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OEP penalty fare notice appeal

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to appeal against Penalty Fare Notice number [number], a copy of which is enclosed as requested.

This notice was issued to me on Friday 6 August when I arrived at London Bridge station, having touched in with my Oyster card at Bexleyheath station.

My Oyster is loaded with an annual Zones 3 to 5 Travelcard. On all Transport for London (TfL) rail services, and until Friday on all National Rail services (including most frequently Southeastern, my local rail company), I have been able to touch in within my Travelcard’s zones and touch out outside them, and have the appropriate fare for the part of the journey not covered by the Travelcard deducted automatically from the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) balance stored on my card.

Indeed, this is how it has worked for years on TfL services, long before Oyster PAYG was accepted on National Rail. While I am a relative newcomer to having an annual Travelcard, before we moved house in May it was my wife who had one of these so we have many years’ experience of them (hers was Zones 3 to 6 at our old house so she had five months’ experience of Oyster PAYG on National Rail before we moved and her experiences were the same as mine).

I enclose with this letter a Journey History report which I requested from TfL after I’d been issued with this penalty. This Journey History report shows clearly – I have highlighted several examples – how I have on numerous occasions touched in in Bexleyheath after work and then travelled to London, touched out at (for instance) Waterloo East, and thus had the appropriate fare deducted. This is exactly how Oyster is supposed to work, providing great convenience and flexibility. (For instance if I touched in at Bexleyheath to travel home to Lewisham, but while on the train received a phone call inviting me up to London for an evening out, Oyster offers that kind of flexibility as I can just touch out there rather than needing to know in advance and buy a paper extension ticket.)

So I was astonished on Friday when, at London Bridge, I tried to touch out as normal and got a “Seek Assistance” message, only to be told (when I sought assistance from Southeastern staff) that I required an ‘Oyster Extension Permit’ (OEP) to travel outside my Travelcard’s zones, and because I had never heard of this I was liable for a penalty fare!

The staff there would simply not listen to my reasoning that I had done this type of journey dozens of times before without any problems, and instead simply kept insisting that OEPs had been a requirement from day one of Oyster on National Rail back in January, so I had no excuse! My wife had never heard of or used an OEP in her five months with a Travelcard, and the same went for me in the past two months, but we had never before been unable to touch out outside our zones after touching in within them, and had always had the correct fare deducted for the difference between where we had travelled to and where our Travelcard was valid.

It seems that without warning Southeastern have reprogrammed their ticket gates to prevent people without OEPs loaded onto their Oysters from touching out, and are now issuing penalty fare notices to people in the same breath with which they first reveal the existence of OEPs to them. I can’t believe anyone has heard of these without first experiencing a problem like this: there is clearly no mention of them on any of Southeastern’s big posters encouraging Oyster PAYG use on their Metro services, so the only assumption that anyone seeing such a poster could come to would surely be that the terms and conditions of use would be the same as those they are used to from TfL services, which have always accepted Oyster PAYG.

The Southeastern staff member who was issuing my penalty fare was showing me an Oyster leaflet and telling me that this leaflet, with a paragraph or two explaining OEPs tucked away in it somewhere, would have been given to me when I got my Oyster. I can categorically state that (a) it wasn’t, because I got my Oyster card years ago before Oyster was accepted on National Rail so OEPs did not exist, and (b) when I got my travelcard loaded onto my Oyster two months ago at North Greenwich, no-one mentioned OEPs to me then either, or gave me any leaflets. The only things I came away with from that transaction were a receipt and a gold record card.

The Southeastern staff member was insistent that nothing had changed recently and that OEPs had always been required, but just a few weeks ago (late June) I was travelling up to Waterloo East almost every night after work and during that week there were at least two manual ticket inspections at the top of the slope up from the platform at the station. I held out my Oyster card containing my Zones 3 to 5 Travelcard, which I had touched in at Bexleyheath, and the staff read it, nodded me through and simply said to make sure I touched out on the way out, which of course I did, as I always do. This suggests that not only have the gates been reprogrammed, but also the staff were not, even that recently, looking for OEPs or penalising people for lacking them. In fact, it would have been a perfect opportunity for Southeastern to have educated people in my situation about OEPs without penalty, but instead they simply kept quiet and nodded me through so I remained none the wiser about this requirement until Friday’s penalty was issued to me.

If you are familiar with Waterloo East station, you will know that it is perfectly possible to exit this station without touching out, by going via Waterloo station. As an illustration of the honesty and good faith with which I have always used the railways, you will notice that I touched out every day when travelling from Bexleyheath to Waterloo East, even though were I dishonest I could have walked past the Oyster touch-out points and allowed the Oyster system to assume I had exited at a station within my Travelcard zones without touching out. (I assume from reading up on OEPs that tackling this alternative dishonest behaviour is the point of OEPs, although I don’t understand why the entire TfL network has been able to cope without OEPs for years and only the National Rail network is deemed at risk of Travelcard holders not touching out. After all, almost all DLR stations are ungated for instance so the risk exists for TfL too.)

So, in summary, I am appealing against this penalty fare notice for the following reasons:

• Southeastern had taken no steps whatever to make me aware of the requirement for OEPs prior to this attempt to penalise me for not having one. I therefore had no idea I was supposed to have one and I believe their failure to publicise OEPs alongside publicity for Oyster PAYG on their services means they have no right at all to enforce these anyway.
• Had the gates not been reprogrammed not to allow me out at London Bridge, I would have touched out as I always had done in the past and paid the correct Oyster fare, exactly as if I had loaded an OEP, so there was clearly no intention for me to evade paying a fare.
• Southeastern staff had previously inspected and approved me undertaking this exact method of travel – touching in within my zones and out beyond them without an OEP – on several occasions, thereby reinforcing my understanding that there was nothing wrong with what I was doing, and completely contradicting their claims now that OEPs have always been a requirement since day one of Oyster PAYG on National Rail.

Of course, now I know about the requirement for OEPs, I will queue up at a ticket machine before every journey which will start within and end outside my zones to add one to my Oyster card, even though this destroys the turn-up-and-go convenience of Oyster PAYG.

However, I do think Southeastern’s case against me is so weak, for the reasons bulleted above, that I am unconvinced that these OEPs would be enforceable on anyone without a major publicity campaign involving contacting all holders of Oyster-held Travelcards, providing the information alongside the issuing of such travelcards in all sources from now on, etc. It seems astonishing for Southeastern (or any other rail company) to suggest that all Travelcard-holding customers should somehow be aware of something which has gone unpublicised, spent seven months being unenforced and unmentioned even during manual ticket inspections, and which is a significant variation from the standard way in which Oyster has always worked previously (and still does on all the non-National Rail services in London).

I look forward to hearing from you soon and to the cancellation of my Penalty Fare Notice – and hopefully ultimately to the abolition of OEPs! In the mean time I shall be loading one on my Oyster for future trips to London because, despite the way I have been treated by Southeastern, I am not out to defraud anyone of any money and have instead always been an honest and very frequent customer of their services, for business and leisure.

Yours faithfully,

[me]

Additional information:
Oyster card number: [number]
Journey date and time: [details]