"Sharon" wrote:

I'm living abroad now but came back to London for a few weeks for a
holiday and used my old Oyster to travel around. It still had auto top
up on it from before which I had neglected to cancel, and had topped up
40 pounds after a normal day out. Which I did not want it to do, but I
thought oh well, I should have cancelled it before, too late now. And I
did go to the website and request the auto top to be stopped afterwards,
but I didn't bother with getting the money back as I'd imagine it would
be a big faff and take ages, and I was flying out in a few days, and I
could let my friend use it up instead etc. The cancelling of the auto
top up had to be 'activated' by tapping in at a tube station (why??)
which I didn't manage to do, so another 'black mark' against me.
But then I got an e-mail from TFL saying the auto top up had failed! So
I thought well, that's worked out then.
A few days later, I'm not in the UK anymore and they've sent me another
e-mail saying as I'd failed to pay them the 40 pounds they had now
cancelled my card, which still had 5 pounds on it, and that I wouldn't
get my 5 pounds back if I didn't pay them 40 pounds. And not only that,
if I didn't pay them the 40 pounds, they were going to 'take further
action'!
What further action could they take? I didn't go into negative with my
card, why do I still have to pay them 40 pounds especially as they've
cancelled it? They are also very happy to send out numerous e-mails, but
bizarrely unable to accept e-mails back themselves.


I think what's happened here is that the 40 pounds actually did get credited
to your Oyster card, so essentially you're currently owing TfL that money,
hence why they've blacklisted your Oyster card. If you pay them that money
then they should de-blacklist your Oyster card.

The reason why auto top-up needs to be cancelled by making a journey is that
basically when auto top-up is activated on a card it will then top itself up
whenever the balance drops below 8 pounds ad infinitum, and the card needs
to be instructed to stop doing this - it's basically the reverse operation
of setting up auto top-up (where you have to pass through a nominated
station).

I'd suggest you pay the 40 pounds, after which your Oyster card will be
unlocked - the important thing then is that you then cancel auto top-up on
that card, otherwise it'll keep topping itself up forever! So you'll either
have to arrange to get your friend to do that by passing through a station
you nominate as part of a journey (I think that'd have to happen within 7
days), or else get them to set your card aside for when you come back to
London and then deal with the matter yourself.

I suppose one other possible solution is if you could come to some
arrangement with Oyster customer services, e.g. pay the 40 pounds minus
whatever's left on the card, and then they'd keep the card on the blacklist.
I've no idea if this is a procedure open to them though.

I guess one thing that might be helpful would be if one could go to a Tube
ticket office and get the auto top-up instruction on an Oyster card
cancelled. I'm not sure whether there'd be back office repercussions of such
a process though.