I have been using KeyGo for a while to travel between London, Croydon and Brighton. It is a product developed by Govia Thameslink Railway to be loaded onto a The Key smartcard which enables account-based ticketing so that I don’t need to buy a ticket beforehand. In the past, it always charged me correctly, but recently I am getting more troubles than the effort saved. In the last week, I had to contact the customer service twice because of suspected overcharging.

East Croydon – Finsbury Park

My KeyGo account has my Annual Gold Card associated, as a result, if I travel during the evening peak, it is better to buy a National Rail ticket, which can discounted with my railcard, instead of paying with my Oyster card which charges the full adult peak fare, as no discount is available on Oyster during peak hours.

KeyGo promises that it will charge the cheaper of the National Rail fare or the Oyster fare, which in the past worked well for journeys such as Farringdon to Kentish Town, Streatham to Cricklewood, Streatham to East Croydon, etc. I was charged the paper fare during the evening peak, and the Oyster fare off-peak correctly. However, in a recent journey from East Croydon to Finsbury Park during the evening peak, I was charged the Oyster fare of £6.60 instead of the paper fare of £5.65 I expected.

The difference of this journey to my previous journeys is that, the paper fare of £5.65 is specifically routed as “via City Thameslink / Surrey Quays”, with another “Any Permitted” fare of £7.55 being available as well. As KeyGo can only be used on Thameslink (not Underground) to cross London, and all Thameslink trains satisfy the City Thameslink routing requirement, I fully expected that it would be matched automatically, but it didn’t. When I queried the fare with the customer service, they admitted mistake immediately and refunded me the difference, which was listed as “incorrect fare calculation”.

East Croydon – Brighton

This is a journey which I do regularly now. I have a Network Railcard associated in my account and there are a few paper fares available, the relevant ones being the following: £18.00 Off-Peak Day Return (Any Permitted), £13.90 Off-Peak Day Return (Thameslink only) and £11.75 Super Off-Peak Day Return (Thameslink only). Despite using the same gates at East Croydon and Brighton, the system always guessed correctly which trains I actually used for my journey and charged me the corresponding fare. On the days I used Thameslink trains only, it charged me £13.90. On the days I used Southern and Gatwick Express, it charged me £18.00 even though the gates used were identical.

On the bank holiday Monday just passed, I decided to stick to Thameslink trains so that I would be charged £11.75 Thameslink only weekend fare. However, the network was already suffering disruption on my way out, and when I was due to return, it had broken down completely.

Unfortunately it means that I had to take any train going north on the mainline to complete my journey, and after a long wait, there was finally a Thameslink train out, but unfortunately it was a short working to Three Bridges only, so I had to get there and see if there would be other services taking me further. After I got there, a Southern train which started from elsewhere followed my train, and would continue to Victoria, so I boarded that train and alighted at East Croydon.

At this scale of network-wide disruption, mutual ticket acceptance was activated between Gatwick Express, Thameslink and Southern. In fact, all these three are operated by the same company, Govia Thameslink Railway, and the legality of differential pricing within the same company is currently challenged in a class action lawsuit as well.

After the journey was completed, the Any Permitted fare was still charged despite the widespread disruption and ticket acceptance. I contacted the customer service again demanding an explanation, and got replied with a reasoning that based on the time of my touch out, I had used a Southern train to complete my journey to East Croydon, and the Super Off-Peak Day Return was Thameslink only. I then followed up with the disruption and ticket acceptance notice to ask for an adjustment, and they “did it on this occasion” without admitting to a mistake like what happened to my previous East Croydon – Finsbury Park journey, and applied a “goodwill adjustment” on my account.

As a result, I have lost confidence on using KeyGo on this particular journey, where differential pricing exists between Gatwick Express, Southern and Thameslink. The mainline frequently breaks down to the extent that “mutual ticket acceptance” is activated, if the system is not configured to ignore the brands when the mainline breaks down, I will be placed at a disadvantage compared to buying traditional tickets, so I am returning to traditional tickets for this particular journey.