Claim machines at station not correctly registering when they swipe out
West Ealing station. Picture: Mark Percy
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February 9, 2023
Commuters using the Elizabeth Line at West Ealing are complaining that they are being over-charged due to faulty equipment at the station.
Since the end of last week, there has been a significant number of reports from regular users of the station that they are being charged up to £17.80 for transport. A peak-time journey from Zone 1 to West Ealing should only cost £3.60. In some cases, the charge has been made daily meaning that the excess fares are approaching a total of £100.
All the people affected are adamant that they have swiped out correctly at the station and that the barriers appeared to be functioning when they made their trip.
One affected commuter contacted us to say, “Unlike some stations on London Overground, you have to swipe out at West Ealing to get through the barrier so it is impossible to ‘forget’ to do so. TfL do allow you to claim refunds if part of a journey is not registered correctly either through your own neglect or equipment failure but there is a limit to how many times they will do this in a given period. You can’t claim back more through your Oyster account and there is no obvious way to register a claim.
“Lots of people will be unaware that they are being over-charged at West Ealing because they are using contactless cards to pay rather than Oyster and may not have registered them. It remains to be seen if TfL will do the right thing but the more awareness of the issue the better so please can you highlight it.”
When we contacted TfL,
Andrew Anderson, Head of Customer Payments sai,: “Due to a power fault at West Ealing station, there was a delay with contactless journey information being processed this week. This fault has been rectified and customers who were overcharged will automatically have received refunds to correct their fares. In addition, our system automatically looks to assume regular journeys and complete them where a touch in or out is missing, which helped reduce the number of people affected by this issue.”
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