As Dave Arquati recently pointed out, if you're buying a weekly or
longer Bus Pass, you may find it helpful to stump up a tiny bit more
(in the case of a weekly ticket it's just 20p) to get a single zone
Travelcard. Any weekly Travelcard for any zone except zone 1 will cost
you £11.20, as opposed to £11 for a weekly Bus Pass.

Regarding bus transfers, I reckon it's a possibility for the future,
especially as it could be implemented easily with the Oyster card
system. Indeed (as Matthew Dickenson pointed out), on Croydon Tramlink
a second journey is free if it's started within 70 minutes of the first
- which is a transfer in so many words. The problem is TfL would lose
money doing this, and their budget is pretty tight as it is.

But public transport is expensive in London relative to the rest of the
world. It can be fairly expensive all over the UK as well.