I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who runs a guest house
in Streatham and he was telling me how visitors to London who use PAYG
Oystercards are still being ripped off.

Two (of many) examples.

A guest with £15 on card gets a bus to Brixton, Victoria Line to
Stockwell, Northern Line to Bank and DLR to Cutty Sark and does the
return journey later that day, but when he boards a bus at Brixton he
gets a double bleep and the driver tells him he has no credit and will
have to pay to travel to Streatham. Being able to speak on a little
English and not being familiar with the system he pays up.

A husband and wife go out for the day and make various journies
throughout the day, despite the fact that they have bothed touched in
and out and the same locations they have both had vastly different
amounts deducted from their cards.

How much longer are people going to be ripped off like this? And
surely the London Tourist Board and similar organisations should be
telling visitors to London NOT to use Oyster and to buy a ODTC where
appropriate instead?

"George" wrote:

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who runs a guest house
in Streatham and he was telling me how visitors to London who use PAYG
Oystercards are still being ripped off.

Two (of many) examples.

A guest with £15 on card gets a bus to Brixton, Victoria Line to
Stockwell, Northern Line to Bank and DLR to Cutty Sark and does the
return journey later that day, but when he boards a bus at Brixton he
gets a double bleep and the driver tells him he has no credit and will
have to pay to travel to Streatham. Being able to speak on a little
English and not being familiar with the system he pays up.

My guess is simply that he failed to touch-out on arrival at Cutty Sark or
failed to touch-in when starting his return journey from Cutty Sark.


A husband and wife go out for the day and make various journies
throughout the day, despite the fact that they have bothed touched in
and out and the same locations they have both had vastly different
amounts deducted from their cards.

That's simply not possible - if any two cards are touched in and out at the
same places then the exact same thing will happen to both of them -
computers are like that, as much as people might like to think that things
are happening randomly they are not.

(Did one card have a railcard discount loaded onto it? Did one card have
auto top-up enabled? Seems less likely if they were visitors, but either
could result in them ending up with different balances on their cards at the
end of the day.)


How much longer are people going to be ripped off like this? And
surely the London Tourist Board and similar organisations should be
telling visitors to London NOT to use Oyster and to buy a ODTC where
appropriate instead?

I think you should go to speakers' corner and have a good old shout about
it.

One particular thing I've seen many people doing is trying to touch-out or
touch-in on the wrong Oyster pads at station gatelines, where those
gatelines are unattended and hence left open - i.e. people leaving the
station don't look for the green arrow light to indicate that the gate is an
exit gate and instead try to touch-out on the inactive Oyster pad on the
wrong side of an entry gate is (or vice versa for people entering a station
and trying to use an inactive Oyster pad on an exit gate) - also people
walking through open gates before then remembering they need to touch-out,
but instead touching-in on Oyster pads on entry gates. Part of the problem
here can be that the lights on the gate's PED unit (? - it stands for
something that I can't recall off-hand) are sometimes rather faint.

On 04/05/2011 15:31, Mizter T wrote:

One particular thing I've seen many people doing is trying to touch-out
or touch-in on the wrong Oyster pads at station gatelines, where those
gatelines are unattended and hence left open - i.e. people leaving the
station don't look for the green arrow light to indicate that the gate
is an exit gate and instead try to touch-out on the inactive Oyster pad
on the wrong side of an entry gate is (or vice versa for people entering
a station and trying to use an inactive Oyster pad on an exit gate) -
also people walking through open gates before then remembering they need
to touch-out, but instead touching-in on Oyster pads on entry gates.
Part of the problem here can be that the lights on the gate's PED unit
(? - it stands for something that I can't recall off-hand) are sometimes
rather faint.

Oh! I had always assumed that there was no difference between entrance
and exit gates in this situation - ie the pads behave the same as those
at ungated stations, being used for both entry and exit. If the
situation is as Mizter T describes it ought to be publicised much more -
unattended gate lines are far from rare.

Mizter T wrote:

"George" wrote:


A husband and wife go out for the day and make various journies
throughout the day, despite the fact that they have bothed touched in
and out and the same locations they have both had vastly different
amounts deducted from their cards.

That's simply not possible - if any two cards are touched in and out at the
same places then the exact same thing will happen to both of them -
computers are like that, as much as people might like to think that things
are happening randomly they are not.

Oh, come on. This is Oyster. Computers aren't the only part of the
hardware. There are plenty of other things to go wrong.

In my experience, there seem to be faulty pads out there, that read
the card and open the gate, but don't always manage to write back to
the card saying the journey is completed. Sometimes they do managed
it, sometimes they don't. (It's either that or I've got a faulty card
that doesn't always like being written to.)

If that happened to the husband but not the wife (or vice versa) then
that could explain the difference.


One particular thing I've seen many people doing is trying to touch-out or
touch-in on the wrong Oyster pads at station gatelines, where those
gatelines are unattended and hence left open - i.e. people leaving the
station don't look for the green arrow light to indicate that the gate is an
exit gate and instead try to touch-out on the inactive Oyster pad on the
wrong side of an entry gate is (or vice versa for people entering a station
and trying to use an inactive Oyster pad on an exit gate) - also people
walking through open gates before then remembering they need to touch-out,
but instead touching-in on Oyster pads on entry gates. Part of the problem
here can be that the lights on the gate's PED unit (? - it stands for
something that I can't recall off-hand) are sometimes rather faint.

Very good point.

I also got confused the first time I tried to for a journey from
Sydenham Hill to Bromley South.

Touched in on the readers by the Sydenham Hill station entrance on the
up platform, crossed the footbridge to the down platform, saw some
more readers, thought "Better touch on one of those too, so the system
knows which direction I'm going in and doesn't get confused by the
fact that I touched in on one platform and then caught a train from
the other one." Big mistake!

On Wed, 4 May 2011 07:09:58 -0700 (PDT), George
wrote:

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who runs a guest house
in Streatham and he was telling me how visitors to London who use PAYG
Oystercards are still being ripped off.

Two (of many) examples.

A guest with £15 on card gets a bus to Brixton, Victoria Line to
Stockwell, Northern Line to Bank and DLR to Cutty Sark and does the
return journey later that day, but when he boards a bus at Brixton he
gets a double bleep and the driver tells him he has no credit and will
have to pay to travel to Streatham. Being able to speak on a little
English and not being familiar with the system he pays up.

A husband and wife go out for the day and make various journies
throughout the day, despite the fact that they have bothed touched in
and out and the same locations they have both had vastly different
amounts deducted from their cards.

How much longer are people going to be ripped off like this? And
surely the London Tourist Board and similar organisations should be
telling visitors to London NOT to use Oyster and to buy a ODTC where
appropriate instead?

To be fair, it is not unreasonable to expect the users to operate the
system correctly and to touch in and out on each journey as required.

There is also the facility to check journeys on the website and to
have 'errors' corrected.

I think you go too far in condemning a whole system because of one or
two difficulties. I will continue to use my Oyster card as a highly
convenient method of payment.

Scott wrote:


To be fair, it is not unreasonable to expect the users to operate the
system correctly and to touch in and out on each journey as required.

To be fair, the system doesn't exactly make things easy whenever it
fails to work.


There is also the facility to check journeys on the website and to
have 'errors' corrected.

Only if you're prepared to give your personal details to an
organisation that can already literally track your movements!
Actually I suspect that's the real reason the Oyster system is so
badly designed in the first place. It's to trick you into giving your
details to the website.

And if you think I'm being paranoid, ask yourself why TfL banned
newsagents from accepting credit/debit card payments for Oyster top-
ups. Think about it. I can't think of any reason for it except that
it means anyone wanting to use card payments for Oyster to either use
the website or the facilities at stations, so the authorities will be
able to link the specific credit/debit card holder with the specific
Oyster card...


I think you go too far in condemning a whole system because of one or
two difficulties. I will continue to use my Oyster card as a highly
convenient method of payment.

OK, but you're playing right into the hands of Scotland Yard or
whoever really controls TfL.

"solar penguin" wrote:

And if you think I'm being paranoid, ask yourself why TfL banned
newsagents from accepting credit/debit card payments for Oyster top-
ups. Think about it. I can't think of any reason for it except that
it means anyone wanting to use card payments for Oyster to either use
the website or the facilities at stations, so the authorities will be
able to link the specific credit/debit card holder with the specific
Oyster card...

But TfL *haven't* banned newsagents from accepting credit/debit card
payments for Oyster top-ups - it's up to the newsagents themselves to decide
on whether they want to offer that or not. It's worth bearing in mind the
cost to the shopkeeper of processing credit/debit card payments, which might
well wipe out the commission they get for selling Oyster top-ups, or at
least significantly reduce it to the point of it not being worth their
while. If customers are making a larger purchase, of which topping up their
Oyster is only part, then shopkeepers might well be more amenable to payment
by credit/debit card - though some will have it as an absolute rule.

(Is that acceptable, Big Brother? Good, I'll post it now...)

Mizter T wrote:
"solar penguin" wrote:

And if you think I'm being paranoid, ask yourself why TfL banned
newsagents from accepting credit/debit card payments for Oyster top-
ups.

But TfL *haven't* banned newsagents from accepting credit/debit card
payments for Oyster top-ups - it's up to the newsagents themselves to decide
on whether they want to offer that or not.

That's not what the newsagents themselves said. I've heard this at
two different shops, so it's not just one newsagent that's mistaken.

It's worth bearing in mind the
cost to the shopkeeper of processing credit/debit card payments, which might
well wipe out the commission they get for selling Oyster top-ups, or at
least significantly reduce it to the point of it not being worth their
while. If customers are making a larger purchase, of which topping up their
Oyster is only part, then shopkeepers might well be more amenable to payment
by credit/debit card - though some will have it as an absolute rule.

Just the opposite. One newsagent made me split my purchase, paying
for the Oyster by cash, and the other goods by debit card. He clearly
had no problem accepting debit cards in general, but insisted TfL
rules didn't allow him to accept them for Oyster.

So this raises the question of why TfL are letting newsagents believe
they're not allowed to accept credit/debit card payments for Oyster if
it's not he case?

"solar penguin" wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

"solar penguin" wrote:

And if you think I'm being paranoid, ask yourself why TfL banned
newsagents from accepting credit/debit card payments for Oyster top-
ups.

But TfL *haven't* banned newsagents from accepting credit/debit card
payments for Oyster top-ups - it's up to the newsagents themselves to
decide
on whether they want to offer that or not.

That's not what the newsagents themselves said. I've heard this at
two different shops, so it's not just one newsagent that's mistaken.

It's worth bearing in mind the
cost to the shopkeeper of processing credit/debit card payments, which
might
well wipe out the commission they get for selling Oyster top-ups, or at
least significantly reduce it to the point of it not being worth their
while. If customers are making a larger purchase, of which topping up
their
Oyster is only part, then shopkeepers might well be more amenable to
payment
by credit/debit card - though some will have it as an absolute rule.

Just the opposite. One newsagent made me split my purchase, paying
for the Oyster by cash, and the other goods by debit card. He clearly
had no problem accepting debit cards in general, but insisted TfL
rules didn't allow him to accept them for Oyster.

So this raises the question of why TfL are letting newsagents believe
they're not allowed to accept credit/debit card payments for Oyster if
it's not he case?

Perhaps there's some issue w.r.t. the settlement of monies which makes
accepting credit/debit card payments more troublesome (e.g. TfL want the
money for Oyster card purchases before the retailer has got it from their
payment card processer).

FWIW this is what it says on the Oyster Ticket Stops section of the TfL
website:

---quote---
How to pay
Please check with individual retailer which types of payment are accepted.
---/quote---

Source:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14434.aspx

If Oyster Ticket Stops (OTS) weren't permitted to accept credit/debit card
payments for Oyster top-ups at all, then one wouldn't expect the above text
to appear. That's not to say that the local relationship manager or whatever
doesn't just say to OTS shopkeepers that accepting debit/credit cards is
more trouble than its worth (for whatever reason). One possibility is that
to accept credit/debit card payments for Oyster top-ups, OTS shopkeepers
have to pass a more rigourous credit test, and many/most don't bother with
that - in which case they'd be right in saying that TfL rules meant that
they couldn't accept credit/debit card payments for Oyster.

On 04/05/2011 21:31, Scott wrote:
To be fair, it is not unreasonable to expect the users to operate the
system correctly and to touch in and out on each journey as required.

Yes, but if you are a foreign visitor, finding out all the arcane rules
and then finding all the oyster pads can be pretty difficult. Is it
obvious that on tubes you have to touch in and out, but on buses just
touch in. Then what do you do on a tram? And does the answer depend on
whether you take the tram from a boarding point with a gate-line like
Wimbledon, or one without? What about Overground and suburban rail,
where the Oyster pads are often quite hard to find. And what's the
distinction between pink and yellow pads? We know the answers, but can
a visitor find them easily?

If even we natives get caught out from time to time with an uncompleted
journey or two, is it surprising that visitors get caught out quite
often? And if you are just in London for a day or two, you really don't
want to spend hours on the phone or web to fix an unresolved journey on
your Oyster card.

I have to say, that I use Oyster in London reluctantly, and only when a
paper One-day travel card is unavailable or much more expensive. And
when visiting cities abroad I'm extremely reluctant to take out an
Oyster-equivalent card unless I can find out in advance exactly what I'm
letting myself in for. In Paris, for example, the carnet of 10 tickets
is still available, and that works for me.

--
Clive Page