In message , at 22:22:45 on
Sun, 23 Nov 2008, Stephen Osborn
remarked:
he is saying that it is only possible to "initiate" your top up by
visiting a tube station and actually making a TUBE journey, something
which not everybody will want to do.

pedant Or a DLR journey /pedant

But what's to stop you touching straight back out, then getting the ticket
office to cancel out the pair of transactions?

How would that work? Would I just touch my Oyster twice on the same reader

If you go through a barrier it's not the "same reader", just the "same
line of gates". As you will be doing this at a LUL station (so there's a
suitable ticket office to talk to), the ones with ticket offices
virtually all have barriers, surely?

then go to the ticket office and ask them to cancel a 'phantom' journey?

Yes.
--
Roland Perry