Forum Topic

Contactless/Oyster overcharges for journeys on 1st January 2017

Yesterday I made two underground zone 1-3 journeys via Ealing Broadway, using my Android Pay phone linked to my credit card. Overnight I received notification that my card would be charged £12.60 instead of the usual £7.60 due to "Incomplete journeys". Logging in to Oyster Online I see that according to TFL I failed to touch in at Ealing Broaday on the outbound journey, and failed to touch in again on my return to Ealing Broadway. Thankfully Android Pay keeps its own log of actual usage and I can see that I DID touch in at 13:10 on the outbound journey, and again at 23:22 on the return. So Android pay shows that I did everything correctly, but TFL/Oyster says I did not. This appears to be a fault with the Oyster card processing system at Ealing Broadway on January 1st so may impact many other Oyster, Contactless, Android Pay or Apple Pay users. I have applied for a refund through https://contactless.tfl.gov.uk/MyCards so if you have the same problem I suggest you do the same.

Owen Williams ● 3228d5 Comments

The TFL representative who called me stated that it might be linked to the different processing to handle the free-travel on New Year's Eve (which ended at 04:30 on New Year's day), but I find that hard to believe as similar free travel has been in place for several years, and other stations were reporting correctly.Obviously I cannot vouch for all stations on the network, but this appears to have been a specific problem with the communications between Ealing Broadway and TFL's central computer on that day. All other legs of my journeys on the 1st were correctly reported in the Journey history. What does appear to be poor system design is that if a station is late in passing its journey data to the central computer, then all journeys for the missing station(s) is marked "incomplete journey" and all those passengers are overcharged. In my opinion the system that calculates the charges ( and applied the daily/weekly caps etc.) should ONLY proceed once data from ALL stations has been received.I suspect that several hundred users were overcharged on that day. Many people do not check their journey history and/or statements regularly - particularly Oyster users. It is very easy to miss the overcharge completely, or only notice it when it is too late to claim a refund. One of the big advantages of using Android Pay (or Apple Pay) over Oyster is that you receive notification the following day of the previous day's charges, and a full journey history. This makes it very easy to spot when an incomplete journey has occurred (either my mistake or TFL's).

Owen Williams ● 3221d

Is this a human error at the station or computer error in the whole system?  Ever since I can remember a New year has started on 1 January! Was there any difference in the arangements this year? (We obviously don't go out into London on New year's Eve - but that doesn't mean we don't see the New Year in and celebrate it.)

Philippa Bond ● 3221d

I received my refund successfully. I also reported the issue via email to TFL and I had a call from them on Friday. They confirmed that there was a problem with the machines at Ealing Broadway on January 1st which meant that the data from the gates at Ealing Broadway was received too late at the central computer that calculates the charges for ALL pay-as-you-go payment methods. As a result, the journeys were incorrectly recorded as "incomplete" and charged at the a maximum fare rate.This problem therefore applied to all non-Season-Ticket journeys. This INCLUDES Oyster, Contactless Debit/Credit Cards as well as Android/Apple pay.Anyone who travelled through Ealing Broadway on January 1st (after the new-years free-travel expired at 4:30AM) would be wise to check their journey history and claim a refund for any incorrectly overcharged journeys.

Owen Williams ● 3222d

I think I'll stick to my Oyster!

Philippa Bond ● 3222d

It happens a lot so I've returned to using an oyster card so at least still see on the statement regular overcharges. It was messing my debit card up too often and end up spending hours onto the bank getting it sorted - at my cost.It's often errors on the wide gates or a delay between beeps and the green light.Very difficult to keep aware of in very busy stations and with baggage.It's instinctive now to touch in and touch out but errors still occur to often.Problem is very few even notice or check .  TfL must make almost as much from unchallenged errors as they lose from fare evaders.This is probably the biggest downside to the lack of ticket office staff. Getting the problem sorted online never works easily and on the phone can be more costly than the amount overcharged.

Mark Kehoe ● 3228d