Mike Bristow wrote:

In article . 170,
Adrian wrote:
And how is the PDA + wand etc going to talk to the oyster system
in real time? Not the card; the databases and stuff in the bowels
of 55 Broadway.

Genuine question - Why would that be needed?

For many simple transactions, it isn't. I would bet that the more
complex customer-service issues would require it.

This will certainly include things like "I made a journey 2 weeks
ago and got charged the incorrect fare". Possibly even if the
journey was yesterday, or this morning, too.

Ticket offices will not deal with that now, so there would be no need
for a mobile person to. If someone has been incorrectly charged they
have to pay to call the oystercard helpline and then get a cheque
through the post

Or "I'd like an oyster
card please". (Ok, the mobile chap(ess) can cary the forms + blank
cards, but they can't carry many, and they won't be able to cary
'ordinary' oyster cards AND photocards AND child oysters AND customer
charter forms AND ... And it'll take them six times longer to tap
out your name and address on a PDA for later uploading than they
would take to type it on the PC, even if we exclude fun tricks like
postcode lookups).

Do they type the information in themselves in the ticket office anyway?
I had a phone call about a week after getting my first oystercard
querying an answer they were reading off the form.



Good comms may also be required for credit card transactions for
monthly season-ticket amounts of money. Even if not required,
there is a lower risk (read: lower cost to LuL) if they do online
checking of the card number against the merchant bad-card-number-list...
I wouldn't be suprised if the modern gripper's ticket machines do
this via a GPRS connection when they can.

One assumes the person would be based in the former ticket office (ie
before the barriers) on underground tube stations - easily within the
range of a simple wireless chip and pin network like that used in many
pubs and resteraunts. In an overground station w/o barriers they would
be above ground anyway. But if someone pays by card and the payment is
later rejected the tube people could stop the oystercard


Not that I'm saying that totally mobile ticket-agents aren't a good
thing; but I suspect it would be better for them to be in a ticket
office where they will be able to do more.... It's not as if there's
a shortage of counters for them to sit at - there's a shortage of
people to sit in them!


But the original point was to reduce the numbers in the offices, not to
close all offices