class411
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Post by class411 on Sept 27, 2012 11:20:26 GMT
Does anyone know why it is that TfL insist on you nominating a particular station for PayGo top ups to Oyster cards.
I sometimes like to walk from my arrival station in London but if it's chucking down I'll catch the train. The 'you must touch in at a specified station' rule means that I can't use the on line top up and retain flexibility.
According to the Oyster site you actually have to 'touch in' so I can't even activate the top up on a ticket machine.
I'd love to know the reason for this perversity as it there's a good one it will make it a lot less annoying.
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Post by trt on Sept 27, 2012 11:38:05 GMT
There's only a limited amount of time to do a table look up, and they have to go through the whole blacklist as well as the top-up list. You see, you don't actually need network or server look-up in order to process an Oyster transaction. Rather cleverly all the information you need for the charge is read from the card, a quick sum is done, which is local to that gateline, and the new balance applied back to the card. The whole process takes around 150ms.
I get your point about using the ticket machine to receive the credit from a web top up. But then if you distributed the top up table to ALL the ticket machines, then you'd have to delete the entry from a central server once it had been picked up and then propagate that change to all the ticket machines on the network again. The WAN is a weak link in the system, you see, so you have to design the system to work with only a LAN. Unless the card presented a list of recent top-up transactions to the reader, so that once a top up had been applied the reader wouldn't apply it again...
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class411
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Post by class411 on Sept 27, 2012 11:48:00 GMT
Excellent response.
Thanks.
Now I know there's a good reason it's no longer annoying.
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Post by peterc on Sept 27, 2012 11:57:21 GMT
I appreciate the difficulties but there is a limit to the amount of processing that the machine can do in the fraction of a second that it takes to touch in or out.
I don't know how ticket machines are controlled but I can think of several ways to use them to activate top ups. All would be very expensive when replicated across every station in the network and I really can't see that there would be sufficient demand to justify the cost.
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Post by norbitonflyer on Sept 27, 2012 12:13:13 GMT
I usually top up at a machine, but what annoys me is that refunds have to be obtained by touching in. As I do not use my Oyster for regular journeys other than by bus - I have a paper season ticket for my NR journey to work - I cannot predict with any certainty whether I will use any particular barrier line in the near future. And having to make a journey I would not otherwise have made simply to get a refund for a previous one defeats the object.
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Post by pakenhamtrain on Sept 27, 2012 12:32:39 GMT
It is possible to do. Our System Myki we can do on online top up and we can touch our cards on any FPD(Fare Payment device) or CVM(Card Vending Machine) on any bus, tram/tram stop or train station and there is is. The only catch is it can take 24 hours to appear. Although I have read in some cases it's only taken hours.
I suspect it can take so long is because the trams and buses don't pass the depot(The action list gets sent to depots and sent off to the vehicles when the vehicle passes by) that often.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2012 13:05:51 GMT
The problem as I see it is the use - or rather the insistence of use - of a normal touch in/touch out process for 'admin' type transactions. My thought would be that they should be doable at any ticket machine (self service or booking office), which would communicate with the back end system, and take local input, as required.
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Fahad
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Post by Fahad on Sept 27, 2012 20:45:27 GMT
Why can a top-up action not be sent to a specific POM in the way it can a specific UTS gate?
EDIT: This would also work for a bus, would it not?
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Post by superteacher on Sept 27, 2012 22:04:09 GMT
Auto top up can be picked up from ANY reader on the system, including buses, with no nomination of a particular station needed. So I suppose it could be done for normal top ups, but probably isn't for the reasons already stated earlier in the thread.
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Fahad
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Post by Fahad on Sept 27, 2012 22:08:27 GMT
There is a difference, though. As far as I'm aware, auto topup is applied by the backend server, when the reader uploads the touch and credit data (in the middle of the night for a station, when the cartridge is downloaded at the garage for a bus). The card is updated the next time it is seen
Secific top ups are applied by the reader, upon the server's instruction
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Post by andypurk on Sept 27, 2012 22:56:29 GMT
There is a difference, though. As far as I'm aware, auto topup is applied by the backend server, when the reader uploads the touch and credit data (in the middle of the night for a station, when the cartridge is downloaded at the garage for a bus). The card is updated the next time it is seen Secific top ups are applied by the reader, upon the server's instruction I think that Auto-top up is programmed on the card and is applied immediately. If there is a problem with the associated credit / debit card, then it gets dealt with at the end of the day. |
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Fahad
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Post by Fahad on Sept 27, 2012 23:38:43 GMT
That sounds logical, but I sincerely hope not... that's a gaping hole right there if so
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Post by andypurk on Sept 27, 2012 23:58:22 GMT
That sounds logical, but I sincerely hope not... that's a gaping hole right there if so What gaping hole? Remember that auto-top is only available on a registered Oystercard and with an active bank card and they know where you live  . The top up is applied when your balance goes below £8.00, so you wouldn't be able to get much 'free' before the system catches up with you overnight and your balance goes negative blocking your Oyster until you sort out the bank details. |
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Fahad
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Post by Fahad on Sept 28, 2012 0:08:00 GMT
Your address needn't actually be confirmed, and one can anonymously obtain a prepaid card using cash...
As for the point about not being able to get much, this is very true, although there are always things such as riverboat services, or even returning the card for a refund of credit+deposit
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Post by andypurk on Sept 28, 2012 8:05:00 GMT
Your address needn't actually be confirmed, and one can anonymously obtain a prepaid card using cash... If there is a problem, they can check the address with the bank, for tracing the user. Pre-paid cards are not free either and most seem to cost more than you might be able to defraud TfL for. Remember that they have to have worked to set up the initial auto top-up transaction and for a minimum £20.00 top up. An awful lot of work for very little profit. Returning the card is going to trigger any outstanding transaction on the bank card. As I understand it credit is only returned to the Auto top-up card associated with the Oyster; this certainly should be the case where credit cards are concerned as the banks insist on it. |
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Post by trt on Sept 28, 2012 10:25:24 GMT
There is a difference, though. As far as I'm aware, auto topup is applied by the backend server, when the reader uploads the touch and credit data (in the middle of the night for a station, when the cartridge is downloaded at the garage for a bus). The card is updated the next time it is seen Secific top ups are applied by the reader, upon the server's instruction I think that Auto-top up is programmed on the card and is applied immediately. If there is a problem with the associated credit / debit card, then it gets dealt with at the end of the day. Andypurk is quite right. You set up the auto-top-up through the website, nominate a gateline where you will 'activate auto-top-up' for your card, then when you go through that gateline it simply marks your card with the auto-top-up details and if the balance at the close of a journey is below £8, it adds the auto-top-up amount to the balance and stores that fact for later processing by the centralized back-end server. If there is a problem with the payment transaction, it will blacklist the card with an appropriate code (28, 30 or 35). I suppose this means that there might be a period where if you auto top up on the last day of the month and the payment transaction is not put through until the next day, then your payment card might have expired. I don't know if they can backdate a payment request by a day before sending it to the bank, or if they make your auto-top-up expire on the same day as your payment card (you entered the details on the web page). Hmm... Still, that's how it works. You can't set up an auto-top-up (which works anywhere) without having passed through a nominated pick-up point first. |
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jazza
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Post by jazza on Sept 28, 2012 10:51:00 GMT
I think that Auto-top up is programmed on the card and is applied immediately. If there is a problem with the associated credit / debit card, then it gets dealt with at the end of the day. Andypurk is quite right. You set up the auto-top-up through the website, nominate a gateline where you will 'activate auto-top-up' for your card, then when you go through that gateline it simply marks your card with the auto-top-up details and if the balance at the close of a journey is below £8, it adds the auto-top-up amount to the balance and stores that fact for later processing by the centralized back-end server. If there is a problem with the payment transaction, it will blacklist the card with an appropriate code (28, 30 or 35). I suppose this means that there might be a period where if you auto top up on the last day of the month and the payment transaction is not put through until the next day, then your payment card might have expired. I don't know if they can backdate a payment request by a day before sending it to the bank, or if they make your auto-top-up expire on the same day as your payment card (you entered the details on the web page). Hmm... Still, that's how it works. You can't set up an auto-top-up (which works anywhere) without having passed through a nominated pick-up point first. This actually happened to me one time. My debit card had expired when they tried to collect my auto top up payment. I received a system generated email requesting me to log in online and make a payment to cover the £20. Once I had done that the system then prompted me to update my debit card details and things were back to normal. |
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class411
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Post by class411 on Sept 28, 2012 12:55:33 GMT
Thanks to everyone who has added information to this thread.
It's now a lot clearer how the system works and it is also now clear that you do not need to use your 'nominated station' for auto top-ups.
Whilst the TfL site never suggested that you did, it wasn't clear whether this was just an oversight given the need for using a specific station to do a manual top up.
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