Oyster/TfL "[No touch-out]" journey help

[BruceS]

Hello all,


I recently went on a trip down south to London with some friends and we got Oyster cards at Russell Sq and applied the 16-25 railcard to them - thinking this would be the cheapest way to travel around London when we know for sure that we will hit the daily cap. We also assumed tapping out of stations would end a trip and not contribute to the maximum journey time. I put the trip details down below.

I understand that for the Russell Square to Kew Gardens (if this is considered one trip, even with a break of 20 minutes at Waterloo to eat) this exceeded the 110 minutes (1h50m) journey time. Also the return combined exceeded the 110 minutes journey time by a mere minute. My questions are:

1. Is what is displayed because of exceeding the maximum journey time?
2. How come the 20 minute break at Waterloo was not enough to break the trip into two parts? How long do I have to wait before it counts are two seperate trips?
3. Is there a cheaper way to travel around via strange routes that doesn't break the bank when the maximum trip time is exceeded?

I have phoned up TfL who didn't provide anything more than "trust the system, it is right" to my questions.

______


We went from Russell Sq to Kew Gardens by taking the Piccadilly Line from Russell Sq to Holborn, Central Line to Bank, Waterloo & City Line to Waterloo. We had a short break (20 minutes) to get some food at Waterloo. Finally we took SWR from Waterloo to Richmond and Overground to Kew Gardens.



On return we went District Line from Kew Gardens to Richmond, SWR from Richmond to Waterloo (the long way round via Strawberry Hill for a scenic tour) and Southeastern from Waterloo East to London Bridge.



All in all ended up being a very expensive day out:

 

[Tetchytyke]

If you are intending to travel around a lot inside the system then the best option remains using a paper ticket.

There are a number of out of station interchanges (OSIs) which treat a subsequent tap in as a continuation of the previous journey, rather than a new journey. The full list, and the interchange time allowed, is included in the link above. In this case, the OSI between Waterloo LU and Waterloo NR is 40 minutes (NB the OSI between Waterloo NR and Waterloo LU is 20 minutes, reflecting the different frequency of services) and, for your evening trip, the OSI between Waterloo NR and Waterloo East is 30 minutes.

If you ring the TfL helpline they will (usually) assist you in adjusting the balances if you explain that you've inadvertently exceeded the maximum journey time because of the OSIs.

If you do use contactless or Oyster then the most effective way of breaking an OSI is to touch in on a bus between exiting one gateline and entering the next. This will apply a charge but if you're going to hit the cap anway it doesn't matter.

 

[PeterC]

If you touched out on an exit gate then getting the journey properly completed should be trivial.

 

[hkstudent]

Hello all,


I recently went on a trip down south to London with some friends and we got Oyster cards at Russell Sq and applied the 16-25 railcard to them - thinking this would be the cheapest way to travel around London when we know for sure that we will hit the daily cap. We also assumed tapping out of stations would end a trip and not contribute to the maximum journey time. I put the trip details down below.

I understand that for the Russell Square to Kew Gardens (if this is considered one trip, even with a break of 20 minutes at Waterloo to eat) this exceeded the 110 minutes (1h50m) journey time. Also the return combined exceeded the 110 minutes journey time by a mere minute. My questions are:

1. Is what is displayed because of exceeding the maximum journey time?
2. How come the 20 minute break at Waterloo was not enough to break the trip into two parts? How long do I have to wait before it counts are two seperate trips?
3. Is there a cheaper way to travel around via strange routes that doesn't break the bank when the maximum trip time is exceeded?

I have phoned up TfL who didn't provide anything more than "trust the system, it is right" to my questions.

______


We went from Russell Sq to Kew Gardens by taking the Piccadilly Line from Russell Sq to Holborn, Central Line to Bank, Waterloo & City Line to Waterloo. We had a short break (20 minutes) to get some food at Waterloo. Finally we took SWR from Waterloo to Richmond and Overground to Kew Gardens.

View attachment 165633

On return we went District Line from Kew Gardens to Richmond, SWR from Richmond to Waterloo (the long way round via Strawberry Hill for a scenic tour) and Southeastern from Waterloo East to London Bridge.

View attachment 165636

All in all ended up being a very expensive day out:

View attachment 165637

Rather than call in, would be easier to do in writing in web form complaint, to let the staff to read and understand the idea before giving you a call back.
It’s likely that you are unlucky to get to a staff not willing to dig into details over tight time of phone conversations

 

[Haywain]

In addition to the comment above about using paper tickets, I would say that if you are going to take the 'scenic' or roundabout route on a journey while using Oyster or contactless you need to be aware of the maximum journey times or how to break the journey at some point en route.