On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:21:32 +0000, boltar2003 wrote:

I wonder if its possible to get an overdraft thats more than the 3 quid
the cards cost in the first place. I'm sure they've thought of this but
if not then you could bin it and just buy a new one and save some money


Don't forget that some cards don't have a deposit - namely, cards
initially purchased with a week-or-longer Travelcard. (Or at least that
was the policy when I was last in London.)

On my way out of London about a year ago, I semi-inadvertently ended up
with a negative balance on a deposit-free card. I was planning to walk
the 12 minutes from where I was staying to Hendon Central, and made sure
in advance that my Oyster card had the proper fare, but a bus pulled up
(and I realized that my luggage was heavier than it looked), so I decided
to take it to Golders Green instead. It didn't occur to me until I was
halfway to Paris what I had done - I'm so used to New York's free
transfers from bus to subway that I briefly forgot they don't apply in
the rest of the world.

I guess that makes up in part for the refund I never received for the 20-
minute delay I encountered in August 2006 trying to get to the Heathrow
shuttle buses at Hatton Cross.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA