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Fare rises , legalised extortion?
solar penguin wrote:
I'm starting to get a theory that some people are just magically lucky when it comes to new hi-tech gadgets. The equipment just always works _perfectly_ for them, while the rest of us have to struggle with all sorts of errors and failures and crashes and bugs and breakdowns. Of course, the magically lucky elite have an unfair advantage over the rest of us -- and they don't even know it. That's why they see no problems in forcing us to use the advanced technology that works for them, even though we would be _much_ better off sticking with older, more reliable technology that we're comfortable with. Oysters are just one example of this. But the problem's everywhere! 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...) -- John Band john at johnband dot org www.johnband.org |
#2
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Fare rises , legalised extortion?
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/ |
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