Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Dear Transport for London

Having just moved from Zone 4 to Zone 6 on the London railway network, I've been trying to get my annual Travelcard (which is conveniently on an Oyster card) upgraded from being valid in zones 1-4 to being valid in zones 1-6. I thought this would be a fairly easy procedure. It must happen all the time, right? I ask them to do it, they tell me how much I owe them for the upgrade, I pay up, everything's sorted. It appears that it doesn't happen all the time, however - either that or I'm the first person to do so since Oyster was introduced.

Being a sensible kind of chap, the first thing I did was my research. The Oyster card website has a good set of FAQs which handle most eventualities, including this one. The result of that was that I had to ring the Transport for London refunds office at 55 Broadway for advice. They checked the availability of my current ticket and the time remaining (it's valid until October) before advising me that no, it shouldn't be a problem, and I should get the necessary form from a Tube station and return it to them. They'd take care of it.

So, off I went to Goodge Street. No problem, they said, and gave me a pink season ticket exchange form. Scrutiny made me decide that this was probably the wrong form (which it is - it doesn't work for Oyster cards), so the next time I was getting on the tube at Goodge Street I asked for the form I now needed I knew by name, having rung the Oyster helpdesk again to double check. This time they said they didn't have any, so going home that evening I went from Warren Street instead, where they did have had the right form. Just fill it in and hand it in at a tube station, they said. For information - the form is blue on white.

So I filled it in on the Northern Line and handed it in when I got to Waterloo. The ticket clerk looked at it like it was from Mars, then rang the helpdesk who confirmed what to do with it - just fax it to them and they'd get back to me explaining how much it would cost. Not a problem, I thought. I'd left over a week for this to get sorted out, as was required, so there was plenty of time.

The end of the next week came, and I realised that I hadn't heard anything back from them. Unfortunately, it was now too late to sort things out, so to avoid having to stand in a long queue at Surbiton ticket office every day to buy an extension I bit the bullet and bought a weekly 1-6 paper Travelcard to tide me over. On Monday I rang the Oyster refunds office again to find out what was going on and moan apologetically a bit.

The person on the end of the phone was informed and helpful. No, she said, they were wrong to insist on sending the form in last week. If the number of zones is being increased it's easy - any Tube station can take care of it, charge you the right amount of money and you'll be sorted. Oh, and send me that weekly 1-6 and I'll refund the cost as it's not something you should have had to buy. Oh, and tell the ticket clerk that if they've got any problems to ring us for assistance. Hooray, I thought! It'll be sorted by this evening!

Evening came. I took the tube to Waterloo on my way home and called in at the ticket office. There was only one window open. "Fill in this form", said the ticket clerk, handing me... an Altered Availability form. I meekly wandered off to an empty ticket window and filled in the form. Didn't take long, as I'd done it before. Then I rejoined the queue, which by now had about 12 people in it, all of whom seemed to be wanting things like their first period Travelcard, and didn't know what zones they wanted it for, and didn't have a photocard.. in short, the queue moved at a glacial pace. After a while another clerk turned up (he'd probably been on his break, and I don't begrudge that) so the queue moved a bit faster. I got to the front eventually.

You can probably guess what happened next. The clerk looked at the form as if it was written in Cuneiform, conferred with his colleague and did the right thing - rang the Oyster helpdesk to check what the procedure was. This time they told him that the thing to do was to fax the form to them, as they had to authorise the transaction and work out how much extra I'd had to pay. Reduced availability with a refund could be done on the spot, while increased availability had to be worked out centrally. This was the reverse of what I'd been told on the phone earlier that day, and as the refunds office had told me to be clear with the ticket clerk that they could do increased availability on the spot, I was. The poor ticket clerk was clear - he'd have to fax the form off to the altered availability office marked "urgent" and it would be taken care of by the appropriate office tomorrow. I reluctantly agreed after a little, er, spirited debate (you can probably appreciate that I was getting to the end of my tether). After leaving the ticket window I growled loudly in frustration and said "I HATE THE LONDON UNDERGROUND TICKETING SYSTEM!" to the world at large. Sorry for the passers-by who were surprised by that, and thanks to the various passers-by who said that yes, they hated it too...

After getting to Surbiton I thought I'd get yet another opinion, so rang the Oyster helpline. This time the answer was categorical - yes, the ticket clerk had done the right thing, and yes, they did have things the right way round, and no, I shouldn't have been told that zone increases could be done on the spot. She offered to check with the relevant office and gave me her name and the hours she's working today in case I need to get back to her about it.

So, let's see how things go on Tuesday. So far - four phone calls, three forms, four Underground ticket queues. At this point I'd like to publicly apologise to Rommel in the Waterloo ticket office for giving him a hard time - I was just absolutely positive that I had the right information, but it seems that actually I, er, didn't. The reason for this is that different people keep giving me different information - I think that (at least, concensus indicates that) what I have now is the right information, so fingers crossed. This is in danger of turning into the Monty Python Gas Cooker Sketch.

Posted by mpk at May 25, 2004 10:06 AM | TrackBack