please empty your brain below

And who is the stupid, evil and ineffective idiot who invented OEPs DG?

But I'm still trying to work out this - I'm coming in from Beckenham in a couple of weeks time, by train. At the end of the day I have to be in Uxbridge, by tube. I might also use the tube or buses during the day. So you'd expect a travelcard to be the right option, and usually, the Oyster card will work all this out and apply the correct fare (minus a third, as I have a railcard).

But will this work on the rail bits too...?

I am never going to bother with these. This is easy to say at the moment as I'm on PAYG, but sooner or later it will be better value to use a season travelcard.

Try explaining these to another person and you realise why nobody is ever going to understand them (I know some people who can barely grasp the difference between PAYG and travelcard).

What I fear is that the revenue protection team of a train operating company might realise these are an "easy win" and will actively target unsuspecting travellers.

And another thought, what if you are travelling on a train service that is "inter-available" with the Underground. Do the OEP rules apply?

One more OEP experiment for you. Try to obtain an OEP from a newsagent Oyster Stop. I can just imagine the confusion. "You want to extend your travel card? But youndont need to. It's valid for three more weeks. You want to extend the zones? Can't do that. Extension permit? Sorry, never heard of it..."

I agree that this OEP lark is madness.

If a penalty is charged, it will be interesting to see if it is enforceable. Surely a court would require the rules to be clear and widely published. Neither of which applies....

you didn't try actually buying an OEP and using it, as supposed to.

Good job with the numbers of comments! :o) Nearly like it used to be...

Kirk - you're fine to use PAYG all the way, and you'll be charged the appropriate one-day cap. (Provided you've got your Railcard linked to your Oyster card, which can be done at tube ticket offices)
OEPs only apply if you have a period travelcard, and want to travel beyond its zones on NR.

Never pay penalty fares - they are yet to be tested in court and are unlikely to ever be tested because the train companies would most likely lose if they were.

The news in this post is shocking, I really thought the issue of oyster on national rail had finally been resolved.

Back in 2005/6 I had an ongoing dispute over a penalty fare issued for travelling from London Bridge (Zone 1) to East Croydon (Zone 5). I had zones 1 and 2 on my travelcard and assumed my pay as you go oyster would cover me for the bit of the journey beyond this. No such luck and I got stung. However I refused to pay cash on the day.

I then spent about six months writing various letters to train operating companies, TfL, my local MP etc, all of whom denied responsibility for the stupid system. A complaint to the advertising standards authority was upheld over the misinformation provided by the then current oystercard promotional campaign. I also got arrested for taking photographs at London Bridge station which were intended to show the lack of warnings as you approach the touch in barriers there.

While all this was happening I was receiving administrative charges on top of the original penalty fare notice.

It all came to a head when they issued the scary red topped letter demanding final payment and the threat of a court summons if I failed to pay. At this point I was finally given a phone number which I could call and gave them a ring to ask when my likely court date would be as I had no intention of giving them any of my money - I was keen to put my case to a judge who would have seen the ludicrous situation that I'd been placed in.

The guy on the other end of the phone said he needed to check with the prosecutions department (I suspect there isn't one) and that he would call me back. True to his word he phoned back 10 minutes later to say that the case was closed, I owed them no money and that I would not be appearing in court. It was a slight anticlimax and even more disappointing was the written confirmation that I requested and received, this consisted of a hand written compliments slip.

My research since has revealed that no-one has been taken to court over the issuing of a penalty fare notice because the train companies would rather write off the £20 for the sake of maintaining the status quo for a system that is not justified.

My advice, refuse to pay cash if you're stopped, appeal, continue to appeal and don't be scared by the bullying letters they send you. Of course you should ensure that you have a case and aren't intentionally fare evading and, if this is the case, they won't take you to court.

And what about if you pay genuine cash money without any sort of card? Is that cheaper?

fear losing revenue from people who've already bought expensive Travelcards

No, it's from people taking advantage of the level of freedom currently given to Travelcard holders. The scam is to buy a much cheaper Travelcard than you should and only pay fares one way. It'd be near impossible to catch people in the act doing this othrwise.

This is really making my head ache. Can this possibly be the most user-friendly, simple, and lovely system they could have come up with, in this best of all possible worlds? Perhaps not. It seems, rather, to be very much of the school of "take a nice simple system and make it complex and stupid and alienate your users". Argh! Thanks for the alert, and please make sure you tell us when they fix it and replace it with something that makes sense. Or bottle tops. Or chocolate money ... anything, really.

Graham
If they were really losing that much revenue they would put staff on the gates of the smaller stations to check.
But its obviously not worth it.

Thanks Martin - I hoped that was the case, but wasn't sure...

When it comes to travelling on my Oyster Card these days I tend to just turn up and hope it charges me correctly because they make it so bloody confusing!

I use my PAYG Oystercard very infrequently these days, and I always write down on it how much I've been charged for my day's travel at the end of the day, and how much is left on it (I have a Post-It stuck inside its wallet, for the purpose.


Now, the amount charged almost never corresponds with any current fare published (it's often more than the maximum daily fare for 1 - 6 or 1 - 4, which are the journeys I make).


And, the amount left on the card the next time I use it is often less than at the end of the last journey where I used it.


So, if they can't get that right, what chance under this new system?


From Sam's story, I'm surprised that penalty fares aren't deducted automatically from cards.

And, hurrah for comment numbers, well done Kirk!

Can we have carriage returns acting as [br/]s next, please? ('carriage returns'? I'm showing my age/that I learnt to type on a manual typewriter, aren't I? ;))

And cookies! I've only just realised!

Blue Witch - I'm working on the whole line break issue...

It's confused because of slight differences in the way I've done things to the way Haloscan did them, and I haven't yet worked out which I want to keep using :)

But it's high up my priority list. I'll make a decision over the weekend :)

Gold cards are good. However you have to be on the ball when it comes to buying tickets from FCC (and probably other TOCs as well). I once travelled in to LDN with my parents who I could buy discounted tickets using my GC. The tickets salesman was adamant that a group save would be cheaper for us. I got him to compare prices and of course he was wrong. Why? Well to get group save you need a minimum of 3 people, so i was effectively having to buy a ticket even though I had my GC season ticket which covered my travel. Dozy twonk or money maker? You decide.

Maybe I'm missing something, but if we simply make it mandatory for all travelcard holders to always touch in and touch out on all their journeys, which shouldn't be a problem with readers every now, then we can get rid of the OEPs and TOCs will still get what they want?

Graham If they were really losing that much revenue they would put staff on the gates of the smaller stations to check

Spot-checks only work as a deterrent if you have to make a commitment to paying before you know whether or not there will be a check.

With Travelcard+PAYG, you don't have to make a decision about paying until you reach the station exit, at which point it should be clear whether or not you will be checked.

@sweek All journeys would have to start and end within the zones. You couldn't use your Oyster travelcard for part of a journey that ends outside London, as you have nowhere to touch out. Would love to know how many journeys this would potentially affect and compare to the number of OEP-requiring journeys.

My head hurts! :(

Spot-on post DG, and thanks for trying out travel without an OEP which I'd been curious about! I'm in the same position as you so will end up queuing for paper tickets with Gold Card discount like I always did, except now my usual going-out ticket costs 25% more because off-peak returns have been abolished. Ho hum.

I forgot to say - my local (Southeastern) station has had its ticket machine upgraded to support Oyster. It can top-up PAYG and issue weekly travelcards, but I couldn't find an OEP option anywhere. If they're not supporting the permits, why should anyone else?

I thought you could only get travelcards on Oyster for the London zones anyway, and not for, say, Reading - London 1-6.

It is definitely _NOT_ "fantastic" that TfL have been allowed to contaminate the real, proper railway with stupid Underground-style Oyster tickets instead real, proper tickets.

And worse, they've raised the cost of the proper off-peak tickets to force us to use their stupid Oyster thing instead, making the ticket pricing out of sync with the rest of the country's real rail network.

And even worse, Oyster promotes the use use of TfL's zonal Travelcard seasons system which is one of the stupidest idea ever inflicted on the travelling public. What's wrong with proper point-to-point ticket seasons, the way tickets are supposed to be?

So just drop all the moaning about OEPs. After all, the only people who'll need them are those who have season Travelcards, and they're scum for supporting the zonal system in the first place, so who cares what happens to them!?!

We should be working on a scheme of collective action to smash all Oyster readers until TfL abandons the zonal system and goes to proper point-to-point ticketing!

"f we simply make it mandatory for all travelcard holders to always touch in and touch out on all their journeys"

I recall reading that this has been done in the latest conditions of carriage on the buses, although whether such an idiotic idea can be enforced is moot. I'd certainly refuse to pay a PF if I had a valid ticket but hadn't touched in, say because the bus was too packed.

@solar penguin - "What's wrong with proper point-to-point ticket seasons?" I'll tell you what's wrong with them - most people who travel in London don't limit themselves to mere point to point journeys. They make use of at least a part of the rest of the Tube / DLR / rail network available at least some of the time. Why should they have to buy a ticket each time they deviate from their standard commute?

Its like a further extension of the exam questions that are set at some of the out of London stations when trying to decode the right London daily return ticket .


Even PAYG on NR is confusing - Oxford Circus to Balham is £2.40 off peak via the tube and £3.40 off peak if you travel via Southern from Victoria. Was that the reason the fare zones were taken off the tube map since they now mean little?

"Stupid, evil, and ineffective. Much like the idiot who invented them"... the OEP was an invention of TfL and their supplier Cubic and I understand it was not what the train companies wanted but they were told to like it or lump it. So perhaps the epithet is acurate after all.

@sweek - I agree with you, I'd prefer this approach too. A big problem though is that there may only be one or two Oyster readers on each platform. Imagine the chaos if a train full of rush-hour commuters arrives at an outer suburban station in the evening. Will people really want to form an orderly queue to touch out on a ticket that they've already paid for?











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