"Colin Rosenstiel" wrote in message
...
In article , james.s
(James Farrar) wrote:

For most tourists touring central London this is not an issue.

Hmm,

Greenwich
Richmond (& Ham House)
Hampton Court
Crystal Palace
Hampstead Heath

Hampton Court is probably the only significant tourist attraction of
the latter four. Greenwich is accessible by DLR.

When will Oyster capping come in for Hampton Court anyway?

One would hope that when SWT introduce Oyster fares it
will be possible to touch-in/out at the obvious stations over
the border.

Not to do so would be stupid IMHO

tim

They do not, but you will have to reactivate them if you do not use one
for 2 years.

"The money on your Oyster card never expires - it stays there until you
use it.
However, if your card is not used for 2 years, you will have to
reactivate it or
claim back any unused cash by calling the Oyster helpline on 0845 330
9876. "

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/fares-tick...user-guide.pdf

asdf wrote:

On Fri, 29 Dec 2006 10:18:05 -0000, tim..... wrote:

The cash on an Oyster card doesn't expire, strip cards usually
do (I've no idea about the dutch ones).

Oyster cards expire if you don't use them for 2 years.

In article ,
uk (tim.....) wrote:

"Colin Rosenstiel" wrote in message
...
In article , james.s
(James Farrar) wrote:

For most tourists touring central London this is not an issue.

Hmm,

Greenwich
Richmond (& Ham House)
Hampton Court
Crystal Palace
Hampstead Heath

Hampton Court is probably the only significant tourist
attraction of the latter four. Greenwich is accessible by DLR.

When will Oyster capping come in for Hampton Court anyway?

One would hope that when SWT introduce Oyster fares it
will be possible to touch-in/out at the obvious stations over
the border.

Not to do so would be stupid IMHO

Indeed but I was assuming that Hampton Court station would continue to be
treated as if it was in Greater London as it has been for other purposes
for some time.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Ian Jelf wrote:
In message , tim.....
writes
Hampton Court is probably the only significant tourist attraction of
the latter four. Greenwich is accessible by DLR.

But is the punter going to know that. They'll look at the map, see
that NR is much quicker and go that way. And then they will find out
that their ticket isn't valid

Actually what happens is that they see loads of publicity for boat trips
and go that way or else they look at the Tube Map and find access *only*
via the Jubilee and DLR.

Actually, I've lived in London ten years and last year when I was in
Charing Cross and needed to go to Greenwich, I used the tube/DLR (and
yes it took ages), without even thinking of taking the train as being an
option.

I wouldn't make that mistake again, mind you.

sweek wrote:

I guess I'm part of that lucky elite group too! Living in London, use
my Oyster almost daily, and haven't had any problems at all. I love
that I just don't have to worry about buying tickets or queueing at all
with auto top-up on it.
I don't know of any friends that have had problems either. Are you sure
it might not just be you who's in the minority here,

It could be. I have a very bad track record with ANY technology from
after the early-to-mid-nineties. Anything more modern modern that can
crash, fail, or break down usually will when I start using it! I can't
be in the minority _every_ time that happens!

and are you sure
you haven't just walked through gates even though you got an error beep
or anything?

What gates? I only ever used it on buses. And I don't travel on them
very often, which is why I'd hardly used it.

Anyway, one day it just stopped working. It didn't respond at all to
the readers on the buses. It didn't even respond to the reader in the
newsagent when I took it back to complain. I couldn't prove there
should still be five quid on there, because the readers wouldn't even
acknowledge there was a card there, never mind how much money was on
it. And I couldn't even get a refund on my deposit, because the
newsagent claimed the damage must've been my fault!

Now maybe you're saying there's something special and different about
the readers on gates that lets them read faulty cards that other
readers can't even detect. No-one told me anything about that at the
time!

sweek wrote:

They do not, but you will have to reactivate them if you do not use one
for 2 years.

"The money on your Oyster card never expires - it stays there until you
use it.
However, if your card is not used for 2 years, you will have to
reactivate it or
claim back any unused cash by calling the Oyster helpline on 0845 330
9876. "

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/fares-tick...user-guide.pdf


Maybe that's what went wrong with mine? Maybe it just went dormant
before its time? I'd only used it two or three times in those two
years, and maybe that wasn't enough to keep it active?

On 29 Dec 2006 07:21:29 -0800,
John B wrote:

Based on my experience of living in London, commuting in London using
Oyster, and being surrounded by friends and colleagues who do the same,
the people for whom Oyster works fine nearly all the time
encompasses... err... all of them, while the people who are cursed with
errors and failures and crashes and bugs and breakdowns are... two
people on Usenet.

(the only problem I've had with Oyster was forgetting to renew my
season ticket, not touching in at Finsbury Park because you don't need
to if you have a season ticket, being stopped by inspectors while
changing trains at Green Park and PF-d £20 for using PP without
touching in. Which was more my fault than Oyster's anyway...)

I work in London and have a prepay Oyster but almost never use it (about
40GBP/year in total which is why I no longer bother with Z1-6 on my Gold
Card) - and when I do use it it's typically 3 journeys in one day so I'm
using it less than once per month.

The problem is that when you use it so infrequently you don't realise it
hasn't worked properly. I've (only) had two problems - one at Leicester
Square where the barriers were open and my card obviously didn't
register when I badged in - I now know to watch for the green light to
come on - but I had no idea at all that there had been a problem until a
couple of months later when I went to top up and saw that there was an
unresolved journey.

The second problem was at Euston where again my card obviously didn't
register properly - the barrier definitely beeped and the green light
was on but the barrier slammed on me (it hurts). Clearly the person
behind me didn't realise I'd done it wrong either because they'd already
put their ticket into the barrier so then I was trapped between the
closed barrier saying "take ticket" and the person trying to get out.
(I then had to queue for the ticket office to find out whether I had an
unresolved journey - I didn't. I could, in theory have used one of the
machines but, of course, they weren't working properly either)

The only problems I've ever had with paper tickets (on NR or the tube)
is, a) my gold card fades and needs reprinting after about 6 months as
it's unreadable although it still works fine in the barriers, and b)
when travelling on a single ticket, usually they are swallowed by the
barrier but occasionally you have to take the ticket and I usually spend
an extra 5 seconds working out what has gone wrong before I see the
ticket and the gate opens.

I'm tempted to go back to an all zones travel card. I'll see how oyster
works this year and then, if I'm still seeing occasional problems I'll
probably go back to travelcard. OK, it will cost me about another
250GBP/year but the knowledge that I definitely won't have to queue for
ten minutes to work out what has gone wrong is worth far more to me.

(Actually I'd like to see the ability to buy paper tickets using oyster
- I don't care about the cap and usually when I am travelling I'm with
other people so the ability to go up to a machine, press Z1 single and
then badge my oyster and get a paper ticket would be ideal particularly
as I can then buy tickets for others as well.)

Tim.

--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://tjw.hn.org/ http://www.locofungus.btinternet.co.uk/