Oyster tap out when fire alarms go off

[Taunton]

Travelling to Green Park, announcement en route that it was closed due to fire alarm activation. Later it was announced as now reopened. It was however packed. Up at the gateline all were open and constant announcements made to please walk straight through.

So large numbers now have an incomplete Oyster journey. Will all be charged the maximum fare? I don't regularly use the station and returned later from quite a different one.

 

[PeterC]

Certainly first generation Oyster cards will be charged the maximum fare. My experience of similar situations is that this may be refunded after a few days. I don't know how quickly they can correct this for second generation Oyster and contactless.

If you have registered your card you can check your account and apply for a refund if they missed you.

 

[bluegoblin7]

Travelling to Green Park, announcement en route that it was closed due to fire alarm activation. Later it was announced as now reopened. It was however packed. Up at the gateline all were open and constant announcements made to please walk straight through.

So large numbers now have an incomplete Oyster journey. Will all be charged the maximum fare? I don't regularly use the station and returned later from quite a different one.

Whilst you will almost certainly be charged a maximum fare initially, due to how the Oyster system works, this should be adjusted automatically within a few days. If you are being told to walk through the gates then generally staff will have arranged for auto-completion to be put in place. If you rarely use Green Park and touched back in from the other side of London it may not get picked up, but anywhere in that area should mop up. A call to the helpline would confirm either way.

Certainly first generation Oyster cards will be charged the maximum fare. My experience of similar situations is that this may be refunded after a few days. I don't know how quickly they can correct this for second generation Oyster and contactless.

If you have registered your card you can check your account and apply for a refund if they missed you.

All Oyster cards work the same way, irregardless of generation. With Contactless in theory this should happen in broadly real-time and the maximum charge never make it to your bank at the end of the day.

 

[Hadders]

It will try and auto correct based n your journey history.

Say you travelled from St Johns Wood to Green Park but were unable to touch out at Green Park but later made the return journey tapping out at both ends. The system will auto correct and assume your missing tap was Green Park.

 

[Mojo]

I’m surprised how the system will automatically complete journeys even if there is no previous history of such a journey being made. Earlier this year I did a journey from East Croydon to Gatwick Airport using a CPC, a couple of days later (after my holiday!) on my way back, I touched in at Gatwick Airport and when on the train went onto my online account and saw that the system had already guessed that my return journey was to East Croydon despite only having touched in at Gatwick Airport a few minutes earlier. I very rarely travel using Oyster/CPC and have probably only made about 3/4 journeys using any card linked to that account, none of which previously were to or from East Croydon aside from my outbound journey.

 

[MikeWh]

I find it will always guess the destination on a return trip if you touch in at the same touch out point of the previous journey. I've never left it a few days though. Perhaps airport stations are treated differently?

 

[Mojo]

I find it will always guess the destination on a return trip if you touch in at the same touch out point of the previous journey. I've never left it a few days though. Perhaps airport stations are treated differently?

Unless I’m misreading your post; that’s exaxtly what happenned in my case.

 

[MikeWh]

Unless I’m misreading your post; that’s exaxtly what happenned in my case.

Yes, you expressed surprise that it had done that. I wasn't so surprised, but queried whether it usually did it when the return was a few days later or whether that was just done at airport stations.

 

[Taunton]

Went through an Underground station today (4 days later), checked card history, still incomplete. We live on the DLR which I mostly use, whose machines are simpler and have no journey check feature, is unusual for me to be at a station where you can do it, so no way provided to even know this has happened.

 

[bluegoblin7]

It won't show up as a completed journey on the ticket machines, because of how the card technology works. It will show up as a completed journey on the web.

You would see an extra line pertaining to an Oyster top up (I forget the exact wording as I haven't dealt with Oyster for a while now) if a refund had been issued - this won't happen until you've used a gateline reader or platform validator.