back to article New Oyster online service goes live at TfL

Transport for London (TfL) has launched an online service for Oyster card holders, which allows them to look back over their journey history and fares paid. London's transport authority hopes that the online account will allow season ticket or pay-as-you-go users to easily check that they have been correctly charged for their …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    2 of the most annoying things on the underground

    1) being stuck behind someone using a paper ticket.

    2) having the stupid card reader decide not to read your card today, but the one next to it reads it no problem. (Made more annoying becouse you know how annoying it is to be stuck behind someone who has the same problem.)

    1. Stuart Castle Silver badge

      Another two

      In fairness this doesn't happen so much on the Underground, but my local SouthEastern station has ticket barriers with Oyster as well...

      1) Being stuck behind a group of people who don't get their tickets or oyster cards ready and fart around for 5 minutes looking in various bags/pockets etc. Especially when they could have been looking while queuing behind someone else who has just done the same thing.

      2) Being stuck, in the rain, queuing to get off the platform partly because of the above people, and partly because people are scared of being wet even for a couple of seconds, so put down their umbrella at the last second before they go and do the above.

      If that doesn't make sense, you probably need to know that my local station has the ticket machines outside, but the station roof has been extended to cover them.

      1. Anomynous Coward

        Almost everything about all of it is annoying - certainly any aspect involving people inconsiderately attempting to travel at the same time as me.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      3) Having someone who was lined up to go through the gate next to you suddenly deciding to swerve into your lane, because the person in front of -them- was taking an extra 0.5 seconds to get through. I've developed almost a sixth sense about this now, and have a shoulder ready to nudge them back into their original lane...

    3. Irongut

      Yeah coz those dirty types who don't live in London shouldn't be allowed on your nice shiny trains. Right?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        A little piece of your humanity dies when you live or work in London.. glad to have left 12yrs ago and dont miss it at all..

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Shiny?

        Have you been to London since 1967?

      3. dubno
        Alert

        correction....

        The trains are neither nice nor shiny....

    4. TRT Silver badge

      Annoying things on the Underground

      Those damned wheeled bags. Not that the bags themselves are bad, but the people dragging them around... when they turn 90° straight across your path especially at the top of an escalator... RAAAAARRRRRR!!!!

  2. CraPo
    FAIL

    What's new?

    Been able to do this for years. Still seems to have the time delay lag as well. Why can't it be real time?

    1. Andrew Torrance 1

      Re: What's new?

      If I recall correctly, the buses aren't wired up to the live system, and only download the usage when they return to depot. Doing it all real-time wouldn't be reliable or fast enough (even at stations the second saved compared to reading a paper ticket significantly increases throughput)

    2. Ed

      Re: What's new?

      The stations all have local copies of the main database, they only sync up with the central database each night (between 1 and 3 in the morning I believe).

      Until recently, this data used to be manually uploaded into the system we see, that's not automated. The delay before you see the data should now be shorter too, I believe.

      See the comments on http://www.oyster-rail.org.uk/2012/03/journey-history-2nd-update/ by "oysteronline".

  3. min

    Why not just..

    ..send a weekly email, like a receipt of sorts, which just tells each oyster user of their usage within the period in question. that way, those who want the emails regularly, will get them. and those who need them occasionally, for expenses or whatever, will also get them.

    but i suppose this can cause issues. imagine your other half getting your oyster usage data and asking you why you go so regularly to Hammersmith after finishing work early when you both live in Harrow or something!

    p.s. the most annoying thing on the underground is people getting annoyed when other peoples cards fail or when tourists are using the transport service. selfish ba^tards.

    oh, and my failure to care to use caps.

  4. Feival

    What's new?

    Hasn't this service been live for a couple of years. Admittedly it was improved about 6 months ago but I have been using this for my expenses for around 2 years?

    1. Hieronymus Howerd

      Re: What's new?

      Oh good, not just me then. I've been using that feature for ages too. Perhaps we were the guinea pigs that the article mentions.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What's new?

      Yes, this service has been around since at least 24th June 2006 which was when I first downloaded my usage data.

      On annoyances:

      1. Why can't TfL put proper gates on the DLR stations, rather than those little pillars dotted miles away from anywhere? I've just noticed that an infrequent trip to West India Quay and from Canary Wharf, I had forgotten to touch in/out and got hammered.

      2. When they have weekend engineering work and/or "tickets are accepted on other modes of transport", why do I have to get charged twice if TfL have forced me to change a normal 1-leg journey into 2? I.e. when can they be a bit more intelligent and know your usual routes and realistic time to get from 1 station to the next (walking etc)? NB, yes, I often use PAYG Oyster rather than a weekly travelcard (works out cheaper if only to/from work directly and not going out at weekends).

  5. Silverburn
    Unhappy

    I note the article says "Correctly charged", not "fairly charged".

    Rip off b******'s.

    1. Chad H.

      Well

      Given that the cost of tickets does not cover the entirety of TFL's budget, I'm wondering who exactly is getting "Ripped off" here, becuase it doesnt seem to be the Ticket holder.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Whats New

    I agree with the above - TFL is trumpeting an online account as a 'new service' ... yet I have had online access to my Oyster pre-pay billing and usage ever since Oyster went live.

    The only thing I see has changed, is that it no longer shows the initial pre-emptive debit(*) that Oyster makes with a subsequent balancing credit - which did make it confusing as hell to work out what you had actually been charged.

    The revised web interface only shows you the net deduction - a lot clearer, but conveniently hiding TFL's nefarious pre-charging scheme.

    (*) which is what burns you if you don't 'touch out' at the end of your journey.

  7. adamgarretty

    Cool, now every time I use the DLR I can see how much I have or haven't been charged.

    I think the down votes on the comments complaining about the people who take forever at ticket barriers are the London tourists. After a month in London, even the mildest meek from quietsvilles in shyland turns into the "I'm too important for these chumps" Londoner. Miss a train by a second and you have to wait THREE MINUTES FOR THE NEXT ONE - THIS IS RIDICULOUS...

    They should add a breakdown of what each error code means as well. Seek assistance - and interrupt the endless coffee break of TfL staff all huddled together who can see you have a problem but would rather watch the chaos ensue behind.

    But in all fairness - I'm 7 months into London and it surprises me still that the amount of people that gets around the capital at a fairly quick pace.

    1. the-it-slayer
      Go

      It's all in the placing...

      I've been commuting in and out of London for the past year now and that's more than enough time to work out where you should stand on the platform (so you don't have to walk to the exit) and roughly know when the trains depart.

      I don't go to extremes to get in perfectly on-time as I always give myself a 30 minute buffer. I travel on National Rail for 30 minutes first (and that particular line can be notorious for delaying you by 30 minutes quite easily as it's single lane trains up until 2 stations down the line.

      Really don't understand why Oyster can't be rolled out across the whole train network. Would cut admin costs down for sure! I hate taking both my season ticket and Oyster card together.

    2. TRT Silver badge
  8. totalpacketloss

    Yep - I thought I was going mad till I read the comments.

    I've been using this system for my expenses for months ( in fact years with the previous screen layout )

    Is the next Reg story about a backlog of journalistic stories making onto the front page ?

  9. CM
    FAIL

    Missing a trick

    The usage is similar to before, what is missing is any way to report or rectify faults such as the one I suffered where a transfer at LVic was treated as a brand new journey. Slog it to the call centre to fix. Some peeps have said they can email these in but it's never worked for me - /dev/null

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