such a change (except
perhaps small savings in ticket office staff training, or extra money
from people phoning the 0845 helpline). On the face of it, it would
seem almost deliberately obstructive, and certainly against the spirit
of customer service (which is normally very good).

I've had a look at the training material. It is very clear that where
there is a system problem (e.g. reader is not working, card problems or
there was an emergency evacuation or something else in LU's control)
that card resetting at the ticket office will be permitted. Where
someone is simply not validating because they can't be bothered / forgot
/ whatever (i.e. in their direct control) then that will NOT be dealt
with at the ticket office. Only a call to the Oyster helpline will
suffice.

The rules relating to charges and card resetting are also changing.

If you think about why the change is being made then there is a logic to
this approach. The whole point is to get people to play by the rules and
to do what they are supposed to do. If you make it too easy to get round
the rules how will people ever learn to play by the rules? If people
keep getting charged £4 and have to go to extra effort to deal with the
helpdesk perhaps they will think twice before doing it again. Where the
problem is LU's fault then the customer is dealt with straight away -
that sounds like a decent deal to me.

If I can summon up the mental stamina I might try to knock together a
summary post of the key points from this change. It is quite involved
and there are differences for Oyster card holders with Travelcards on
their cards and those purely on adult rate PAYG. Would this be
appreciated?

dons flak jacket and hides in corner

Note also that there is going to be a big publicity campaign about this
so more detail will be in the public domain shortly.

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!