On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 18:31:18 -0600,
Tristán White
wrote in 45:
Sending this on behalf of someone else. Her Oystercard, suddenly, stopped
working at about 11 pm last night

I assume something's happened to the card and as she still has the paper
receipt for the yearly season ticket, she'll get that replaced. But what
about the excess on top of the card? Will they honour it if she has no
receipts? Will they somehow be able to read it? How did it happen?

Mine failed a while back, although more slowly than your friend's.
When I filled out the form for a replacement it asked for an estimate of
the pre-pay balance. Since I knew it had £17.60 on it the last time it
shiwed a balance on the bus I put down £18. The chap in the ticket office
then credited the new card with £18 as well as the £3 deposit. I presume
that somewhere down the line there will be a reconciliation of data and
the balance adjusted for any discrepancy, but I really have no way of
knowing if that's happened or not.

She doesn't carry her card next to her mobile or anything like that....

I'd imagine physical damage to be more likely, e.g. being bent.
Mine lived in my shirt pocket and so had no physical abuse, and the way it
failed gradually suggests an intermittent failure such as a cold-soldered
joint, or one slowly corroding away.

--
Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. ] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".