Well I think you still misunderstand how contactless works. Your original thread title is wrong, you had not “paid for your journey beforehand”. At the time of inspection you are only ‘touched into the system’, and that’s what they are checking for, as per the conditions of use for both Oyster PAYG and contactless bank cards.
Yes, the transaction can't take place until it knows how much to charge you! I think if it's TfL's system, the payments are only processed at the end of the day to avoid overcharging if people make further journeys and hit the cap, so you may not even pay for the journey until some hours later.
I'd be interested to hear how you arrive at that assertion. Some superficial research hasn't revealed a legal definition of what constitutes a ticket in a contactless ticketing system and I doubt that it's an issue that has yet been considered by the courts. The Railway Byelaws of 2005 don't assign a meaning to the word; they merely set out a list of things that are included in the expression.
Fair enough. Serves me right for reading the headline and wanting to "geg" in.
That seems the critical point. If they had, he might've had a defence. Looks like paying up is the best resolution.
TfL Revenue Officers are equipped with a TfL warrant badge similar to a police officer, so that's more official. Of course, they always have the staff ID if required by passengers.
If you have genuine doubts about them you should NOT give them any details until you have been satisfied they are genuine.
I would think there are intermediate steps first, like finding another member of staff and asking them to confirm, or asking the suspect RPI if there is a phone number you call to establish his authenticity (e.g. to a manager). Or even sending a photo via DM on Twitter to the relevant TOC. Should all these fail, then yes summoning the BTP would probably be the next step.
Yes, although they may want to ask you what your concerns were to check you weren't just wasting everybody's time before moving onto the specific ticketing issue.
This whole thread is about the fact that there effectively isn’t a “ticket” to present when using a contactless bank card. I suspect all BTP would do is ask you to present the same bank card to the RPI’s gadget that you could have already done. I don’t believe that would help much.
To get us back on topic, the OPs problem was he didn't trust the scanner. If a BTP officer had examined the scanner and confirmed to him it didn't store any sensitive data, would he have been willing to scan the card?
It simply records a touch which is compared with other touches in and out in the overnight processing to establish whether or not to charge a maximum journey charge. All the RPI knows from the interaction is whether the card works or not.
How would the police officer know what the equipment does? I doubt a police officer could do more than confirm the authenticity of the RPI. And probably tell the OP to stop wasting his time.
I expect he would confirm the authenticity of the RPI and then ask a couple of questions like 'what data does it show you?'
Would a fake RPI would risk involving BTP ? Or even know the correct way to summon one ?
This….a few years back as I arrived home from work and went to unlock my front door a bloke suddenly appeared claiming to be from the water company, saying they were doing some work on the supply and that he needed to check my manhole cover. When I said I didn’t have one he insisted it would be in the back garden and asked to come through the house to the back. I was suspicious of his mannerisms and when I asked him for ID he became evasive, pointing to a van parked a few doors down the road and saying his ID was in the van and that he would finish off talking to my neighbours and then get the ID and show me it. I resorted to telling him to either show me his ID and work order now, or else get the f… off my property. He said alright, alright, no need for that, then went and got in the van and drove off….it was obviously sone sort of distraction scam where his mate would have sneaked into the house whilst I let him through to the back garden. Rang the police but they didn’t seem overly interested.