My Oyster craziness tale

What happened was that when you touched out at Paddington H&C the system assumed you were interchanging and would therefore be touching out at your destination station at the end of your single journey.

That your first journey appears free, and that you started your second journey at Ealing is an artifact of the non-intuitive way Oyster records journeys that involve an interchange through barriers. It charges you for your entire journey where you finally touch out, but records your individual journey legs as from your origin to the end of that leg and notes them as free.

For example, say you travelled from Stamford Brook to Royal Oak, incherchanging from the DR to the H&C at Hammersmith. Your PAYG journey would look something like this:

12:00 Stamford Brook - Hammersmith (Dist & Pic) £0.00
12:25 Stamford Brook - Royal Oak £1.00

It would be much more logical to record it as
12:00 Stamford Brook - Hammersmith (Dist & Pic) £1.00
12:10 Hammersmith (H&C) - Royal Oak £0.00

You got charged £4.00 because it interpreted your touching the oyster reader as an interchage rather than an exit. If you touched out with that card to exit at St Pancras then Oyster are in error and should refund you £2 (£4 - £2 off peak fare). If you didn't touch out with that card (e.g. if you touched out with your staff oyster) then you should still be refunded the same amount (fare to Paddington is the same as to St P) but would need to speak to someone with a brain at the oyster helpline.

16:47 would logically be the time you touched out at St Pancras, but as it doesn't know where you touched out I'm at a loss as to where it comes from.

The final journey suggests either that the reader at Paddington was faulty or that you touched in with one card and out with another. In the former case you were again overcharged £2.

There are signs on the bridge at Paddington that although Oyster is now valid on some FGW services, there are some journeys where it is still cheaper to user a paper ticket. My understanding however is that all fares within the greater London fare zones were now zonal based, so that it was the same price to travel between Z1 and Z3 by tube and by train, regardless of where in Z1 and where in Z3 you were travelling to and from.

It also interesting to note that at the top of page 15 of "Your Guide to Fares and Tickets. 2 January 2008 unitl further notice" (Page 8 (or 26, the numbering starts at 19 for some reason) in the PDF version) it states "If you use Oyster to pay as you go on the Tube, DLR, London Overground and some National Rail services, the system will look at your journeys in a 24 hour period (from 0430 and before 0430 the next day) and the amount you pay will be less than the price of an equivalent Day Travelcard.
If you also use buses or trams during this period these trips will be included in this price cap. Our aim is to ensure that Oyster always charges the lowest fare. Where it doesn’t we will refund the difference."
(my emphasis).

I have had many, many dealings with the Oyster helpline. The majority of the time I speak to people with a clue, this is not always the case though.

Contactless [1] assumptions are the fix for the programmer.

[1] vice carnets et al.

Oyster Pay as you go users must always touch in and touch out to avoid paying the maximum fare for your tube journey[/color][/size]

Penalty fare him I say ;D