On Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:50:10 +0100, Roland Perry wrote:

From the BBC's earlier story, linked on that page:

"From March 2008, about 240 staff will be redeployed from the
least busy stops to the busiest stations.

Although the massive queues at KX/StP presumably indicate that rather
more than 3% of that station's passengers are buying tickets:

"Fewer than 3% of Tube journeys are now made on single and
return tickets, with Oyster accounting for more than 60% of all
trips, said TfL. "

But ticket offices also perform Oyster transactions. So do the vending
machines, of course, but (unless this has been corrected in the past two
years) the vending machines refuse to accept overseas credit cards that
do not feature UK-style chip-and-PIN.

Last I checked, there was no warning of this fact at either the TfL
website (which indicates that credit cards are accepted) or the chip-and-
PIN website (which indicates that credit cards without chip-and-PIN will
be accepted in the UK, with no exception indicated for vending machines).

So a tourist from overseas may well find himself stranded with an empty
Oyster card and insufficient cash at a station without an open ticket
window, expecting to "top up" by credit card at the machine. (If the
problem with the machines cannot be corrected, there should at the very
least be a warning on the TfL website, with a list of affected stations
and, if relevant, the hours that the ticket windows are closed.)

In the US, many vending machines ask for the cardholder's ZIP code as a
security measure. However, the machines are generally intelligent enough
to skip that step for non-US-based cards.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA