London Banter - View Single Post - More Oystercard Oddities & TravelSafe officers

Paul Corfield · August 31st 06, 09:35 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On 31 Aug 2006 09:27:35 -0700, wrote:

Forgive me as it is a bit off your topic, but a similar situation made
me wonder when I was to London last week.

I had a 7-day travelcard for zones 1 and 2 on my Oystercard and started
one journey at Holland Park on the Central Line, changed at Bank to DLR
and got off at Westferry, did another journey between DLR stations
later on and went back from Canary Wharf on the Jubilee Line.

I swept my card over the reader anytime I entered or exited a DLR
station, but as I understand that was not mandatory? Unless,
eventually, you had touched in at a tube station earlier?

This is where the mix of Travelcard and Pre-Pay on an Oyster card can
get confusing.

Every Oyster card issued to fare paying passengers has the ability to
have a season type ticket (e.g. Travelcard) AND pre-pay on it. Even if
you have no cash loaded to your card the card can still go into negative
value. This arises if you travel beyond the validity of your travelcard
as this would trigger the card to look to the pre-pay "purse". This is
also why there is some benefit in having some cash held on the card if
you can afford to do so.

If you had been travelling beyond zones 1 and 2 and using the pre-pay
functionality then it is hugely to your benefit to validate in and out
on every trip so that the correct incremental extension fare was
deducted and also so the card can calculate if a daily cap would need to
be applied after a certain number of extra out of zonal validity trips.
For this reason it is sensible to validate in and out everywhere.
However you are also correct that you would not suffer any penalty or
loss if you had not bothered to validate your Travelcard at DLR entry
and exit points given the trips you said you made.

soapbox

I really do wish TfL would provide a detailed set of information about
things like this!

soapbox

--
Paul C

Admits to working for London Underground!