I cannot endorse this strategy. I am not confident at all it will get you anywhere. As I said before, if you have some recommendations for TfL then do it as such, not as a complaint.
I wasn't proposing a complaint to TfL, necessarily. I certainly would put more blame on the Train Operator in this case, since (as I have found) there is very little information to explicitly state that Oyster and Contactless is not valid to Gatwick. However, that TfL advert stating "go contactless, go anywhere" is very definitely misleading, as there are even places within London
operated by TfL where you can't use Contactless (on the 15H bus, for instance)!
By your logic because Oxford Airport is now called London Oxford Airport, someone unfamiliar with the system should be allowed to get away with trying to pay with Oyster / Contactless at Oxford. I cannot see reasoning along such lines being successful.
Oxford Airport is nowhere near as busy as Gatwick, and Oxford is (one would hope) internationally known to be outside London as it is a town in its own right, 51 miles away. I have already demonstrated that Oyster is valid to Amersham, which about the same distance away from London as Gatwick.
However, I
do believe that, on all trains where Oyster is valid for part of the journey, but not all, this should be advertised extremely clearly both on the CIS and on-board. This does not happen, and it is simply not good enough when Oyster/Contactless has been sold to the customer as a "go anywhere, never bother buying a ticket again" product. (I know this is mainly TfL's doing, but the mainline TOCs have a lot to answer for too, by merrily advertising Contactless availability within the zones without disclaimers about the boundary.)
If you make an incorrect assumption, there are consequences, some being more expensive than others. That's life. You learn from these mistakes and make sure you don't do it again.
Fine, and I absolutely agree that the responsibility for checking they have the right ticket ultimately rests with the passenger (certainly from a legal perspective.) But:
Trying to pin the blame on someone else because your hands are not being held step by step is hardly going to be at all helpful. The overwhelming majority of people do not have a problem with understanding the validity area of Oyster / Contactless, including many who have no knowledge of the system, so I am not convinced by your argument whatsoever.
This is not about one's hand being held: it is about people's expectations being built up by various publicity saying that Contactless/Oyster is "cheaper than paper tickets, and more convenient," to the point where they make a perfectly reasonable assumption based on the information available, and then getting caught out when they find out it is only valid within London, and sometimes a little bit outside London but not all of the time. The caveats need to be clearly and explicitly advertised.
If this were publicity for (e.g.) mortgages, it would be required that the APR is shown, along with a disclaimer that "if you fail to keep up repayments you could have your home repossessed." Why on earth can the advertisements extolling Contactless as the best thing since sliced bread not have a disclaimer, "You cannot use Contactless to travel beyond London Zone 6 on our services. You must buy a ticket if you want to travel further, including to Gatwick or Brighton, or you may have to pay a Penalty Fare"?
At the end of the day, Contactless is not cash, nor is its acceptance universal like regular credit and debit cards, so I am quite surprised that your default position is one of assuming acceptance until else rather than assuming non-acceptance until you find affirmation.
Once again,
you and I know that Contactless's acceptance is not universal because we are familiar with the system, and, I would be willing to bet, familiar with the history and the politics behind Oyster and Contactless roll-out.
But how should other people be expected to know this? How should someone who rarely takes public transport, but has seen a poster saying "go contactless, go anywhere" (with no disclaimer and no clear assertions to the contrary) be expected to know this? How should someone who has visited from a foreign country, and while trying to queue for a ticket at Victoria sees the poster saying "Contactless is cheaper" (with no clear assertion that it is not valid beyond Zone 6) be expected to know this?
Bear in mind that many of the general public have difficulty even telling the difference between trains operated by various Train Operating Companies.
----
And the thread goes
into another loop.
This is a straw man argument.
No-one was suggesting that someone could turn up in one of the other Londons (none of which, by the way, is accessible from London, England without crossing some body of water) with London transport publicity and expect to be allowed to travel according to the TfL terms and conditions.
I, and others,
are suggesting that it needs to be made extremely clear, to customers travelling
from London, that if they want to go
out of London,
including to stations which one might assume ARE in London but are not, they need to buy the correct ticket. Otherwise these people will continue to be caught out.
As I have suggested, this can be done very easily, by doing the following:
- Displaying notices on the CIS for each train that "the last stop for Oyster/Contactless on this train is [STATION]";
- Hanging posters inside the train stating clearly that if you intend to travel outside London, you need to buy a paper ticket;
- Making announcements on the approach to the last station in the Zones that anyone paying by Oyster needs to get out here and buy a ticket to continue their journey;
- Ensuring that publicity for Oyster and Contactless states clearly that you cannot use it to travel outside London, including to popular destinations that customers might assume is in London, but isn't.
As for stations outside London: you could, for stations close to the boundary, do what South West Trains have done and put clear signs on the barriers, ITSO validators and station platforms, saying "Oyster is not valid here". But even for these, and
definitely for stations well outside the former Network SouthEast area, customers who intend to travel
from these stations would very quickly realise their mistake, as they wouldn't be able to touch in!
This is not about hand-holding or nanny-stating, it is about TOCs being helpful to people who are, after all,
hoping to use their services and pay the correct fare, without committing a Byelaw offence in the process.
