Workers' Liberty

'Auto-completion' seemed to be playing some kind of joke on passengers over the bank holiday weekend - which of course made life more difficult for staff too.

At start of traffic on Saturday all Oyster readers clapped out. The whole lot of them - Underground, Overground, DLR, buses, national rail. Why?

Tubeworker has reported previously on management's decidedly unhelpful hints to ticket sellers. Here's another one ...

Management have a handy hint for ticket sellers. If someone asks for a quid's credit to be added to their Oyster card and tenders a twenty pound note, ask them "Are you sure you wouldn't like more credit than that?".

Management reckon the Ticket Office Procedures Handbook is a wee bit bulky; a tad old-fashioned; and perhaps as not as user-friendly as it could be.

Wide Aisle Gates (WAGs) were recently been installed at Euston.

LUL management seem to be on a frenzy of getting us to fill in forms.

One of the (many) problems with the way Oyster is set up is that when visitors leave the country, they often miss out on claiming back their £3 deposit or unused pre-pay because they can't find an open ticket office with a short enough queue to make it worthwhile cashing in their chips.

Bank holiday Monday, and the BBMS advises us that auto-completion/continuation is in operation, but will only work if customers do NOT touch out.

So we've spent the whole year up til now telling punters that they absolutely MUST touch in and out on pain of losing chunks of money off their Oyster credit, but today we have to tell them to do the exact opposite?!

Noticed how all the choccy machines on the platforms have been taken out of service? Apparently, not only does LUL want to squeeze more passengers onto the platform, it also wants to move away from retail provision at platform level!

'Free Oyster cards' scream the headlines, and of course lots of people don't read on and examine the small print. Which says that no, you can't just walk up to a ticket office to get yours, you have to apply online or phone up.

On the DLR, a certain Service Team Leader is causing grief amongst staff. He has developed a nasty habit of taking people to one side and giving them an ear-bashing about penalty fares. Some people might call his behaviour 'bullying'. Especially if he pressurises staff working alone on trains to dish out penalty fares and put themselves in danger of a punch in the face.

The eagle-eyed amongst us spotted some time ago that ticket office windows that used to have illuminated signs above them saying "Assistance and Tickets" now have signs simply saying "Assistance".

Hmmm. It seems that the unions asked why this might be, and management helpfully replied that it was so that customers did not get "confused".

Management's latest ruse to replace ticket offices, and therefore ticket office staff, is to sell Oyster cards from vending machines. The machines will be operated by (yet another) private company.

Creeping privatisation continues to creep into more and more parts of the job. The latest is the Fraud Survey, which LUL wants to sell off. Yet another contractor will mean yet more fragmentation, and yet another company organising for profit rather than for the good of the railway.

Today there has been a sudden flurry of '01' codes on ticket gates. It's the code for 'bad data'.

The reason, apparently, is that paper 16/17 photocards are no longer valid, so gates reject the associated Oysters.

Using Oyster - especially with the new punitive charges on people who do not touch in and touch out correctly - relies on a robust system for dealing with service disruption. If someone touches in and makes their way to the platform only to find the service suspended, they have the right to leave the station and continue their journey without losing money from their Oyster.

... cos there will be fireworks on that day.

Anyone who fails to touch in and out with their Oyster card will find themselves charged the full cash fare for the journey. They will find that out when they try to travel again later in the day only to discover they have not enough money on the Oyster. And then they will get really really cross. Understandably so.

As ESAF rolls on, MFs are getting a whole five hours training in how the system works. Some people might suggest that is not enough. We will certainly need a longish period of grace to make mistakes without getting into trouble.

MFs are getting five hours' training on ESAF. Some might say that's really not enough, so there had better be a decent period of grace for people to make mistakes on the new system without getting into trouble.

Four quid for a Zone 1 single cash fare?! Is Livingstone having a laugh?! He might thing he is encouraging people onto Oyster, but the truth is that he is ripping passengers off. And to think this man made his name over twenty years agao with a policy called Fares Fair!

On the subject of ESAF, management have a plan to get CTS technicians to use it. This is an attack both on CTS techs, as it increases their workload, and on LUL MF staff. If they can get someone else to do part of your job, then they'll be after gettig rid of your job!

As the company rolls out ESAF, MFs have good reason to be concerned about the new Surplus and Loss Monitoring System.

You'll no longer declare a balance at the end of your duty, so you'll have less opportunity to find and put right any discrepancies. Instead, the system will on on your case, seding off reports to your manager and getting you into trouble.

The BBC reports that the police are using Oystercards as a way of tracking people's journeys. In January, police requested journey information 61 times, compared with just seven times in the whole of 2004. 229 of the 243 requests made by police to access records were granted.

Hypothetically, say there was a GSM who insisted that it was safe to leave UTS gates in service when there are no staff present to monitor them. Even with the ticket office closed, and even if the Station Supervisor was otherwise engaged and did not believe it to be safe ...

Mayor Ken has dealt another blow to both passengers and staff by scrapping the Family Travelcard, leaving people with kids paying up to twice as much to get about London. Of course if, facing this 100% fare hike, they decide to get around in the family car, then Ken is going to sting them with the Congestion Charge. So whichever way – they pay.

So Ken Livingstone thinks that the Penalty Fare should go up to £40 or even £50.

He reckons that this will be a 'real' disincentive to fare evasion. Obviously, it won't be much of a disincentive to the likes of him and his various commissioners, advisers and other hangers-on. On their £100k+ salaries, fifty quid is a mere drop in the ocean.

What’s the slogan for Oyster? Faster, smarter, cheaper, Oyster.

So what’s the slogan for the Oyster helpline? Slower, busier, useless, infuriating, Oyster?

The Advertising Standards Authority has slapped TfL's wrists and ordered the removal of one of the latest Oyster posters. You know that rather witty 'blue is the new pink' one? Well, it gave people the impression that Oyster is as useful as a One-Day Travelcard, which - if you travel on parts on the mainline railway - it isn't.

London Underground believe that the Oyster card is the answer to all their staffing problems. Who needs ticket sellers when you can just top up your ticket at one of the many pass agents as you would your phone?
The company envisage a cash-less System within the next few years. No booking offices and Passenger machines that will only take cards.