On Sun, 6 Nov 2005 10:53:41 +0000, Clive Page
wrote:

(1) I don't like the idea of having to register my details, so that
every journey I take is known to TFL. That smacks just a bit to much
like big brother for my liking. If I use an unregistered card and lose
it then I lose all the stored value (as I understand it).

So don't lose it. Just keep it in your wallet (it's credit card sized)
along with your banknotes - they are also unregistered and if you lose
them you lose all their value, but I'm sure you manage to cope.
There's no real need to keep more than £10 or so of value on the card
(despite some posters managing to reach the £90 limit!).

(2) I've seen far too many stories of people finding unresolved journeys
for a whole variety of reasons, and then it takes them a huge amount of
time to get the excess charge refunded. I often transfer from mainline
rail (which doesn't use Oyster) to tube at places like Kings Cross
Thameslink, Farringdon, Moorgate, or Blackfriars where it is hard (or
impossible) to find an Oyster machine to touch in to, so I expect that
using one will be a frequent waste of time and maybe money.

This, IMHO, is one of the main problems with the Oyster system -
although, like you say, it's easy to end up with unresolved journeys
for all sorts of reasons, they deliberately go out of their way to
make it difficult to get the problem resolved. Ticket office staff
(while extremely helpful IME) do not have permission to sort out
unresolved journeys in many situations. And if your card is
unregistered, the Oyster helpline flatly refuse to help you at all.

The only mitigating factor is that the charge for an unresolved
journey is (currently) the minimum fare, so some of the time at least
you don't lose out financially. However, it's been reported in this
group that at some point the charge will increase to the maximum (i.e.
zones 1-6) fare.