I have written a few times over the past few months about the problems with the tap and cap system and how it has been overcharging passengers, see unexplained and unresolved; Cabinet question and answer; still not working. Numerous emails have been exchanged with council officers and the management of Citybus (Go Cornwall Bus, Go Ahead etc.) with me providing evidence of the failures of the system. My emails to them usually produced responses that claimed to have solved the problem although the problem had not actually been solved. The evidence that I produced involved my catching several buses in one day and paying for journeys by tap and cap and then showing the officers and bus management screenshots of my Littlepay account.
After nearly 3 months from when I first alerted the Council to the problem, it now looks like the flaw in the system has been fixed. The problem was the failure to apply capping of fares properly. The Transport for Cornwall branding and supposed working together of bus companies in Cornwall should mean that passengers are charged the same fares irrespective of which particular operator’s bus they catch. This should apply to the daily and weekly caps where the maximum is applied on a multi-operator basis, e.g. if a passenger takes 2 journeys on a First Bus and 2 on a Go Cornwall Bus on the same day, he/she should be charged £9, the price of the Cornwall Adult all-day price. However, what has been happening is that the capping was applied on a single operator basis which means that, in this example, the passenger would be charged 2 x £3 by First and 2 x £3 by Go Cornwall, i.e. £12 in total. If all 4 journeys had been on either just First, or just Go Cornwall, the single operator cap would have applied of £9.
When the tap and cap system was first introduced in 2022, the multi-operator cap worked as it should with caps applying both on the Cornwall adult all day basis and on the Cornwall adult all week basis. However, at some point between 2022 and June 2025, the system stopped working as it should and single operator capping applied instead. I do not know when this change in the algorithm used in the Littlepay system happened - it could have been relatively recently in 2025, or it may have been happening for many more months or even years.
The way that the passenger is charged for the journeys is that a running log is kept in the Littlepay system recording all the journeys - the bus operator, the route number, the stop at which the journey started, the stop at which the journey finished, and the final price charged for the journey, taking account of previous journeys made on the same day so that an appropriate cap could be applied. These chargeable amounts are transmitted to the relevant bus companies and the bus companies then instigate debits against the passenger’s bank account. Go Cornwall Bus applies each debit individually to the passenger’s account, whereas First applies a total debit for all of its journeys for that day. These debits come out of the passenger’s bank account the day after the journeys are made, or in some cases two days later. This means that, unless the passenger is very diligent at checking their Littlepay account and their bank account, it is very easy for incorrect additional charges of a few pounds one day, a few pounds another day, to be made and for the passenger not to notice. Given that multi-operator capping has not worked for at least 3 months, and probably a lot longer, it is inevitable that dozens, or probably hundreds of passengers have been overcharged and have not noticed it.
The marketing manager of Citybus says that the problem has now been resolved and that everyone who has been overcharged has been reimbursed or is about to be reimbursed (see question and answer to this week’s Cornwall Council Cabinet meeting). I think that the capping problem itself has been sorted out. Whether it stays correct in the future remains to be seen and I will be checking it with test journeys from time to time. However, I do not believe that everyone who has been overcharged will be reimbursed. The Citybus manager has admitted to me that he does not have sight of all the data that would show where overcharging occurred. See email from Citybus. In my own case, it took three separate attempts by Citybus to refund me the correct amount and that was only after my persistent emails and comprehensive evidence. For other passengers who have been overcharged but have not realised it, or thought that they were overcharged but have had difficulty in assembling all the evidence, it is inconceivable that Citybus have refunded them correctly.
Overall, despite a partial success in achieving a fix to the multi-operator capping issue, I still do not have sufficient confidence in the tap and cap system to be able to recommend passengers to use it. My advice is to stick to buying single tickets or, if you are sure that you will be taking four or more journeys in one day, buy at the start of the day a Cornwall adult all day ticket for £9 and you will be able to use it on all the buses whichever is the operator. These tickets can be purchased from the driver or in advance through the TfC or First app.