On 05 Jan 2005 20:09:39 GMT, Iain wrote:

"Dave Plumb" wrote in
:

Has anyone gotten round to sewing their Oystercard into their coat
sleeve? You could keep the photo card seperate just in case and as
long as you don't need to pass the card through a ticket window you
should be ok - surely?

I seem to recall seeing an item at work that said that station staff
doing gateline duty could order gloves with a special pocket sewn into
them to allow for easier use of Oyster based gate permits.

For a while now I've been tempted to do something like that so that the
Oyster sits somewhere halfway up my forearm, and then go to one of the
more touristy central London tube stations and go through the barriers
by waving my arm over the oyster scanner and at just the right moment
clicking my fingers with a flourish. Very puerile but I'd love to see
the expression on people's faces!

When we did the very first LU trials many years ago we had great fun at
the test sites - Green Park, St James Park and Victoria.

One of the testers put the card in a glove and waved his hand over the
reader and the gate opened. Some American tourists watched this and then
did the same and walked into the gate paddles.

I also once put my card inside a thick book and plonked the book on the
gate at Victoria and the gate opened. That caused some double takes.
Similar tricks were done with bags etc and as the technology was very
new then (for a transport application) there were a lot of bemused
looks.

At the time we had a mix of staff and some annual travelcard holders
taking part in the trial and absolutely no one wanted to give the cards
back as they found them so much more convenient.

I've seen women with it in the bottom of their handbags, they just
plonk the whole handbag on the reader pad, or more often have to tip
everything out holding everyone else up when it doens't work

By wife does this (puts the Oyster in her handbag and plonks that on the
reader). She tells me it's never not worked -- but then she's got a
small compartment on the front of the handbag which it lives in, rather
than being in the main bit of the bag where it can get mixed up with
everything else.

This is very common in Hong Kong with the Octopus cards - whether on the
bus or trams or MTR / KCR. All the parking meters that I saw accept
Octopus as a payment means as do the telephones and many other outlets.

I found the other night I can't keep my Oyster in the same wallet as
my works ID (which also has an embedded chip to get me in and out of
buildings) - the Oyster pad reads the works ID and ignores the
Oyster. It flashes up a code 70 (read error - re-present card).
Putting it on a ticket machine shows "Your smartcard is not
initialised for Prestige". The system at work ignores the Oyster card
totally.

I understand that the very first Oyster Cards interfered with shop
security systems so some people had rather embarrassing discussions with
security staff when they went to the shops at lunchtime. I believe these
sorts of "interference" have been resolved.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!