As of today 7 May my Oyster journey history is showing only to 29
April ("it normally takes 48 hours for journeys to be added to your
statement") with a Entry in Notting Hill Gate £4 gobbled, to leave
£2.90 and no exit. The exit was Bank within the 2hr limit. Some
previous journeys also involving Bank as entry and exit are also
wrong. Has the station had a credit crunch?

It seems weird that my merry trips (Ladbroke Grove, White City,
KingsX, and several buses) all show but Bank is last there on the
20th despite being visited as part of all those journeys. Methinks a
puzzling phone call will need to be made. No, I didn't vault the gates
at Bank.
--
Old anti-spam address cmylod at despammed dot com appears broke
So back to cmylod at bigfoot dot com

"Colum Mylod" wrote in message

As of today 7 May my Oyster journey history is showing only to 29
April ("it normally takes 48 hours for journeys to be added to your
statement") with a Entry in Notting Hill Gate £4 gobbled, to leave
£2.90 and no exit. The exit was Bank within the 2hr limit. Some
previous journeys also involving Bank as entry and exit are also
wrong. Has the station had a credit crunch?

It seems weird that my merry trips (Ladbroke Grove, White City,
KingsX, and several buses) all show but Bank is last there on the
20th despite being visited as part of all those journeys. Methinks a
puzzling phone call will need to be made. No, I didn't vault the gates
at Bank.

I'm also finding a lot of missed journeys or missing entry/exit points
in my Oyster journey history over the last few weeks. But when I did a
full check, the balance is correct. So I'm guessing that the underlying
transaction system is working properly, but the reporting is broken.

On May 7, 9:48 pm, "Recliner" wrote:

"Colum Mylod" wrote:

As of today 7 May my Oyster journey history is showing only to 29
April ("it normally takes 48 hours for journeys to be added to your
statement") with a Entry in Notting Hill Gate £4 gobbled, to leave
£2.90 and no exit. The exit was Bank within the 2hr limit. Some
previous journeys also involving Bank as entry and exit are also
wrong. Has the station had a credit crunch?

It seems weird that my merry trips (Ladbroke Grove, White City,
KingsX, and several buses) all show but Bank is last there on the
20th despite being visited as part of all those journeys. Methinks a
puzzling phone call will need to be made. No, I didn't vault the gates
at Bank.

I'm also finding a lot of missed journeys or missing entry/exit points
in my Oyster journey history over the last few weeks. But when I did a
full check, the balance is correct. So I'm guessing that the underlying
transaction system is working properly, but the reporting is broken.


This problem has cropped up beforehand - for whatever reason the
online journey history (via the web account) can get out of sync with
the data held on the central Oyster database. And it's the
transactions held on the central Oyster database that's the definitive
record.

If you look at the journey history on a touchscreen Tube ticket
machine (which is most of them these days) then you can see your
recent journey history - specifically the last eight or ten journeys,
depending on the type of ticket machine - and this screen will also
flag up any unresolved journeys (i.e. those that you'd get charged £4
for).

I'd be prepared to bet that if you were to do this you wouldn't find
that you'd been overcharged - in other words, the problem is with the
online journey history.

I'm wondering if it's possibly connected to the upgrade of the PAYG
system, and thus a resulting upgrade of the online journey history
system. Note that I'm not making any excuses though - it's certainly
not good enough, not least because it just ends up leaving punters
confused.

"Mizter T" wrote in message

On May 7, 9:48 pm, "Recliner" wrote:

"Colum Mylod" wrote:

As of today 7 May my Oyster journey history is showing only to 29
April ("it normally takes 48 hours for journeys to be added to your
statement") with a Entry in Notting Hill Gate £4 gobbled, to leave
£2.90 and no exit. The exit was Bank within the 2hr limit. Some
previous journeys also involving Bank as entry and exit are also
wrong. Has the station had a credit crunch?

It seems weird that my merry trips (Ladbroke Grove, White City,
KingsX, and several buses) all show but Bank is last there on the
20th despite being visited as part of all those journeys. Methinks a
puzzling phone call will need to be made. No, I didn't vault the
gates at Bank.

I'm also finding a lot of missed journeys or missing entry/exit
points in my Oyster journey history over the last few weeks. But
when I did a full check, the balance is correct. So I'm guessing
that the underlying transaction system is working properly, but the
reporting is broken.


This problem has cropped up beforehand - for whatever reason the
online journey history (via the web account) can get out of sync with
the data held on the central Oyster database. And it's the
transactions held on the central Oyster database that's the definitive
record.

If you look at the journey history on a touchscreen Tube ticket
machine (which is most of them these days) then you can see your
recent journey history - specifically the last eight or ten journeys,
depending on the type of ticket machine - and this screen will also
flag up any unresolved journeys (i.e. those that you'd get charged £4
for).

I'd be prepared to bet that if you were to do this you wouldn't find
that you'd been overcharged - in other words, the problem is with the
online journey history.

I'm wondering if it's possibly connected to the upgrade of the PAYG
system, and thus a resulting upgrade of the online journey history
system. Note that I'm not making any excuses though - it's certainly
not good enough, not least because it just ends up leaving punters
confused.

Yes, I thought it must be something like that. But given that this is
possibly a common fault, perhaps there should be an on-line warning of
potential errors, together with a simple way of reporting them?

Certainly, my first reaction was that there must have been some
expensive unresolved journeys, but it appears not. But I needed to do
some spreadsheet work to be sure.

I will be able to re-verify the card's records at a machine this
evening. Thanks for the good answers. Unfortunately for me, I use the
JH for expense claims (and even to remember where I was on some whacky
weeks, and if a journey was £2.20 peak or £1.60 off peak - the
difference does add up).

The current malaise appears to be worse than the old long-gap but at
least *consistent* updates.
--
Old anti-spam address cmylod at despammed dot com appears broke
So back to cmylod at bigfoot dot com

On May 8, 6:29*am, Colum Mylod wrote:
I will be able to re-verify the card's records at a machine this
evening. Thanks for the good answers. Unfortunately for me, I use the
JH for expense claims (and even to remember where I was on some whacky
weeks, and if a journey was £2.20 peak or £1.60 off peak - the
difference does add up).

I'm sure you're already aware that tube ticket offices can give you a
printout of your last 8 journeys, which should do the trick for
expenses claims.

I noticed lately that White City has been missing from my online
journey history since April 19th. Wood Lane hasn't shown up for a
recent entry, but the auto top-up did register there.
I emailed Oyster Online support to ask if they knew what the problem
was, but they took six weeks to reply to me last time, so I'm not
holding my breath.

Certainly, my first reaction was that there must have been some
expensive unresolved journeys, but it appears not. But I needed to do
some spreadsheet work to be sure.

I've also suffered missing entries, but with a correct overall
balance. Am I alone in thinking that the online display is
unnecessarily confusing? The "Fare" column doesn't actually show the
fare for a journey (except for a bus) - it shows debits and credits.
I'm interested in your spreadsheet - does anyone have anything that
you can just paste the journey history into and it actually shows the
fares charged??

Tim

On Fri, 8 May 2009 02:09:39 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:


Certainly, my first reaction was that there must have been some
expensive unresolved journeys, but it appears not. But I needed to do
some spreadsheet work to be sure.

I've also suffered missing entries, but with a correct overall
balance. Am I alone in thinking that the online display is
unnecessarily confusing? The "Fare" column doesn't actually show the
fare for a journey (except for a bus) - it shows debits and credits.
I'm interested in your spreadsheet - does anyone have anything that
you can just paste the journey history into and it actually shows the
fares charged??

(Sorry this is rather specific to unix and open office users but maybe
someone can adapt it for microsoft tools)

I use the following:

1. Save the "printer friendly version" of the journey history.

2. Run it through a script to turn the saved html in 1 into a csv file
(see end of this post for the script)

3. Import the CSV into open office.

Then (I think) adding the following columns will give you what you want:

Column I: row 94: =IF(A95+B95+2/24A94+B94;I95+E94;E94)
Column J: row 94: =IF(A95+B95+2/24A94+B94;"";I94)

Copy and paste into the other rows.

This fails in two cases: 1, if you have auto top-up that will be added
to your journey "cost" and 2, if you make two journeys the second of
which starts less than two hours after the first finished it will be
consolidated into one journey.

1 is fairly easy to fix - just create a new column that zeros out any
auto top-up entries and then change the column I formula to reference
your new column instead of column E. 2 is harder to fix - you can tweak
the 2/24 parameter - that's the number of hours for the next entry to be
added to your journey (not the total journey time)

I don't know how well this will play with capping - I've never reached a
cap - or season tickets plus extensions.

Tim.


$ cat ppv2csv
cat $1 |
sed -n '
/tr/ {
h
}
/\/tr/ {
H
x
//g s/
s/\n//g
s/\t//g
s/ *//g
s/ *//g
s/tr//g
s|/tr||g
s/td//g
s|/td|$ $|g
s/^.*$//
s/[^]*//g
s/£//g
s/- /-/g
p
}
{
H
}
' |
while read d r; do
if [[ "$d" = '$' ]]; then
d=$oldd;
else
oldd=$d
fi
echo $d $r
done |
grep -v '^$' |
sed 's/\$ \$/\t/g'

--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://www.woodall.me.uk/

On Thu, 7 May 2009 22:35:08 +0100,
Recliner wrote:
"Mizter T" wrote in message


I'd be prepared to bet that if you were to do this you wouldn't find
that you'd been overcharged - in other words, the problem is with the
online journey history.

I'm wondering if it's possibly connected to the upgrade of the PAYG
system, and thus a resulting upgrade of the online journey history
system. Note that I'm not making any excuses though - it's certainly
not good enough, not least because it just ends up leaving punters
confused.

Yes, I thought it must be something like that. But given that this is
possibly a common fault, perhaps there should be an on-line warning of
potential errors, together with a simple way of reporting them?

Certainly, my first reaction was that there must have been some
expensive unresolved journeys, but it appears not. But I needed to do
some spreadsheet work to be sure.

I don't think I've had a correct day on the journey history since end of
March. Below is the current mess that it has for my journey history.

Currently it appears that Euston is not registering at all except for
Auto top-up. Also the pricing appears to have gone weird - why I'm being
debited 1.50 when I exit at Watford - which implies I'm being charged
2.00 at entry at Euston. I think it should be 5.00 debit at Euston
followed by 1.50 credit at Watford.

Previously to that it was Watford Junction that stopped registering at
all.

It's extremely hard confirm it's correct because there are days missing
- e.g. nothing has registered from Moorgate entry on 17/04 to Watford
Junction entry on 22/04 but there must have been at least 15GBP of
journeys for the Auto top-up to have triggered. Because I sometimes
travel before 06:30, sometimes don't do a normal journey - e.g. that
17/04 day where I did WJ-Moorgate; Moorgate-Euston - and I don't keep
a record of exactly when I travel where.

I know for a fact that occasionally exits can fail to register (I
believe it has happened on entry as well but I can only be 99% sure).
It's happened to my girlfriend the very first journey she made on PAYG.
I was explaining to her how it all worked and how you had to make sure
you always touched in and out. On that particular journey she exited via
the barriers at Watford Junction - I watched her open them with her
oyster card and walk through - but she ended up with an unresolved
journey. And because she's not that often in London and credits can only
be put back onto your card when you use an oyster gate, LUL "stole" that
money because she couldn't get her credit back within 8 weeks.

Tim.

*
Date Time Location Action Fare Price cap Balance
*
08/05/09 06:12 Watford Junction Entry - £4.00 £31.10
07/05/09 21:11 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £35.10
06:09 Watford Junction Entry - £4.00 £38.10
06:09 Watford Junction Auto top-up £40.00 £42.10
06/05/09 21:10 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £2.10
06:02 Watford Junction Entry - £4.00 £5.10
05/05/09 21:55 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £9.10
07:34 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £12.10
01/05/09 21:59 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £18.60
07:35 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £21.60
30/04/09 20:44 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £28.10
07:37 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £31.10
29/04/09 22:47 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £37.60
22:03 Euston NR Auto top-up £40.00 £41.10
07:36 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £0.60
28/04/09 21:55 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £7.10
07:36 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £10.10
27/04/09 22:18 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £16.60
24/04/09 05:58 Watford Junction Entry - £4.00 £19.60
22/04/09 19:28 Watford Junction Exit - £1.50 £33.10
07:36 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £36.10
07:36 Watford Junction Auto top-up £40.00 £42.60
17/04/09 18:22 Moorgate Entry - £4.00 £19.20
08:29 Moorgate Exit £0.50 £23.20
07:38 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £23.20
15/04/09 19:38 Euston NR Auto top-up £40.00 £42.70
09/04/09 19:55 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £16.70
08:07 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £21.70
08/04/09 20:11 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £26.20
08:10 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £31.20
07/04/09 22:49 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £35.70
22:49 Euston NR Auto top-up £40.00 £40.70
08:09 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £0.70
06/04/09 20:43 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £5.20
08:55 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £10.20
03/04/09 21:12 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £14.70
08:13 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £19.70
02/04/09 19:00 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £24.20
08:11 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £29.20
01/04/09 18:59 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £33.70
08:09 Euston NR Exit £0.50 £38.70
31/03/09 21:08 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £3.20
08:18 Euston NR Exit - £0.50 £8.20
30/03/09 19:00 Euston NR Entry - £5.00 £12.70
08:12 Euston NR Exit £0.50 £17.70
07:35 Watford Junction Entry - £6.50 £17.20

--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://www.woodall.me.uk/

On May 11, 9:10*am, Tim Woodall wrote:

On Thu, 7 May 2009 22:35:08 +0100,
* * Recliner wrote:

[snip]

Certainly, my first reaction was that there must have been some
expensive unresolved journeys, but it appears not. But I needed to do
some spreadsheet work to be sure.

I don't think I've had a correct day on the journey history since end of
March. Below is the current mess that it has for my journey history.

Currently it appears that Euston is not registering at all except for
Auto top-up. Also the pricing appears to have gone weird - why I'm being
debited 1.50 when I exit at Watford - which implies I'm being charged
2.00 at entry at Euston. I think it should be 5.00 debit at Euston
followed by 1.50 credit at Watford.

Previously to that it was Watford Junction that stopped registering at
all.

It's extremely hard confirm it's correct because there are days missing
- e.g. nothing has registered from Moorgate entry on 17/04 to Watford
Junction entry on 22/04 but there must have been at least 15GBP of
journeys for the Auto top-up to have triggered. Because I sometimes
travel before 06:30, sometimes don't do a normal journey - e.g. that
17/04 day where I did WJ-Moorgate; Moorgate-Euston - and I don't keep
a record of exactly when I travel where.

Tim, the problem here is with the *online* journey history display -
as displayed via Oyster online - as opposed to the underlying Oyster
central database being incorrect.

In other words what's being displayed doesn't make a lot of sense
because some exits and entries are missing on the online journey
history - however the definitive record, as held by the central Oyster
database, is correct. You should therefore find that you have not been
overcharged - you can ask the Oyster help desk for a PDF of all the
journeys you've done in the past three months, which won't have any
gaps in it (unlike the online journey history).


I know for a fact that occasionally exits can fail to register (I
believe it has happened on entry as well but I can only be 99% sure).
It's happened to my girlfriend the very first journey she made on PAYG.
I was explaining to her how it all worked and how you had to make sure
you always touched in and out. On that particular journey she exited via
the barriers at Watford Junction - I watched her open them with her
oyster card and walk through - but she ended up with an unresolved
journey. And because she's not that often in London and credits can only
be put back onto your card when you use an oyster gate, LUL "stole" that
money because she couldn't get her credit back within 8 weeks.

I have never come across this issue before. It's worth noting that
when you touch-in or touch-out on a gate (or standalone Oyster reader)
a transaction occurs there and then between the validator and the
smartcard - this means that the fare is debited from the card
immediately, i.e. without any recourse to the Oyster central database
(which just keeps tabs on all the transactions).

In this particular instance I'm not sure what happened - perhaps the
validators on the gates at Watford Jn were not functioning correctly
(it was early days of PAYG at Watford Jn) and so let her out but
somehow didn't properly conduct the transaction with her Oyster card.
Otherwise I wonder if she inadvertently walked through on someone
else's ticket, though from your account that sounds unlikely. The
other thing that comes to mind was whether this was a problem of the
whole journey 'timing out' - which could perhaps happen if she had
started the journey from a Tube station, then made the interchange at
Euston, then travelled on to Watford Jn and the total time of the
whole journey was over 2 hours (this limit has now been raised to 2
1/2 hours, and is in the process of being changed again so that it
reflects the distance a passenger has travelled).


Tim.

* * **
* * *Date * * Time *Location * * * * Action * * * * Fare Price cap Balance
* * **
[snip list]

Sorry Tim, I'm not going to provide a free consultancy service on this!