On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 17:51:31 +0000, "I@n" -uk wrote:

Fulham Broadway tube station (admittedly the only one I've tried at
but it's not exactly small) are adamant that there is no such thing as
a prepay card, they can't sell me one, and they can't give me a
photocard on it's own either.

Last Monday I asked at Goldhawk Road for just a photocard so that I
could get an Oyster Pre-Pay online.

The ticket guy said he'd have to charge me £1 for the photocard unless
I bought a ticket, but that he could sell me the pre-pay Oystercard.

In the end, it took him about 15 minutes to issue it, involving 2
longish calls to a helpline, and which included him having to relay
questions to me from the phone such as 'what kinds of tickets was I
hoping to buy with it', and 'did I know it wouldn't work until
January', 'did i realise it wouldn't work on buses' etc!

He asked if I 'really' wanted to put £10 credit on the card, and at
the end, when I didn't question the £3 deposit, he expressed huge
relief that finally, 'someone' had actually bothered to read the
Oystercard leaflet!

He was throughly friendly and nice about the whole thing though, and i
felt quite guilty taking up so much of his time!

I got the feeling they are dreading the complexity of issueing and
explaining the Oystercards to people!