TfL 'contact issuer'

Anyone elses card stopped working on tfl? Mine says contact issuer. ??? Had to buy an oyster card as I Left my wallet at home.

Was this as you were trying to go through the gates?

To confirm are you on the prepaid or current account and if the latter, which card do you have?

This is almost always caused by unpaid fares on your card from TfL.

When this happens, TfL blacklist your card and ask you to get in touch with us.

If you top up your Monzo card and try again, you may get rejected once more but should shortly see the unpaid fares be authorised in the app. At that point, your card will become valid for travel in TfL’s system again. :metro:

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Actually it would be easier to fix it self-serve via https://contactless.tfl.gov.uk - you’ll need to create an account and link your card. Make sure you have funds and you can get TfL to charge you again if there are any unpaid fares or there was an issue with a payment i.e. declined charges. You’ll be able to use your card again after a few minutes. The TfL contactless portal will indicate this and/or send you an autoresponder email.
Hope this helps.

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Correct, though if you’re already in a station, it’s far more fiddly to have to sit and sign up there on your phone when the gates also attempt the same authorisations. Especially if it’s a quiet gateline.

It also works without having to contact us if your prepaid card is affected by this issue.

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Am I missing the logic behind this? Are they assuming the unpaid fare was due to the issuer blocking the card? If TfL are responsible for the blacklist it seems silly to point the customer to someone unrelated to the problem.

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The point is to have an account set up regardless whether you face issues or not.

  1. You can track all journeys and apply for refunds if there are any delays.
  2. In the odd chance your card is blocked/doesn’t work, you can bookmark it and access the TfL contactless portal at your convenience.

Unpaid fares are the result of an initial 10p authorisation or a daily travel charge being declined. TfL is in the right to be pointing people back to us as only we can tell exactly why the transaction was declined. :x:

The two major reasons a charge will be declined is insufficient funds or your card was frozen :snowflake:. In these cases, TfL allows you to complete your journey before blocking your card from further travel until they are able to properly authorise your card or claim the fare (either automatically or by you requesting it online).

While a great idea and people should certainly do this, by the time someone realises that there is an issue and is contacting Monzo support, it’s generally a little too late to suggest that. :sweat_smile:

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Maybe you could suggest it via an in-app notification the first time someone goes through a ticket barrier…? :man_shrugging:

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It’s already in there on every single TfL transaction but I do see your point.

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Most users don’t tend to read large blocks of text and only interact with notifications :frowning:

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