I'm signed up for the auto re-charge thingy - once your card has under £5
it adds £40 the next time you go to a tube station.

Very useful it is too, though it only seems to do it if you are under £5 on
entry and not if it is your journey that takes you under £5, or at least
that's what happened to me over Christmas.

Also I suspect that a strange error message on one bus about the card not
being valid in the zone or area might have been caused by the auto-topup
settings not being understood correctly by that particular reader but I
suspect even more strongly I may be talking drivel ;-)

My balance is very low, and I'm unlikely to use the tube this week but
will need to use buses.

For similar reasons I find the £5 threshold a little on the low side. I'd
prefer it to be a tenner. I wonder if there is any scope in the system for
variable amounts in future.

If I go to the tube station and put my Oyster on a
gate (to recharge it) but don't travel, surely that will result in an
unresolved journey? Or can I 'charge' it on the big ticket machine, or ask
at the ticket window?

As I am sure others will have said, auto-topup doesn't stop you topping up
your card normally. So a ticket machine or ticket window or Ticket Stop
newsagent does the job.


G.