The apology came after Labour London Assembly member Val Shawcross highlighted a number of complaints on social media from passengers who experienced difficulties with TfL’s season ticket website.
Other disgruntled customers complained of “long delays” to speak to TfL’s customer service line.
One person who contacted Ms Shawcross directly said they’d been left on hold for 45 minutes before being told that they needed to go to one of TfL’s six Visitor Centres or use the more expensive Oyster pay as you go.
Shawcross said: “By closing all of London’s Tube ticket offices Boris has made it much harder for people to renew their season tickets.
“Twitter has been awash with people complaining that the online renewal system doesn’t work or that TfL’s phone lines are perpetually blocked. It’s clear TfL should have done far more to prepare and make this process far easier for customers.”
TfL says customers can renew tickets online, at Travel Information Centres or at any National Rail station and adds that “around 20,000 annual season tickets have been purchased through our website since early December 2015.”
Shashi Verma, Director of Customer Experience, said: “I’m sorry to hear that a very small number of passengers have experienced problems renewing their ticket.
“Station staff have been redeployed to ticket halls, gates and platforms where they can help customers most effectively.
“As we’ve done this, we’ve closed ticket offices that were more and more under-used as customers increasingly choose to travel using Oyster or contactless payment.”
Mr Verma added TfL was “consistently seeing a noticeable increase in customer satisfaction” since the changes were implemented.
