In message , at 09:52:23 on
Thu, 7 Nov 2013, Tony Dragon remarked:
Can you explain what you mean by "so much human intervention"?

I presume he means when buying the card, and when spending hours talking
to the helpline to sort out unresolved journeys etc.

On the few times that I have had a problem with Oyster, I have spent
less than five minutes on the phone.

I've had several half-hour sessions, and I'm only an occasional visitor.

Plus of course the effort of getting printouts for "expenses purposes"
when all you need do with a paper ticket is hand in the ticket itself.

Register Oyster,

Find a computer, log on... Find a printer...[1]

print journey history (or have it automatically e-mailed to you)

Then clip out the bit you want to submit as expenses.

And this functionality is quite recent, to begin with the only way to
get a journey history was to queue at a ticket window.

[1] Actually, this is one of the most difficult steps when travelling or
working away from home.
--
Roland Perry