Richard wrote:

On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 17:57:15 GMT, "Graham J"
wrote:

I'm just looking at adding an auto top up on my PAYG, but it asks for
which station do I want to use. As I don't have a tube near me, I will
only be using buses. Should I just put a default station e.g. Waterloo?

Except that you can't at Waterloo. There's nothing on the web site to
explain why to I emailed TfL who replied to say that it was to do with
the Waterloo and City closure and some ongoing work on the gates,
IIRC. Irrelevant in your case, but you did mention Waterloo!

Your Oyster card needs to be tweaked so that it is recognised as having auto
top-up enabled. [...[

I decided that Auto Top-Up was so useful that I'd plan ahead a bit and
wait until I needed the underground. I didn't expect the walk to
Southwark, but did find two nice pubs and a street of restaurants (at
Southwark) along the way so it wasn't a waste of time...

I guess you walked down the The Cut. There is some lovely dining to be
had down there at say the Anchor and Hope or one of the restaurants.
There's a couple of really nice pubs just north of there on some great
old-London-Town side streets - the Kings Arms on Roupell Street and the
White Hart on Cornwall Road.


[...]
I seem to remember that TfL belatedly realised this is a bit of a stopper
and that you can now order Oyster cards online with the auto top-up already
enabled. So it might be easiest to just get a new one. Unless of course I
was just dreaming that bit.

I ordered mine around the time that the rules changed and you could
top-up on buses. The help pages and the normal text were inconsistent
so I emailed - again - and was told that I'd still have to visit a
station. I *think* this was incorrect advice. Perhaps if you ask
now, they've got their story straight.

Have you got an approxomate date for that at all? I may, if I'm stupid
enough, attempt to write some kind of Oyster FAQ and if so it'd be
useful to have a timeline of Oyster developments to hand.