London Banter - View Single Post

SteveL · September 23rd 11, 02:33 PM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote in message ...

In article ,
(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 once went through pretty much this same scenario - my automatic top-up had
"bounced", so my Oyster card had a balance on it that I couldn't use because
my Oyster card was now "blocked", meanwhile I was technically owing TfL for
the outstanding top-up fee.

The solution when I phoned them was that I paid that outstanding top-up fee,
resolving my technical debt to TfL, albeit making me temporarily
out-of-pocket. Then, as my Oyster card was cancelled, they were able to
refund the full balance (including the original deposit) to me.

Steve