Please explain contactless card use on London Underground

andygb

My OH and I went up to London today for my annual checkup at hospital.
We parked in Westfield, and caught the tube to central London after taking advice from one of the London rail staff.
He kindly explained that we would be better off using our contactless debit cards, which would work out each at £6.60 for the day regardless of how many journies we made, as long as we swiped in and out after every journey.
At the time this seemed very reasonable, but after a while it just seemed too good to be true.
I have now looked up more information on the TFL site, and they seem very insistent that you have to physically touch the yellow bit with your card (something which we were not told), and although all the gates opened OK, I think I only scanned the card.
So, is the one off charge for a day of £6.60 (zones 1 and 2) correct, and should I have been actually touching the yellow sensor with my card?
I thought that "contactless" really meant CONTACTLESS.

jon81uk

All contactless, in a shop or on public transport relies on your tapping the card against the reader, it is contactless in the sense that your chip doens't need to go in the slot, you still need to place your card near or on the reader.

On the London Underground you always need to do something to open the barrier, either tap a bank card, tap an Oyster card or insert a paper ticket.

For contactless bank cards it will charge £2.40 each way (or more/less depending what zones) and then at night the system works out how much you spent and charges your bank account, reducing it down to the daily cap (£6.60) if you spent more than that.

But you need to open the barrier with the same card at each end for it to work out the right amount to charge you, as it needs to know where you got on & off to charge the correct fare.

If you want to see what fares were charged sign up for an account here http://contactless.tfl.gov.uk/

ibizafan_2

After getting some very helpful information on this forum about using contactless cards on the tube, we did just that a couple of Sundays ago, and it was so simple. Yes, we did touch the sensor with our cards in the same way that others use the Oyster card. Our total cost for the day was £4.80 each going from Euston to Gloucester Road and back. This saved us a shed load of money versus using a travel card. However, if the gates opened,I would assume that your cards registered.

AirlieBird

You don't need to physically touch the yellow reader with your card, but you do need to put it in close enough proximity to it so it can read the card.

elverson

If the gates opened then the card was picked up by the barrier.

[Deleted User]

elverson wrote: »

If the gates opened then the card was picked up by the barrier.

The very first contactless journey I ever made (Kew Gardens - Liverpool St) was charged at the maximum penalty fare because the gate didn't register the end of the journey, even though the green light lit and the gate opened.

andygb

jack_pott wrote: »

The very first contactless journey I ever made (Kew Gardens - Liverpool St) was charged at the maximum penalty fare because the gate didn't register the end of the journey, even though the green light lit and the gate opened.

Well if the green light came on and the gates opened, and you received a penalty fare, then IMO that contravened TFL's own rules.

andygb

Many thanks to everyone for the clarification of this. I will await the charges hitting my account.

[Deleted User]

andygb wrote: »

Well if the green light came on and the gates opened, and you received a penalty fare, then IMO that contravened TFL's own rules.

I don't think it's anything about breaking rules, just a technical fault. I got a refund, but it was a PITA, nearly half the refund went on protracted phone calls.

lammy82

It doesn't actually matter whether your card makes physical contact with the yellow spot - that's just a way to make sure people 'get it' that that's where the reader is and your card needs to be very close to it. If you hovered your card close enough that it opened the gates (both ends of your journey) then it has indeed read your card and you should be fine.

Hopefully you used a single card for all journeys, one card each. The most likely way to not get the 'daily cap' is for a person to have more than one contactless card (e.g. credit and debit) and to spread journeys between both of them.

If you do get hit with a penalty fare due to a 'tap' not registering then you can contact TFL via the phone or website and I have found they are generally good at adjusting the charge without fuss.

glider3560

andygb wrote: »

Many thanks to everyone for the clarification of this. I will await the charges hitting my account.

You can view the charges (and a full breakdown) immediately at https://contactless.tfl.gov.uk/UnregisteredCustomer/Show