In message , at 08:48:13 on Sat, 7
May 2011, Clive D. W. Feather remarked:

Indeed, none of my family (two of whom live in London and commute daily
on Oyster) have *ever* had a problem.

I've had self-inflicted problems (forgetting to touch-out at a DLR
station because the pads were hidden away and didn't provide a ready
reminder).

But also system-inflicted problems (a mystery overcharge which they
confessed to, but was quite some trouble to pick up[1] due to the "you
must nominate somewhere specific to do it" syndrome).

I also had problems when trying to set up auto-topup because my travel
plans changed and I didn't use the "somewhere nominated" station after
all. So had to re-specify a place and try again on a later trip.

A later administrative pickup failed because they didn't say at the
beginning of the request process that the instruction would time out
after a week. (And I wasn't going to be there for about a month).

I've also got a Barclaycard OnePulse, and "someone" registered it online
(with a userid clearly associated with me, but which I would never have
picked, and a password I obviously never supplied) and failed to tell me
they'd done it, or supply login details. It took a half hour call to the
helpline to sort that out.

My annual Oyster usage is about £30, and I've had one since they were
first introduced (and the OnePulse since first issued). So a regular but
infrequent customer. And given the level of my usage, quite a high
percentage of faffing about.

I'm prepared to accept that daily users will get more accustomed to the
way it works, and suffer fewer problems as a result. But tourists are
likely to be unfamiliar users, if we are suggesting they try Oyster.

[1] I foolishly chose "St Pancras", which turns out to be the FCC SPILL
gateline, not the tube station.
--
Roland Perry