London Banter - View Single Post - Whats the minimum Oyster card value to get through a gate?

Colin Rosenstiel · June 27th 08, 12:47 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In article , (peter)
wrote:

wrote in message

...
On Jun 24, 1:33 pm, Paul Weaver wrote:
On 22 Jun, 03:39, "peter" wrote:

"Paul Corfield" wrote in message

.. .

On Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:12:48 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

Anyone know?

It's the minimum fare at that station - £1 outside Z1 and £1.50
in Z1.

big snip

So will the gate at the destination let you out, if after
deducting the correct fare, the balance on the card is negative?

The reason I ask is that I infrequently visit London, and on my
last journey I commenced with £3.00 on the card (Z1 to Waterloo)
(eurostar was there in early November) and now I have £1.50
sitting on card which won't be used for a year or two (it is a
registered card-- dunno how long they will allow it to remain
inactive)

The card previously had a 7 day Travelcard on it, so it has no £3
deposit.

I suspect to avoid giving Tfl a long term interest free loan, :-)
I should try to commence my last journey with only £1.50 on the
card.

Or you could just take it to a ticket window and say "gimme my
money". As it's registered I dont think there's an issue.

Unless you've used both cash and a credit card to top it up. Then you
can only get the money back by cheque, posted to your address.

Bit of a bugger if your usual currency isn't GBP.

Ok thanks for the replies.. I want to keep the card, so in future
I will just run it down to zero.
It's useful as I can add funds from here (Sydney) prior to any trip
to London and don't have to pay the £3 deposit

It depends on the frequency of your visits to London I suppose but we
keep our cards at a minimum normal balance of £1.50 so we're not forced
to queue up at King's Cross to top it up before entering the tube. For
almost every tube journey we make the other end of the trip is a better
place to top up a card than King's Cross.

--
Colin Rosenstiel