London Banter - View Single Post - Oyster Card Users

asdf · October 20th 06, 05:32 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On 20 Oct 2006 09:02:42 -0700, wrote:

We all had some trouble stomaching the £5 minimum too - at current an
Oyster deducts the minimum fare for the station you enter, and charges
any extra required when you leave the network. As of 19th Nov, it will
charge essentially the maximum, and refund the difference when you
exit.

I don't have a problem with the last bit, per se. It doesn't bother me
if my balance temporarily drops to minus £1 or whatever when I make a
local journey, as long as once I exit the system it's correct.

Whilst this is obviously controversial, hopefully it is clear
enough that this is simply designed to avoid anyone trying to cheat the
system by walking around with a negative balance until they need to
travel again (say by putting £1 on, then travelling from Amersham back
home in zone 1), Perhaps the £3 deposit will be adjusted to go
towards this...

OK, I can see there's a loophole that needs to be addressed here.
Currently, if you're travelling from Amersham to Z1, you can go to the
ticket office, hand over £4 for a PAYG Oyster containing £1 of credit,
go through the barriers (which will let you through as the fare to
Chalfont & Latimer is £1), then travel to Z1, where the fare of £5.50
will be deducted. This leaves you with an Oyster with a balance of
minus £4.50, which you then might as well throw away, having saved
£1.50 on your fare.

However, as you suggest, this loophole could be closed simply by
raising the deposit for new cards to £5. (Holders of existing cards
wouldn't need to place an extra £2 in deposit - it's only the price of
new cards that matters.)

As to whether it'll work... we'll see I guess. Considering its a
"pre-pay" ticket though, I guess it should be used as such. After all,
no-one complains that they have to put £10 minumum on a mobile phone,
when the call they want to make might cost 10p. Doesn't make it right
by any means, but there's a similar idea behind it.

Bad analogy. The correct analogy would be not being allowed to make a
10p phone call even though you have £4.90 of credit remaining.

Anyway to answer one of your points - there's no chinese whispers. The
£4 penalty is coming, and will be enforced as of 19th November (a
sunday) upon anyone who fails to touch in or out properly with pre-pay.

I don't have too much of a problem with this. What concerns me about
the confirmed part of the change is that TfL are deliberately going to
make it a PITA, and costly (in terms of time and money), to get an
unresolved journey resolved.