COMMUTERS are racking up millions in unjustified penalty fares using Oyster cards across the rail network.
East London houses some of the worst instances with the Barking to Liverpool Street overground rail line generating more than £2million in penalty fares for operator National Express East Anglia last year.
Liverpool Street also makes the top five most costly underground stops for commuters with £670,000 generated in penalty fares for Transport for London in 2010.
Last year more than 14,000 'incomplete journeys' were recorded across the London network netting train operators a whopping £61million in maximum penalty fares.
The charges come when passengers using an Oyster card fail to touch in or touch out on their journey and incur a penalty maximum fare - although a quarter of passengers stung with a maximum penalty fare are later refunded on appeal.
Liberal Democrat London Assembly leader, Caroline Pidgeon said: “This level of overcharging is totally unacceptable.
“There is something very seriously wrong when each and every week of the year Londoners are ripped off by more than £1 million.
“Of course in some cases passengers might forget to touch in and touch out, but such huge levels of overcharging clearly demonstrate that there are some structural problems with how Oyster is operating. It is clear that not enough is being done to ensure the machines and the technology are working properly.
“TfL also need to take immediate steps to make it far easier for people to be able to claim a refund when they have been overcharged.
“Above all else the levels of overcharging occurring need to be regularly published at every station, so that passengers are alerted to this serious problem.”
A TfL spokesperson defended the charges claiming 80 per cent of the maximum fares charged are what customers would have had to pay if they had validated their journey by touching in or out at the station.
“Maximum fares are not overcharges. We have maximum fares in place to ensure customers validate their journeys or we would be open to widespread fare evasion across our network. We are seeing the number of incomplete journeys falling - just two per cent of journeys on the TfL network are left incomplete and we are confident that the Oyster system, which has transformed the way people pay for travel, is charging correctly.
”If a customer fails to touch in or out they are charged a maximum fare however up to 80 per cent of those maximum fares would have been payable had passengers touched out correctly.
“Clearly any passenger who believes they have been incorrectly charged a maximum fare should contact us to apply for a refund via the Oyster helpline or station ticket offices.”