please empty your brain below
There's always tears when the implementor of a system overreaches themselves, and provides something that cannot be sustained.
Only the rich who can afford to hail a taxi are allowed privacy in their movements now.
Not quite true Malcolm. I may be one of a small subset of users, but for me I can see an advantage. I generally use PAYG. Occasionally, things will crop up which means I'll do more travel than normal, and a weekly travelcard would have been better value. This system will review the travel pattern over the previous week, and if a weekly travelcard would have been cheaper, then the charge will be adjusted to that rate.
I've been using contactless on the buses for a while, and my experience is different. I'm using an American Express card, and I can use an online account to review my spending. Amex are unusual, in that their website allows you to review both 'finalised' transactions and 'pending' ones. Pending is usually car rental (which I do frequently), where a 'hold' is put on the card when I collect the car and then cancelled when the final charge is calculated when I return the car. But I noticed last week that when I use the card for a bus fare, a 10pence 'pending' charge appears on my account. This popped up only a couple of hours after I'd used the bus, which surprised me. Like you, I thought bus charge data was only loaded at end of day. Unless (for operational reasons) the particular bus I'd used went straight back to the depot after my journey.? It'll be interesting to see if the roll out to rail modes goes smoothly, as it seems a complex and challenging undertaking.
Look out for '70' a lot next week (CARD CLASH!) along with '71' another duplicate card error.
I don't think many people WILL get charged twice, i think there'll just be more delays at the gateline as the card reader detects multuple cards in inside people's wallets and purses.
The has been an ongoing desire to decriminalise a lot things that many would consider minor misdemeanors - you might not agree but that is not particularly relevant. It is done partly with an aim of removing the enormous expense of bringing minor crimes to court and also to avoid putting people quite unnecessarily in jail e.g. single-mums who haven't paid their TV licence. The desire to do this is partly based on the need to stop the courts completely clogging up with minor offences.
This approach is also geared at putting a lot of onus on the prevention of crime back onto the people who legitimately benefit from the activity that caused the crime in the first place. So if large shops want to make their merchandise more attractive it is up to them to bear a lot of the cost (in providing security cards an store detectives). They can't expect the police service to pick up the pieces all the time.
It seems clear that wave and pay fits in with this policy. If you don't wave and pay on the way in (or out) you will be hit with a bigger expense than if you comply with the rules. There is no shame, no criminal sanction - just a big incentive to stay within the rules.
One of the problems of prosecuting for fare evasion is proving an intention to avoid payment. Of course in serious cases that can still be done. By introducing wave and pay the onus is on the user, just like the onus is on the user to put sufficient money in the meter for parking their car, to get it right rather than the authorities to have the ordeal or proving intent and bringing a prosecution.
It will put the onus on users to check for errors and apply for refunds as well as avoiding card clash in the first place. I am inclined to say "get used to it. We are a big busy city and we need initiatives like this to keep us functioning and competitive with the rest of the world".
They should have been doing announcements basically telling people NOT to put their wallet or purse against the reader. People are still doing this and whilst some may not currently have contactless cards, they may in the future.
I also await the Evening Standard headlines about all this penalty fare stuff as well. It's 100% guaranteed to be front page news - no matter what comms TfL have done.
I think the ability to get updated hotlists of lost / stolen / counterfeit card numbers to buses was probably a pre-requisite for payment cards being allowed to be used on the transport network. The banks won't want to be overly exposed to that fraud risk (nor will their customers!).
I actually think the "blocking" facility is the one that is going to cause the greatest heartache for people. That's because it involves dealing with a bank and most likely a call centre miles away from London. Let's just hope there have been some good staff briefings and updated on line guidance for bank staff trying to sort out cards blocked because they were touched out at Roding Valley at 2100 on a Thursday night in October and then a payment couldn't be processed.
"only the rich can afford to hail a taxi are allowed privacy in their movements now" as long as they (wait for it) pay cash! Plus avoid all those CCTV cameras and switch off their mobiles/smartphones. On the other hand the very poor can have privacy in their movements...but find themselves unwelcome in many places.
I just see contactless being the stuff of criminal fantasies! How long will it be before a fraudster can just walk past you with a device upon their person that can take a contactless payment from you. And heaven help you if you're in a crowd!!
They make it so difficult to get your oyster deposit back, ask for two forms of ID, even though the card might be registered but want to late charge your credit card without veryfiyng facts first - joke.
The recent "Plebgate" report shows that this is precisely the sort of thing the police did to identify the source used by the Sun journalists (in that case, demanding the metadata from the journalist's telephone company, and then identifying who called whom and when).
He has an Oyster on Auto-Top-Up and I have a Freedom Pass. Both are kept separately.
With the ticket, you have absolute proof of entitlement to be on that bus, as long as that's the bus you boarded in the first place when paying by contactless.
Another idea not future-proofed - the next generation of bus ticket machines will still need to issue paper tickets, or at least until the banks allow card chips can be 'written' to by third parties, as on Oysters or Freedom Passes, to electronically show trip validity - or not.
Secondly what happens if you genuinely don't remember which card you used to touch in? For example Barclaycard recently decided to replace my Mastercard card with *two* new cards, one a Visa and one Amex, both contactless and both on my same account. So it would be easy for me to forget which of the two I used. Get it wrong and I get a "fine" later, even though my account will show that I paid (since both cards have different numbers but are the same account). All I see is lots of scope for requesting a charge back from your card provider for a fraudulent debit. Much easier than you might think, since the only distinguishing feature between the small cards is the small Amex/Visa logo in the corner.
Regarding privacy yes I do have some concerns about this, but surely the answer is get an Oyster card and don't register it. Sure you can't get back the deposit, but it's not a lot of money, if you value your privacy that much.
Anyone can confirm, or know different?
Had no intention if using contactless but have just registered to make claiming a refund easier if the worst happens - thanks for the heads up. On the plus side does this mean I can use my credit card as a "guest" oyster card for visitors, or are tfl going to tell me that technically my card is non transferable (like my period oyster) and so I'll be seen as paying twice and my guest liable for a fine by a particularly ruthless ticket inspector - an earlier post about someone offering to pay contactless for someone stranded on a cashless bus implied this? Aware I or at least my card will need to be with my guest for this...
"2.6 Your contactless payment card may only be used for pay as you go travel made by you. It is not transferable. You cannot let someone else use your card for pay as you go travel if they are travelling with you. "
I have a season ticket on my Oyster and I rarely bother to touch in on DLR (there's a reason but let's park that for now). Not once have I had an inspector tell me off, or money taken from me. At least not that I've noticed.
"A twelve page Contactless travel leaflet is arriving in stations this weekend."
If it takes 12 pages to explain how it works, it's almost certainly too complicated!
That's not my experience. I've been paying for buses using my American Express for a few weeks - never once been issued with a ticket. The beep sound I hear is identical to a regular PAYG Oyster beep.
No receipt is issued if you use a CPC for travel, as Island Dweller has indicated.
I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing people get prosecuted based on their bank details? I give SouthEastern a week before they start doing it.
TridentScan | Privacy Policy