On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 00:46:58 -0000, "Tim Roll-Pickering"
wrote:

And if I go out of zone, say to Amersham or Chesham, that's the first time
the ticket picks me up. And this brings up the other problem. The travelcard
is in part appealing because of "no need to plan your journey in advance",
whilst Oyster PrePay has been advertised (dodgily) on the same basis. But
the extensions *do* require me to beep in and out at Stratford, even if I
haven't yet planned to do so - say I was going to Harrow but got a phone
message to go to Chesham in the Willsden area?

In that case, tough luck!! I really don't see why you think you're
being so deprived here. If you thought you might need to go out of
zone, you should have touched in when you entered the Tube system.

Is it really so much trouble, on these extremely rare occasions, to
have to leave then re-enter the gates at Harrow (where you'd probably
be changing trains anyway)? It's still more convenient than pre-Oyster
days as you don't need to buy a ticket extension.

(In fact, if you were really lucky, you might have received the phone
call on board an Amersham/Chesham-bound train that subsequently got
routed into platform 1 at Harrow, which has validators on the platform
that you could step out briefly and use.)

Incidentally, if I'd started my journey at Ilford were there are barriers
with Oyster readers, would the system have a problem? Or would I need to
find a TfL reader for PrePay as well?

UIVMM you'd also need to touch in when entering the pre-pay system.