On 24 Nov, 12:00, Tim Woodall wrote:
You can't get a refund unless you use the tube within a certain number
of days (8 weeks?). So if you're abroad/in another bit of the country
and not planning to visit London for a few months then TfL will eat the
refund and there's nothing you can do.

I was in exactly this situation and thought I'd lost the money, but at
the end of the 7 days (while I was still abroad) they emailed asking
to choose a date and station to try again with (it was an automatic
refund due to an "operational error" at Bank, and they'd chosen a
refund station for me). Which appears to be a good faith effort to not
"eat the refund".

(I've no idea if there's an actual point in time when they do give up
trying to refund and keep the money)

U

On 24 Nov, 11:40, Tim Woodall wrote:
On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 06:40:41 -0800 (PST),
* * Mr Thant wrote: On 23 Nov, 14:23, "tim....." wrote:
And what rule is it that makes this method of "top up" un-refundable if you
don't use it?

Auto top-up triggers whenever the balance falls below £5. Thus your
balance is always in the £5-£25 range, never below. The loophole I'm
suggesting is to add cash before each journey to keep it in the £5-£10
range, but what you can't ever do with a card with auto top-up enabled
is spend the last £5.

You can still have the card refunded of course, but then you have no
Oyster Card.

The topup triggers when you ENTER a station with your balance below
5GBP. So you should top you your card before every journey to 5.10 and
then the topup won't trigger. There are a handful of journeys where your
card balance can actually go negative if you plan it right (but the
deposit will be more than the negative balance)

Presumably only before your last ever journey on that card, or it
really would defeat the whole object.

On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:26:41 -0800 (PST),
MIG wrote:
On 24 Nov, 11:40, Tim Woodall wrote:
On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 06:40:41 -0800 (PST),
* * Mr Thant wrote: On 23 Nov, 14:23, "tim....." wrote:
And what rule is it that makes this method of "top up" un-refundable if you
don't use it?

Auto top-up triggers whenever the balance falls below £5. Thus your
balance is always in the £5-£25 range, never below. The loophole I'm
suggesting is to add cash before each journey to keep it in the £5-£10
range, but what you can't ever do with a card with auto top-up enabled
is spend the last £5.

You can still have the card refunded of course, but then you have no
Oyster Card.

The topup triggers when you ENTER a station with your balance below
5GBP. So you should top you your card before every journey to 5.10 and
then the topup won't trigger. There are a handful of journeys where your
card balance can actually go negative if you plan it right (but the
deposit will be more than the negative balance)

Presumably only before your last ever journey on that card, or it
really would defeat the whole object.

Don't know about last ever journey - just last journey before you leave
London for months.

Last time my parents were in London (August IIRC) I helped them get PAYG
oyster cards and we arranged it so that their balance would be zero when
they left London (couldn't be negative because they were only making Z1
journeys).

Given that they would only ever arrive at Euston and they walk to their
hotel (mostly they walk around London but we were going to a prom which
is a bit too far to walk) they've got ample opportunity to put more
money on their card next time they arrive and they can find a convenient
station with no queue. And, if next time they decide to try a different
hotel they can (I think) set up a topup online that they will pick up at
Euston station[1] so they won't need to queue to topup their cards
before they travel.

Tim.

[1] When I used my oyster card maybe a dozen times a year I decided I'd
still like to have autotopup. One day I was going to be taking the tube
to work instead of cycling so I arranged it so I could enable the
autotopup at Euston. Unfortunately, when I got to Euston there was some
sort of alert and I wasn't allowed into the underground and so I went to
work via Euston Square. So the autotopup expired uncollected.


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

http://www.woodall.me.uk/

"Andrew Heenan" wrote in message
...
"tim....." wrote ...
None of this helps us provincials who use perhaps a tenner a year on
PAYG.
That being the case, what on Earth are you doing even considering auto
top-up.
That's insane.
No it's not. It's just as much a PITA having to feed three quid cash
onto my card each time I want to make a return tube journey than it is to
feed thirty quid for a week's travel.

But if you use 'a tenner a year', why not top up a tenner a year?

because I still have to keep track of whether I have enough for "today's"
journey



tim

wrote in message
...
In article , (Andrew
Heenan) wrote:

And how you think an 'auto' system could conceivably function
*without* registration beats me!

Why does the system need to know more than which /card/ is being topped
up?

Because I'm sure that the owner of card number 6786 5678 3467 6789 would be
awfully ****ed off if I asked TfL to use his card to top up my Oyster
without any checks

tim

On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 03:45:27PM -0800, MIG wrote:
On Nov 21, 11:19=A0pm, Richard wrote:
On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:37:59 -0800 (PST), Mr Thant
wrote:
On 21 Nov, 15:17, David Cantrell wrote:
Bus usage is reasonably heavy here too, but TfL doesn't seem to care.
People who use the busses a lot are *forced* by the penalty cash fares
to either have a Travelcard (which we can get from the local railway
station) or an Oyster card. How inconvenient Oyster is doesn't matter,
it seems.
Auto top-up, yo.
Exactly. It's inconvenient, but only once, or less if you have
internet access and buy on-line.
And you have to sign up with full details, to be electronically
tagged. No thanks.

I too object to that. However, I'd probably hold my nose and do it anyway
*if* there wasn't one other big problem with Oyster. That is that when
it goes wrong it goes badly wrong. And it goes badly wrong in two ways:

First of all, to even know it's gone wrong you either have to keep a
running total in your head (and I have lots of other things to remember)
so you can spot when more money has been taken from your card than
you expected, or you have to religiously check the web site the day
after every journey so that you can compare the journeys it thinks you
made with the journeys you actually made. There's no real fix for this,
other than them SMSing me as soon as possible after every transaction
with my current pre-pay balance, or something of that ilk.

Second, to fix the problem you either need to phone an expensive 08
number or visit a tube station. The first is Wrong because I don't see
why I should pay to fix TfL's screw-ups*; the second is Wrong because
it's damnably inconvenient. They *must* introduce an 020 number for the
Oyster helpline, or they *must* make it possible to fix Oyster problems
at every railway station in London.

* even if, strictly speaking, I screwed up, I still blame TfL, because I
wouldn't have screwed up if they hadn't designed such an over-complex
system. Certainly if *I* designed a system as complex at work with so
many weird edge cases and complex conditions that the users were
regularly making mistakes, I'd have a great deal of explaining to do
if I wanted to keep my job.

--
David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

I don't do .INI, .BAT, or .SYS files. I don't assign apps to files.
I don't configure peripherals or networks before using them. I have
a computer to do all that. I have a Macintosh, not a hobby.
-- Fritz Anderson

On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 11:28:31PM -0000, Andrew Heenan wrote:
"tim....." wrote :
Assuming you are referring to the bit that you left, he is saying that it
is only possible to "initiate" your top up by visiting a tube station and
actually making a TUBE journey, something which not everybody will want to
do.
If you don't want to travel, why, for God's sake, would you want to top-up
your oyster, auto, manually or any other way?
It simply does not make sense.

Perhaps you are unaware that there are other methods than tube by which
one can travel. Bus, for example. Why should one have to make a TUBE
journey when all you want to do is travel by BUS.

--
David Cantrell | Hero of the Information Age

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 24 Nov, 18:29, David Cantrell wrote:
There's no real fix for this,
other than them SMSing me as soon as possible after every transaction
with my current pre-pay balance, or something of that ilk.

You should be able to check the cost as you go on the screens on
readers. Every gate and standalone reader has a screen that shows you
your balance and the amount being deducted. There seems to be two
types of gates - one shows the numbers on the post next to the gate
(where the green arrow lights up) on both entry and exit. The other
has an LCD as part of the Oyster pad, but only on the pad you use when
exiting, meaning you don't get shown your balance on the way in on
this type.

U

On Sun, 23 Nov 2008, wrote:

In article , (Andrew
Heenan) wrote:

And how you think an 'auto' system could conceivably function
*without* registration beats me!

Why does the system need to know more than which /card/ is being topped up?

Because you have to give them your credit/debit card details, so they can
charge you money for the credit which is being topped up. If they took
paypal or something, then maybe they wouldn't have to take your details,
but they don't, so they do.

tom

--
Tomorrow has made a phone call to today.

On Sun, 23 Nov 2008, wrote:

In article , (Andrew
Heenan) wrote:

wrote:
None of this helps us provincials who use perhaps a tenner a year
on PAYG.
That being the case, what on Earth are you doing even considering
auto top-up. That's insane.
I think I was slightly confusing auto with online top-up which has
similar issues.

Fair 'nuff.

Online top up really is a pain, especially for small amounts.

But it's pretty well the only option if you live in the USA.

People who live in the USA aren't really part of the target demographic
for Oyster. Unless the Crossrail plans have changed radically since i last
looked.

tom

--
Tomorrow has made a phone call to today.