When is a delay not a delay?

Quite an adventure this morning: traffic problems made me miss my original train from Hampton Court, so I had to wait half an hour for another.  In the absence of any advice to the contrary from my previous post, I'm going to continue not charging for this form of delay.

However, I am going to charge for the three minutes' delay arriving in Waterloo on the train I did take, which was due to being held at a red signal outside Vauxhall because of overcrowding.

I'm also going to charge for the reasons behind this, which were chaos caused by the suspension of the Victoria Line (irrelevant to me) and an earlier signal failure on the Bakerloo Line (which I needed to take), the latter causing a further minute of delay.  I suspect that these delays worked in my favour, because given TfL was advertising 'severe' delays on the Bakerloo Line this morning, I think the 09:37 I caught was probably a very delayed earlier tube - and it's only my final delay that counts.  You lucked out, TfL!

Or did it?  I make this three new strikes for this week's Tube Bingo card: overcrowding, red signal, and signal failure, to be added to yesterday's sitting in a tunnel for no reason.  My card for the week is below, and I'll add another 4 minutes and £10 to the tally.

Finally, I note at Hampton Court station, South West Trains has removed its poster asking you to vote for their employees in National Customer Service Week.  Do we think this is:

1. Because of reading my earlier post?
2. Because they realised the absurdity of the proposition?
3. Because they decided they were too cheap after all to offer those first class tickets?
4. Because they'd already received so much abuse from passengers instead of nominations?

UPDATE: total of five minutes' delay on the way home.  No reasons given.  £12.50.

One bus-fare zone: £2m

Ever wondered what happens to the change you don't get given when buying a bus ticket at one of the bus stop ticket machines in London?  TfL pockets it all.  The call it 'legitimate fares income' and put it back into the bus network, which must mean 'make dodgy investments'.


The lesser-known 'no-armed bandit' (Image credit: BBC)

 TfL says it's OK to steal money from travellers, though, because it's only about 1% of them.  Happily, though, they plan to start removing these ticket machines from next January, instead accepting cash on all buses.  Expect delays.

That's a new one on me

I got a new excuse for delays today: an 'overhead line problem' between Clapham Junction and Willesden Green apparently caused the delay of my train from Hampton Court to Waterloo (which does pass through Clapham Junction, but on a different line) by seven minutes.  There was a further delay of a minute on my Bakerloo Line train from there to Edgware Road, which involved both stopping in a tunnel for no reason (or at least, none given) and a very poor lift service.

Three excuses and only one tick for my weekly game of Tube Bingo.  I may have to rethink the design!

But, that's a total of eight minutes for another £20 this morning.


UPDATE: no explanation for delays on the journey home this evening, but they were made up of:

1. A District Line train arriving at Edgware Road two minutes later than advised, and at its Wimbledon destination three minutes late.
2. An overground train to Hampton Court arriving in Wimbledon three minutes later than it should have and at its final destination six minutes late

I make that a total of nine minutes and £22.50.