A couple of separate incidents have occurred to me in the past week or so using my contactless payment card to travel around London; as a Londoner without a travelcard or Oyster-worthy railcard CPCs are useful for me with their weekly capping so have become my principal way of paying for travel within the zones. Sorry about the length of this by the way, but I wasn't sure which details would be important so thought it best to include all of them!
Incident no. 1:
This is something I always feared would happen when London's buses turned cashless: a bus declined my CPC. I placed it on the reader, got the red light and double beep, tried again several times, but not luck. The little Oyster reader display just said try again. Very helpful. Initially I feared it was an issue with my own card, but then the passenger behind me got on, tried to use a CPC, and that didn't work either. The driver offered no help whatsoever; I recognise that payments-wise his hands were tied, but he didn't deign to investigate whether perhaps his machine was broken or something. So we both got off and waited for the next bus, on which our cards worked fine.
The thing is, it's not uncommon that living in zone 6 I find myself waiting for infrequent buses (even one that just runs four times a day). So whilst I was lucky that the above incident occurred on a frequent bus, I'm unhappy that it happened at all and the only solution offered was to wait for another because the situation could be more challenging if trying catch a bus on a different route.
Does anyone know what might have caused the problem, what I/the driver should have done about it, and whether this would be worth reporting to TfL? (I have a note of the bus's reg no., time and bus stop where the issue happened.)
Incident no. 2:
OK, there're two parts to this, the first of which occurred several months ago. I was entering Stratford via the Westfield ticket hall gateline. The station was busy (very noisy) and my set of ticket barriers was still open as I placed my CPC on the reader. I held it there for as long as I normally would with a CPC (slightly longer than needed for an Oyster), but heard no beep and didn't see a green light however the barriers stayed open so I walked through. As I progressed through the station however I started to worry that I'd accidentally tailgated somebody, hadn't registered a touch-in and could therefore cause problems for myself further on in the journey. So I went back to the gateline, asked somebody for assistance; he reached over and touched the card in on the entry side, the barriers opened, and all was well with the world.
Until I checked my TfL account and saw that two entries at Stratford had been logged, one therefore causing an incomplete journey. I must've taken slightly too long to return to the gateline therefore and exceeded the two minute limit. TfL were happy to refund the incomplete journey charge anyway and I put the experience down to me just, I don't know, going mad.
Since that occurred however I've been fastidious at never removing my CPC from an Oyster reader until I see the green light, which sometimes appears with a noticeable delay after the single beep. Fast forward to the weekend just gone, then, when I was touching in at a station gateline (can't remember which one), held my CPC on the reader, heard a beep, the barriers didn't close after already being open for the previous customer, waited for the green light and waited. After a couple of seconds I thought I must be looking stupid standing there like a lemon so I proceeded through, never having been given a green light. Checking my TfL account later in the day everything was fine, but until such a time as I could check the account, it did have me worried.
So is there a known bug with green lights occasionally not showing for CPC users? And is it safe to rely on the beep and/or opening (or non-closing) of barriers if no green light is seen?
Incident no. 1:
This is something I always feared would happen when London's buses turned cashless: a bus declined my CPC. I placed it on the reader, got the red light and double beep, tried again several times, but not luck. The little Oyster reader display just said try again. Very helpful. Initially I feared it was an issue with my own card, but then the passenger behind me got on, tried to use a CPC, and that didn't work either. The driver offered no help whatsoever; I recognise that payments-wise his hands were tied, but he didn't deign to investigate whether perhaps his machine was broken or something. So we both got off and waited for the next bus, on which our cards worked fine.
The thing is, it's not uncommon that living in zone 6 I find myself waiting for infrequent buses (even one that just runs four times a day). So whilst I was lucky that the above incident occurred on a frequent bus, I'm unhappy that it happened at all and the only solution offered was to wait for another because the situation could be more challenging if trying catch a bus on a different route.
Does anyone know what might have caused the problem, what I/the driver should have done about it, and whether this would be worth reporting to TfL? (I have a note of the bus's reg no., time and bus stop where the issue happened.)
Incident no. 2:
OK, there're two parts to this, the first of which occurred several months ago. I was entering Stratford via the Westfield ticket hall gateline. The station was busy (very noisy) and my set of ticket barriers was still open as I placed my CPC on the reader. I held it there for as long as I normally would with a CPC (slightly longer than needed for an Oyster), but heard no beep and didn't see a green light however the barriers stayed open so I walked through. As I progressed through the station however I started to worry that I'd accidentally tailgated somebody, hadn't registered a touch-in and could therefore cause problems for myself further on in the journey. So I went back to the gateline, asked somebody for assistance; he reached over and touched the card in on the entry side, the barriers opened, and all was well with the world.
Until I checked my TfL account and saw that two entries at Stratford had been logged, one therefore causing an incomplete journey. I must've taken slightly too long to return to the gateline therefore and exceeded the two minute limit. TfL were happy to refund the incomplete journey charge anyway and I put the experience down to me just, I don't know, going mad.
Since that occurred however I've been fastidious at never removing my CPC from an Oyster reader until I see the green light, which sometimes appears with a noticeable delay after the single beep. Fast forward to the weekend just gone, then, when I was touching in at a station gateline (can't remember which one), held my CPC on the reader, heard a beep, the barriers didn't close after already being open for the previous customer, waited for the green light and waited. After a couple of seconds I thought I must be looking stupid standing there like a lemon so I proceeded through, never having been given a green light. Checking my TfL account later in the day everything was fine, but until such a time as I could check the account, it did have me worried.
So is there a known bug with green lights occasionally not showing for CPC users? And is it safe to rely on the beep and/or opening (or non-closing) of barriers if no green light is seen?