MIG wrote:

While the point of the deposit is to stop people casually losing the
cards and getting new ones, which are costly to produce, presumably
those that are returned and the deposit refunded are thrown away?

I mean, they wouldn't reissue a sticky, scratched one to a new
customer. There's something in the logic of this I can't quite get my
head round.


If someone returns a card once after they have finished with it, LUL
lose £3 + cost of card.

If someone chucks their card away every time the (e.g.) weekly ticket on
it expires, then LUL loses £cost of card x 52 weeks = lots more.

The fact they may make a loss when returning the deposits is, I suspect,
outweighed by the deterrent factor of persuading people not to chuck them.