On May 8, 9:25 pm, Simon wrote:
You are just being silly. TfL provide cheap and excitant travel for
Londoners.

Sorry , that joke is lost on me , it must be too early in the morning.

B2003

On May 8, 10:30 pm, "Richard J." wrote:
Not true. Other walks of life tend to offer *only* card payments when they
can't justify the cost of handling cash. For example, some all-night petrol
stations offer only credit card payments at the pump. Westminster have
started to abolish cash payments at parking meters.

The petrol stations probably do that for security reasons for the
attendent. You probably can't buy anything from the shop using any
form of payment either. As for Westminster , didn't you notice the
uproar about that or have you been in another country for the last
year?

B2003

On May 9, 7:23 am, James Farrar wrote:
On Thu, 8 May 2008 12:49:26 -0700 (PDT), Boltar

wrote:
On 8 May, 17:30, James Farrar wrote:
Bottom line, when you get penalised because you screwed up - that's
no-one's fault but your own.

You are a jackass arn't you. I had money on me , ergo I didn't screw
up.

Then why are you whingeing?

Because I got screwed over. But like I said, you're a jackass and
obviously too stupid to understand the issue here.

B2003

On May 8, 9:57 pm, alex_t wrote:
Yes. I've had bad experiences with direct debit in the past and TfL/LU
have proven themselves time and time again to be incompetant and I
don't need the hassle of either my details being nicked by some
minimum wage eejit working in their back room or more likely just a
foul up over payment with all the hassle that entails.

My question was about credit card, not direct debit - and it is much
easier to get refund with credit card, compared to DD.

Fakes?? When the hell did anyone last see a fake paper travelcard!

About 6 months ago I saw in the news some gang that was busted for
making fake paper travelcards.

Really? I never saw that. Care to provide a link because I can't find
anything about it. Did they manage to clone the magnetic strip too or
were they just lookalikes?

It someone hacked a pay as you Oyster card I suspect TfL would never
know about it unless their systems crosscheck the supposed balance on
a certain card every time that card goes through a gate. But thats
pretty unlikely as it would be far too slow. And since smartcard
hacking isn't exactly unheard of it would be interesting to know how
many hacked Oysters are out there.

B2003

On 9 May, 09:14, Boltar wrote:
Not true. Other walks of life tend to offer *only* card payments when they
can't justify the cost of handling cash. For example, some all-night petrol
stations offer only credit card payments at the pump. Westminster have
started to abolish cash payments at parking meters.

The petrol stations probably do that for security reasons for the
attendent. You probably can't buy anything from the shop using any
form of payment either.

Eh? Creating a vending machine that accepts cash isn't exactly mystic
Martian technology. The fact that petrol stations have chosen to pick
card-only machines strongly suggests that this is a lot cheaper for
them than offering a cash alternative.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

On 8 May, 20:53, Boltar wrote:
They lived in Cambridge and had no intention of getting Oyster cards
(£6 in deposits?). Welcome to London.

I get the feeling there are many people on here and in TfL who simply
don't want visitors in London , or if they do at least not using
public transport.

I'm happy to have visitors in London; I'm happy for them to use public
transport; I'm glad that TfL provides a great deal of clear and
readily available information in a wide variety of languages to
explain to them how the system works; and I think it's right that
people can hand Oyster cards in at any ticket office to get a refund
of the deposit.

But if people can't be bothered to find out how the system works, or
just avoid it out of spite (why on earth did the Cambridge residents
above have no intention of getting Oyster cards? Even if they were
never planning on going to London again, they could hand them in at
Finsbury Park or KX for a refund...), then I don't see any reason why
the system should go out of its way to accommodate them. As it is, TfL
does allow people who are clueless about the system to use it, but
imposes a fee for the inconvenience they cause.

[if I went to Tokyo without checking how the public transport system
worked, and then got hopelessly lost because all the station names
were in Japanese and I'd only written down my stop in phonetic
English, this would mean that I was a raving idiot, not that there was
a problem with the Tokyo metro].

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

On Thu, May 08, 2008 at 09:12:49AM -0700, John B wrote:

But that doesn't alter the original point, which is that it saves us
all a lot of time and money if people use Oyster;

Even that isn't true. My paper travelcard has got more expensive every
year since Ken shat Oyster out. And the rate of increase isn't
noticeably different from what it was *before* Oyster existed so it
hasn't even made the increases smaller. As for saving time - judging by
the number of cards that don't work at the barriers or need to be swiped
several times to make them work, the number of people who try to pay with
cash on buses only to have to get out again through a queue of people
who are trying to board, the people who wait for the barriers to close in
front of them because they're scared of paying for someone elses journey
on their prepay, the number of people dithering as they try to figure
out what the hell to do at stations like Wimbledon - no, it doesn't save
any time either.

--
David Cantrell | top google result for "internet beard fetish club"

In this episode, R2 and Luke weld the doors shut on their X-Wing,
and Chewbacca discovers that his Ewok girlfriend is really just a
Womble with its nose chopped off.

On Thu, May 08, 2008 at 01:57:51PM -0700, alex_t wrote:

About 6 months ago I saw in the news some gang that was busted for
making fake paper travelcards.

If it's the story I'm thinking of, it was bus saver tickets.

But instead of trying to abolish those, TfL went to the expense and
trouble of issuing a new series that are supposedly harder to fake.

Proving that "fake paper tickets" being a reason to switch to Oyster is
a lie. Cos if it was true they'd have abolished bus saver things.

So self fullfilling prophesy then - less people use them because they
jack the price up so they can claim they want to get rid of them
because less people use them and hence its less economic. Nice.
I'd argue that majority of people switched to Oyster because it is
much more convenient.

Yes, being half the price is certainly more convenient. The point is
that the only reason it's half the price is because cash fares have
shot up faster than at any other time that I can remember.

--
David Cantrell | top google result for "internet beard fetish club"

What is the difference between hearing aliens through the
fillings in your teeth and hearing Jesus in your heart?

Care to say something on the point you've ignored?


Really? I never saw that. Care to provide a link because I can't find
anything about it. Did they manage to clone the magnetic strip too or
were they just lookalikes?

I saw it on TV (BBC News 24) and quite some time ago, so no link...
you are free to google it.
I do remember that there was a dark strip on them, but not sure if it
was working magnetic strip or just something that looks the same.

On Thu, May 08, 2008 at 09:35:03AM -0700, MIG wrote:

I can't remember the last time I went in or out of an LU gate that
displayed anything at all apart from maybe "Enter" or "Exit".

No, they do mostly display other stuff too. It's just that the displays
are of such low quality that they're hard to read quickly. I suggest
that you bend down close to them and look more carefully. Of course,
this will take time and annoy everyone behind you, but that is
apparently what TfL want you to do.

Taking time like that and annoying all their other customers will save
time!

On buses, to read the screen you may have to take even more time to
put your luggage down and shade the screen with your hand because they
don't work in sunlight. But that's OK, you'll save time that way as
well!

--
David Cantrell | Enforcer, South London Linguistic Massive

You may now start misinterpreting what I just
wrote, and attacking that misinterpretation.