On Mar 18, 7:16 pm, David of Broadway
wrote:
MIG wrote:
I have got an Oyster card. My problem is that I can't use it for all
the journeys I make for a number of reasons and nor do I have the
typical options (eg when passing my local station ticket office) for
putting credit on it.

Understood. I was somewhat frustrated when I discovered that daily
capping was useless if I was riding NR. And the day I went to Hampton
Court, I was a bit surprised to find that a ODTC was my best bet.

But, even if Oyster isn't /always/ the best payment mode, it /often/ is.
Since it effectively costs nothing to have one, why not keep one in
your wallet just in case?


Yeah, I just said that I do, but ...



There simply isn't any justification for imposing penalty fares to
coerce people into using a system that isn't fully available.

On the systems that accept it, how is it not fully available?


Firstly, when I reach the point where I want to switch to PAYG, I
haven't previously had the full range of opportunities to put credit
on it.

Secondly, when I have a paper travelcard and want to go an extra zone
on LU (this is not hypothetical; it has happened to me several times)
I either have to pay £4 for the single zone extension (ludicrous), do
the whole journey on PAYG (less, but still paying for the part of the
journey for which I already have a paper season ticket) or get off, go
up the escalator, touch "in", go back down and wait for a later train.

None of these options is acceptable, despite there being obvious
solions, eg

1) put pads in the trains
2) offer paper extensions at a reasonable price to people who can show
a paper travelcard
3) flag a person's Oyster (where the extension is being bought) as
haveinb being touched in at the boundary station, only then needing to
be touched out.

These solutions can't be beyond the technology, and the problem can't
have been unknown. The explanation is that is whole bluddy thing is
a cynical scam.