"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
.li...
On Tue, 25 Nov 2008, David Cantrell wrote:

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 08:08:28PM +0000, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sun, 23 Nov 2008, Stephen Osborn wrote:
But to get to a Tube station, as I live in SE London, I would have to
take an Overground train and so I would normally buy a one day
Travelcard at the train station. To use my Oyster at the Tube station
I
would either need to buy a train return ticket instead or use my Oyster
PAYG when I had a valid Travelcard. Either of those would mean I was
paying extra for the privilege of switching on auto top-up.
Yes. Paying one pound extra. Once.

Two pounds and ninety pence actually.

No, one pound.

You set up auto top-up, and nominate the most convenient station outside
Z1 for pickup.

And if one needs to get a train to get to a Tube station then nearest Tube
station will be inside Z1. So to get the lower excess price involves more
travel

You go to your local railway station or ticket seller and buy a paper
one-day travelcard. You travel to the nominated station using it. You
enter the system using your oyster card, activating auto top-up, and
travel to another station outside Z1. You leave the system, with your auto
top-up activated, and having paid a pound for the journey. You then
continue your day's travelling on the paper travelcard.

From the next day on, you use the oyster card.

The only extra cost over having auto top-up activated at a tube station is
the one pound cost of the tube trip.

There is the cost of my time in travelling to & from two Tube stations
outside Z1.


This is only one of a number of problems with Oyster that does not seem to
have a reason and which TfL does not seem to be doing anything about
resolving.
1. Journey history is only available to customers if they have purchased
pay as you go credit (including Auto top-up) from Oyster online. Why? The
data is in TfL's computers. They have software to publish that via a web
intertface. So why is only some data available.

2. Oyster retailers can sell seven day (and longer) Travelcards on Oyster
but not one day Travelcards.

3. The Tram terminus at Wimbledon is a mess. AFAIUI, if you are using
Oyster PAYG then you have touch out on the Tram platform before exiting
through the barriers. If you don't touch out on the Tram platform then you
are charged for a Tram journey to Wimbledon and a £5 minimum Tube fare for
using the barrier. Even if it does not get sorted out immediately at the
barrier then overnight the system should be able to work out that you
started at a Tram stop and ended at Wimbledon and only make the appropriate
charge.

The warning posters about this say that the same is true if you have a
Travelcard on Oyster but I know for a fact that that is not the case. So
either TfL don't know how their systems work or they are lying.

4. I read in another thread that if you start your journey, using Oyster
PAYG, in the peak period and make further journeys in the off-peak period
then those later journeys count towards the peak cap and not the off-peak
cap. Hence it can be cheaper to buy a single ticket [1] for the peak
journey and use Oyster PAYG for the off-peak journeys

[1] In the case quotes the person actually uses two Oyster PAYG cards.

5. TfL staff don't seem to understand how Oyster works. One example;
when I wanted to change my Z1-3 Travelcard to a Z1-4 Travelcard I was told
at one station that this is not possible and that I had to apply for a new
Oyster by filling out a form - but that I could not do that there as they
had run out of forms. So I went to the next station and there they changed
my Travelcard on the same Oyster card with problem and no paperwork.

--
regards

Stephen

That's the only explanation I can think of for how they could have
deployed a system with so many obvious design flaws.

Because *obviously* it wouldn't have been pushed through far too quickly
for mere political expediency!

We should have another utl meet, this time with a tinfoil hat making
workshop.

tom

--
The literature is filled with bizarre occurrances for which we have
no explanation