On Dec 31, 5:41*pm, Paul Corfield wrote:
I assume the inconvenience reference is London Travelwatch considering
the setting of an OEP to be as inconvenient as queuing at a ticket
office to purchase a ticket.

No - the inconvenience is that if I have a z12 Gold Card on Oyster
(which I do) and want the cheapest fare to Surbiton, then I still need
to queue up for a paper BZ2-Surbiton ticket, rather than getting an
IEP, touching in at Waterloo and touching out at Surbiton.

You're speaking from your own experience. I was attempting to translate
the London Travelwatch words. *We seem to have come to two different
conclusions - hardly a shock when it comes to this complex subject!

I wasn't speaking from experience here (since IEPs haven't yet come
in) - just putting in concrete examples to make it a bit clearer. LTW
said:

"If you have an annual ticket (Gold Card) it will be cheaper (and
equally as inconvenient) to get a paper extension, as you need to
currently"

To me, that means:

"If you have an annual Travelcard on Oyster and want to travel outside
your zones on NR, it will be cheaper to get a paper extension ticket
with the Gold Card discount from a manned ticket office (which is
inconvenient, and which you need to do at the moment) than to use the
Oyster PAYG functionality with no Gold Card discount".

IEP doesn't even apply here - this point simply reflects the
unfathomably weird / crooked (according to taste) fact that even
though discounts for YP, Senior and Disabled railcards have been
enabled on Oyster, Network and Gold Card discounts haven't.

You could then go on to say "Also, because IEP means Oyster PAYG will
be a pain in the arse to use with a Travelcard on NR, the
inconvenience of getting an extension ticket is only a bit greater
than that", but LTW don't.

Agreed that their wording could be much better.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org