Does TfL owe you money? Check now.
A little pre-Christmas bonus is now available if you've been overcharged for travel in the last three months.
Good morning from London Centric, where we interrupt normal service to bring you a quick breaking news update on the cyberattack which has plagued Transport for London for three months.
If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of Londoners overcharged for travel on the capital’s transport network since TfL’s systems were taken offline in September, then there’s finally some light at the end of the tunnel – and it could mean a nice cash bonus this December.
The transport authority’s refunds website has, in the last hour, come back online for the first time in three months, enabling passengers to automatically apply for their money back.
TfL told London Centric last week that it won’t be actively refunding customers who have collectively been overcharged by millions of pounds. Instead, it’s up to you (and your friends, and your family members, and your colleagues) to manually click this link, log in, and check if you’re due a rebate.
The usual time limit on claiming refunds has also been extended, so it’s worth searching your journeys all the way back to the start of September to see if there were any occasions when you failed to tap out at a station due to a broken contactless reader.
Oyster card users are unable to apply online for refunds relating to journeys taken more than eight weeks ago, due to a longstanding data protection policy which wipes journey history after two months. However, TfL told London Centric that Oyster card refunds all the way back to September are still possible by phoning their customer call centre on 0343 222 1234.
It’s also good news for anyone whose workplace allows them to expense journeys, as receipts for past travel are finally available for the first time in three months.
London Centric has already tested the system and received a refund for an incomplete journey relating to a trip to the ice cream depot featured in our reporting on Westminster Bridge.
The transport authority has also reopened applications for discount Oyster cards for children, students, and the over-60s, issuing tens of thousands of new passes in the last few weeks. TfL is now also able to transfer old balances over to the new discount cards. Anyone who has been overcharged during the last three months due to not having a discounted travel card will eventually be able to claim the price difference, although Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, accepted that not everyone will have kept their receipts and records of their journeys during this time.
Andy Lord, the boss of TfL, told his organisation’s board meeting this morning that “a cyber incident is inevitable” and said his staff has achieved “remarkable things from a non-technical perspective” to keep services running. He said TfL had been inundated with requests to learn about how it handled the cyberattack and would be commissioning an independent review into the incident.
Lord also said TfL is continuing to work closely with the National Crime Agency and the National Cyber Security Centre: “All agencies involved believe that we responded well to the incident and potentially prevented a far worse outcome.”
Back in October TfL insiders told a different story, speaking to London Centric about the internal “shitshow” that followed the hack. Although the cyberattack itself caused limited damage, passengers were hit hard as TfL voluntarily shut down many of its systems to avoid the hack spreading further.
The cyberattack also delayed the launch of the new London Overground branding until last week, as well as the still-on-hold expansion of contactless payments to 47 railway stations outside London on lines to Sevenoaks, Southend, St Albans, and Shepperton.
The total cost of the cyberattack could be enormous, with a line in the recent board minutes showing TfL has revised down its year-end surplus by £38m, “largely due to the financial impacts of the cyber security incident”
One 17-year-old male from Walsall in the West Midlands has been arrested in relation to the hack.
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Want to understand the TfL cyberattack? Read London Centric’s previous reporting here.
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London Centric will be back later in the week with exclusive stories and some last-minute Christmas ideas. Please get in touch via WhatsApp or email if there’s something you think we should be writing about.
Curious what the click to open rate is on this, because I want to bet it's through the roof.
But — a lot of my journeys are not marked as incomplete. They’re complete journeys I’ve been overcharged for. How do I claim for those? It’s not clear…