Tristán White wrote:

Sending this on behalf of someone else. Her Oystercard, suddenly, stopped
working at about 11 pm last night in spite of having a season ticket
"loaded" on there till 2007. She was let through by the staff but very
weird. Wouldn't work on the bus either.

This morning she went to the Londis to ask and they said "the magnet has
broken" and she needs to go the LUL station to get it replaced. What's that
about and has that happened to any of you before?

It's never broken before - and original card from when they first came out.
She also has loaded between £20 and £30 of prepay on top of it for when she
goes out of zone, although has no record of the amount, no receipts or
anything.

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?

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

Just because its never broken before doesn't mean it never will!

If she goes to a ticket office, they can call oyster helpdesk and
confirm how much prepay is on her ticket, and provide a duplicate.

To help you understand why the cards fail from time to time, they're
not magnetic. Basically within the card is a chip, much the same as
that on your bank cards, just its internal. There is a coiled wire
around the inside of the card, which acts as an aerial, so that the
Oyster readers can interpret the card. If the card becomes damaged,
even by bending (for example, in your back pocket when you sit down)
you can damage the chip or the aeiral, rendering the card useless.

It doesn't take more than a few minutes to replace the ticket, 10 at
the most, so i recommend she goes tomorrow and gets it done, as she
shouldn't be travelling without it.