Tap & Crap

Tuesday 28th April 2026

Tap & Cap has the potential to revolutionise the way passengers pay for their bus travel. But a key ingredient is trust in the system. TfL has long successfully achieved this with its Oyster Card and, in more recent years, the extension to include debit/credit contactless cards whereby if you hop on and off a bus, tram, Tube or train in London you have every confidence you’ll be charged no more than the appropriate day ticket or even a longer duration cap such as a week. That’s been my long experience of travelling around London and if ever I’ve raised a query, it’s been dealt with over the phone or by email by return and an explanation immediately provided or, in one case, a no quibble refund made.

I wish I could say the same for travel outside of London. In particular my recent experience in Lanarkshire has left me with zero confidence at using Tap & Cap on First’s buses.

Mid March 2026

The First Bus website for Greater Glasgow (remember to “Select Region” on the home page) encouragingly headlines with “Find out more” about “Lanarkshire Network Improvements From 29th March” so prior to my visit at the end of last month I did some clicking to find out what the best ticket for my travels would be.

This takes you to a long list, route by route, of all the changes…

… at the bottom of which is a click through to a “Lanarkshire network map!” (not sure why the exclamation mark – maybe it’s so unusual for there to be a map provided?).

My only concern. looking at this. was the town of Lanark wasn’t included on the map and had dropped off the bottom right hand corner…

… which of course prior to 29th March didn’t matter as First had withdrawn its presence in the town leaving it to be served by JMB Travel and Stuart’s Coaches. I thought I’d better do some research to find out if there’s a day ticket that covers Lanark following these changes.

Clicking on “Tickets” in the top menu bar brought up a long list of menu items including “Tap On, Tap Off” which seemed a good way of paying for my expected travelling around, not having to worry about whether any network tickets had boundaries etc.

Indeed, clicking on it reassured me I’ll “never pay more than the day ticket price for each day that you travel with us, no matter how many journeys you make”.

Scrolling further down the page marked “Tickets” brought forth an explanation of the “ticket options calculated with TOTO” including “Two-Trip” and “FirstDay”…

… which helpfully includes prices and I noted an “Adult (Network)” ticket was £8.30 which I guessed would be the price I would pay. My rookie mistake was failing to scroll even further down the page where, had I done so, I’d have found the rather hidden details of “Promotional Tickets”…

… including an “Adult FirstDay Lanarkshire” for £4.70 which, however, is “On app only”. So nothing to do with Tap On, Tap Off. In fact what this promotional ticket does is completely undermine the promise I’ll “never pay more than the day ticket price for each day that you travel with us, no matter how many journeys you make”. I’ll pay £3.60 more.

Unaware of this promotional offer I began my travels happy that Tap On, Tap Off was the way to go, and off I went.

Tuesday 31st March

I arrived in Motherwell for my first journey on First Bus’s new route 243 from Motherwell all the way to Lanark. I Tapped On and duly Tapped Off as I alighted. I travelled back to Motherwell on a JMB Travel bus with a day ticket I’d bought earlier, on a journey with that company from Glasgow to Motherwell, knowing their day ticket covered every bus route that company operates so used it with confidence.

Next up I took a First Bus route 211 from Motherwell to Airdrie tapping on and tapping off returning to Motherwell with JMB Travel and using my day ticket again.

The final journey was on another First Bus route 211 from Motherwell to Hamilton once again tapping on and off for the third and final time.

Thursday 2nd April

Back home I checked my online credit card statement and noted it contained three entries for First Bus on the Tuesday shown as:

• 31 Mar First Glasgow £7.05
• 31 Mar First Glasgow £6.20
• 31 Mar First Glasgow £6.20

Not knowing if it takes a while for the Day Ticket maximum to kick in and also concerned my credit card wouldn’t “tap off” on a journey I had made the following day, Wednesday 1st April. from Glasgow to Cumbernauld which was showing as 10p (later changing to £7.05) on my statement, I decided to give First Bus’s customer service phone number a call.

It was answered automatically straight away with what I suspect is a permanent message advising they are experiencing “high call volumes” with the suggestion of either calling back later or to fill in a contact form on the website. I decided to do the latter…

As always with these things, the online forms never quite fit the circumstances of what one wants to report.

But I had a go by selecting “failed payment” even though it was actually the opposite – a failed reimbursement as I’d paid too much.

The form then only gives space for one journey to be listed. So I used the “Details of your query (Required)” box to explain things and…

… I’ve long learned to keep a copy before pressing “Send” in such cases as otherwise you don’t have a record and this is what went off at 11:45 on Thursday 2nd April…

I made three journeys on your buses on Tuesday – 243 Motherwell to Lanark; 211 Motherwell to Airdrie; 211 Motherwell to Hamilton. Each time I used Tap On/Tap Off. Please can you advise whether the price I paid should have been capped by the cost of a Day Ticket and if so how much that will be as so far it’s not showing on my bank statement which lists each transaction separately. Secondly on Wednesday morning I travelled on the X25A from Glasgow to Cumbernauld and ‘tapped in’ but when I ‘tapped out’ the machine wouldn’t accept my bank card and the driver said, don’t worry you’ll be just charged a single fare – so far this is just showing as a deduction of 10p. Please advise what fare will be deducted. 

Back came an immediate response from “No Reply”…

… advising to expect a reply within “14 working days”. That’s just a day short of three weeks which, for a query about tapping on and off and the price of a couple of tickets, seemed a bit excessive, but that’s First Bus for you. I made a note to expect a response by Friday 24th April (allowing for Easter) or maybe “sooner where possible” and got on with life.

Wednesday 15th April

Well, that’s one way of beating customer expectations. A reply within 13 days instead of 14 working days. Quite an impressive result for First Bus, as at 12:08 on 15th April back came a response from Victor in First Bus Customer Service explaining he’d like to answer my “query as soon as possible” (and this 13 days after submitting it) but needed more information, including whether I “have been charge (sic) more than the normal expected fare cap” which was the point of my query to them! Turns out Victor needed some digits from my credit card so he could look into the matter.

Despite being out and about at the time, I replied immediately (well, five minutes later, at 12:13) with the required information…

… and just over half an hour later, at 12:47, came another email from Victor with news he has “now escalated my query for a refund of £6.20 and £3.80”…

… which raised more queries than answers, wondering why and to who Victor has to escalate such things but even more pertinent why two different amounts were mentioned. I guessed the £6.20 was no doubt in respect of one of the fares that had been deducted, but I couldn’t work out where the £3.80 came from.

I decided not to email back but wait to see what the “escalation” would bring and sure enough 10 minutes later came another email, this time from Khya with “Good news! I can confirm that your refund of £16.95 was authorised today”.

£16.95! Which meant a further £6.95 in addition to the £6.20 and £3.80 Victor had promised. But, again I had no idea why.

Thursday 16th April

Checking my credit card balance I noticed I’d received three payments from First Glasgow in respect of previous dates…

• 31 Mar First Glasgow £6.10
• 31 Mar First Glasgow £7.05
• 2 Apr First Glasgow £3.80

Which raised even more queries as even though the total came to £16.95 I’ve no idea what I was being reimbursed for with no confirmation of what the price of a day ticket actually was (I assume the earlier quoted £8.30). I’d paid a total of £19.45 on 31 March and a further £7.05 for the single journey to Cumbernauld on 1 April making a total outlay of £26.50. Deducting the refund of £16.95 gives a spend of £9.65 which doesn’t match anything. If the day ticket was indeed £8.30 that only leaves £1.35 for the single to Cumbernauld but First reckon they reimbursed me £3.80 for that (I paid £7.05) making for a fare of £3.25.

Monday 27th April 2026

I decided to give First’s National Contact Centre another ring yesterday afternoon to see if they could shed any light on this so I could include the explanation here. Guess what? It was experiencing “high call volumes” but this time I decided to persevere and listened to the full eight options: 1: mobile tickets and app; 2: ‘where my bus is’ 3: timestables and journey planning; 4: feedback about drivers and servcies; 5: ticket prices and fares; 6: lost property; 7: incident, accident or cctv; 8: anything else.

I choose option “5: ticket prices and fares” as I planned to ask what a single fare from Glasgow to Cumbernauld is and confirmation the town of Lanark is included in the £8.30 day ticket area.

Back came the automated response that “we are prioritising queries about the First Bus App and contactless payments and are unable to take your call today” and the National Contact Centre duly cut me off.

What a way to run a company. Hang up on your customers when they call. Tell them to fill in a form which takes three weeks to reply to …. to find out the price of a bus ticket. Unbelievable. But sadly true. With First.

Finally for this sorry tale, I also took a look on the First Bus App yesterday to see if the Promotional Ticket price of £4.70 for a First Day Lanarkshire ticket was available to buy, as advertised on the website (if you can find it) as was still slightly annoyed with myself for using Tap On, Tap Off when, despite the promise, it’s not the cheapest way to travel.

But it wasn’t listed when clicking on “Promotions” as shown above and below with a list only of Cumbernauld promotions with no mention of Lanarkshire…

… but clicking on “Day” on the first menu brought up the following.

… which at least is the same as the price listed on the website as shown earlier.

The upshot of all the foregoing is to explain why I now have no faith in using First’s Tap & Cap nor their ability to answer simple queries in a timely fashion at the “First Bus National Contact Centre“.

I do hope someone who knows the answers at First Bus reads this and perhaps can explain (a) why my Tap & Cap didn’t work; (b) how the £16.95 refund was calculated; (c) what I should have paid; (d) whether a map showing the boundaries of day tickets might be useful; (e) why the £4.70 Promotional FirstDay Lanarkshire ticket advertised on the website as “on app only” isn’t available on the app; (e) whether 14 “working days” is customer service at its best to answer simple queries about ticket prices; (f) whether hanging up on a customer calling about a ticket enquiry is good practice; (g) whether, when a passenger is overcharged, then an apology and the word sorry might be appropriate to include in the responses rather than encouraging participation in “short online surveys”. You’re very welcome to respond in the Comments below so everyone can see, or send me an email which I’ll publish to reassure readers, many of whom no doubt use First Bus and might consider availing themselves of Tap & Cap. Without such reassurance I would advise everyone to avoid it completely.

Roger French

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