please empty your brain below

Does the daily and weekly cap apply?
I often walk through Blackfriars rail station for convenience, and I always assumed it was within the price cap at the end of the day. Is it?
Eh? That doesn't make sense. So if you enter the station, then leave after 1 minute (eg you feel ill)- you get charged the full fare?

Where's the logic in that?
What's the logic behind this rule?

I've been caught out once or twice when my travelcard has lapsed and I was walking through Stratford station to Westfield to avoid the rain.
The rules say "Maximum fares don't count towards capping."

So taking a shortcut through a station (e.g. Stratford, Blackfriars) could be unexpectedly expensive.
Thank goodness it takes more than 2 minutes to walk through Blackfriars. Stupid rule indeed.
I would guess the two minute rule is to stop people passing the card back to allow their mate in - or simply pretending to leave the system but not actually doing so.

2 minutes is seen as enough time to realise there is no service and 30 as the maximum time before everyone will give up waiting.
Disappointed that this system presumes guilt on the part of the card user - you must be up to shenanigans if you leave the station after two minutes rather than something more prosaic happening. Obviously there is some opportunity for fraud but that must be minimal compared to legitimate reasons. But, I presume, that's why the within-7 days refund rule applies
Yes, I think it's all about fraud protection, and in theory one has nothing to fear because of the refunds available. It is probably inappropriate to describe here the various ways people could defraud the system, though one can imagine them.

The people I feel sorry for are those who do not check on their journey history in time, so that when they come to realise, either the refund is refused, or they think it will be and do not bother applying for it.
This reminds me to check my Oyster card statement. I use Oyster for Southern Rail services, and recently they've been so bad that you could have waited on the train for ages just to have it cancelled.

Charging anything for the swiping in/out at the same station within 5 minutes is a crime, in my opinion. Just automatically refund.

Charging a maximum fare for under 2 minutes is just taking the proverbial. It's such a specific rule too! I'm guessing they think that people are going to get a free journey and then swipe in/out at the destination?
There may be exceptions for 'walk through' stations.

I have a dormant pre-paid MasterCard obtained for use when it was the only way to avoid Ryanair surcharges. Out of curiosity I used it to walk through Southwark from Waterloo East National Rail, making no further use of the card. TfL debited it by 10p and refunded it several days later.

Southwark's rules are a bit weird. It's a legitimate OSI, allowing you 40 minutes to walk to Blackfriars NR (but only 20 minutes in the other direction). Passengers with paper NR-only tickets are also allowed to exit it and/or to use alternative routes because of London Bridge rebuilding. However, the exit must only be via the manual gate, so many passengers will think that walking through is not allowed.
Southwark has special rules at the moment because of the London Bridge works, allowing NR passengers to use the Tube between Waterloo East, Southwark and London Bridge for no extra charge, and also allowing NR ticket holders to walk through Southwark station.

The assymetric 20/40 minute OSI is quite common between tube and NR stations - it is because of the lower frequency on NR, meaning you are more likely to be waiting on the concourse for your number to come up before going through the barriers. When changing the other way, they assume you will dive straight down the Tube.
What about same station ENTRY, i.e. enter at A, exit at B, then enter at B again?
@dubidubno

I think that depends where you exit. If you use different barrier lines it would be an OSI (for example if you exit from Hammersmith H&C and enter at Hammersmith D&P.

Otherwise, I imagine it would treat it as two separate trips, whether you go straight back to A, or on to C.

But if you then exit from B a second time the (re-)entry and (second) exit would be subject to the 2minute/30 minute rule.
On a related note, if you've used Oyster to touch in when you didn't mean to at a station with a ticket office that sells Oyster (primarily London Overground stations), a trip to the ticket office without touching out should enable them to resolve the issue on the spot.

The same is not possible for contactless, however, as staff have no ability to alter your journey history and, even if they did, you don't get charged until the end of the day anyway.
This can be really horrible.

For example: catch a train to Cannon St from Southern land. You have to pass out and pass in again at London Bridge. Your just miss your train from London Bridge to Cannon St so exit the station again and decide a walk over London Bridge is the quickest means of completing your journey. You get heavily stung despite reassuring claims that you will not be charged for exiting London Bridge from the Southern side and entering the SouthEastern side during the current works.

Or ...

You go to Birkbeck not realising that Southern have removed ALL trains from the Monday Friday timetable. You innocently touch in, realise that there are no trains and naively believe that touching out will be the best thing to do.
You also get stung if attempting to assist an aged relative making a journey. The old platform tickets were good for this.

Nowadays I always phone and ask for assistance when seeing my mum off at Paddington. I could do it myself but I am not going to risk getting charged.
Clicking to the reference to this I see that in two of my three examples what should have happened is not so bad - possibly.

The hypothetical Birkbeck situation would be different because it is a reader "not attached to a gate". It states that "This does not apply if you touched out on a yellow card reader that is not on a ticket gate or take a bus or tram before re-entering". However it is not clear if this only applies to the previous sentence or the full paragraph so goodness knows what would happen.

In the Paddington case should have charged me the minimum station fare i.e. to Acton Main Line which seems to make no sense at all. Nevertheless I am pretty sure that is not what happened. It was a long while ago.
I managed to get myself in a minor pickle the other week at Woolwich Arsenal (last chance to see the Firepower museum before it closed), touching out at one of the yellow card readers as I got to the top of the stairs from the DLR (having touched in in a similar manner further up the line, where the platforms are open) only to realise that there was still a closed gateline to get through. Fortunately a nice man let me through, but what would have happened if I had touched back in so I could operate the exit gates?
I think consecutive touch outs or touch ins at different barrier lines at the same station, especially if one is a standalone one (such as provided at Wimbledon, Woolwich etc for interchange passengers) are generally ignored.

So touching out on the platform and then at the barrier line should be OK.
I have, on occasion, been for a trip in the cab with a friend who's a tube driver - and had rather hefty same-station exit fees, despite not really having gone anywhere. It's usually been sorted by the call centre, but it's nice to now know what the rules are!
I am reminded of problems with my free-dom pass with same station exit. I have had to ask an attendant to let me out.
I'm a bit sceptical of this.

I walk through Southwark Underground station from time to time on my way to Waterloo East (In/Out with Oyster PAYG, in to Waterloo East NR with another ticket) and have never been charged for doing so.
I asked LU station staff before doing this for the first time; they told me there would be no charge. That was definitely before SouthEastern trains in / out of Charing Cross ceased to stop at London Bridge.

Colleagues walk through Blackfriars NR station using Oyster PAYG, and tell me that they don't get charged.

Conversely, several years ago I entered Knightsbridge station at one end and left at the other (problems on the Circle line meant that I couldn't board the first three trains going east, so I gave up and walked to Lancaster Gate) and I was charged for doing so.
It's not a stupid rule at all.

If the two-minute rule weren't enforced, passing back would become trivial (touch in, enter, touch out without exiting, pass back, second person touches in and enters, repeat cycle for any other people). That's the reason it exists, and if it didn't there'd be an absolutely huge problem with passing back because it'd be so easy, and a lot of revenue would be lost.

Sadly, preventing that possibility far outweighs the disbenefit to a few innocent users changing their travel plans, at least in TfL's eyes.

The only way around it that I can see would be to prevent multiple touches in at the same station even with an intervening touch out, within a certain time limit. (Which would still make it possible for one person to enter the station, give their card to someone exiting, travel, and hope someone does the same at the other end. But that's much less likely to get exploited.)
Malcolm: Other people worth feeling sorry for is foreign tourists which AFAIK in practice are barred from checking their journey history online. (And if they could they are (or atleast were) probably stuck at having to pay foreigner fare on their phones and wasting precious time. It's not easy to know how much time it will take to convince oyster support to do a refund - if the procedure (including going to a specific station to pick up the refund) takes a while the refund might well be worth less than the time spent on getting it).

It seems like visitors are best off getting a non-visitor oyster card and load it with a seven day travel card or similar. It might in theory cost more than using daily capping but you cannot be charged extra if you don't even have any payg money on the card.
Help!

A week last Friday, I was charged £4.70 from Cheam (Z5) to Euston at 2pm, yet charged £5.80 on the Sunday returning to Worcester Park (Z4) at 6pm. Surely something wrong here...
@Ken:

Yes, something is wrong. Unless I missed something in the May 2016 fare updates, there is no fare of £5.80 from anywhere to anywhere on any mode.

Are you sure £5.80 wasn't the remaining balance on the card?

http://www.oyster-rail.org.uk/fares-guide/single-fares-2016/

That site is the best place to ask TfL fares questions.
[email protected],
I use a Freedom Pass and often go to my local station in the morning to pick up a "Metro" newspaper from the platform.
I have never had any trouble in and out in a minute or two.
People need to understand there are slightly different fraud protection rules for PAYG only users, those with Travelcards on their Oyster Cards and those who have a pass such as a 60+ or Freedom Pass. I'm not going to explain the differences here.
John, it happened twice, both for my wife and myself, and we used contactless credit cards. I just checked the statement and £5.80 is "correct". We went via Victoria for both journeys.
Humble pie (and for the record):

Err, forgot that there was a bus waiting right outside that took us back to Cheam (where our daughter picked us up).

Apologies - so that's £4.30 + £1.50.
As a magistrate I understand why TfL has this rule. One of the ways people swindled the system was touching in and out and then travelling through zones not paid for and doing the same at the exit. CCTV and revenue inspectors' machines provide excellent evidence when fraud is alleged. The also a real problem with fraudulent use of Freedom Passes.










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