Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sun, 3 Aug 2014 07:56:16 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 06:17:35 on
Sun, 3 Aug 2014, Charles Ellson remarked:
Can you use your Oyster card for Pay-as-You-Go from London Bridge to
Tundbridge Wells?

Definitely not.

Not according to anything I can see on the NR website (assuming it is
up to date). There doesn't seem to be anything definite announced
since e.g. "A spokesman for Southeastern confirmed: “We’re in
discussions with Transport for London to extend Oyster into Dartford."
[Kent Online 21 Feb 2014]

Tunbridge Wells being even further away from Greater London and AFAIAA
with a lower thicko count (Dartford seems to have a particular problem
with people unaware that Oyster has geographical limits) might not be
so far up the list for providing Oyster.

The problem with extending Oyster is that it has a very finite number of
price-zones and it's possible these were exhausted when extended to
Shenfield.

I asked TfL's ticketing people, via a Twitter "chat" session, if they
would technically cope with the indicated TSGN franchise plans to
extent Oyster beyond the zones. They said they could. Unfortunately I
can't send you a technical specification to prove this so I imagine my
statement will go on your vapourware list of probably untrue nonsense
;-)

This suggests there is some system capacity left but I imagine there
may also be assumptions about pricing and keeping stations priced on a
consistent basis outside the zones.

If Oyster PAYG is to extend to Dartford that will solve a great many
problems although it might reduce South Eastern's penalty fare income.
It's hardly likely to be a huge problem given Oyster based Freedom
Passes *are* valid to Dartford so there must be some ticketing logic
in the system that allows those cards to be read (I assuming the gates
at Dartford *do* read them - happy to be corrected if actual practice
is different).

I don't think the gates at Dartford do read Freedom passes. After the gate
wouldn't read it, I had to show mine to a person, who let me through.