I thought I'd share the results of an experiment I did.

Some time back I bought a Visitor Oyster Card so I could lend it to
people who were visiting me -- it has the advantage of being visually
distinct from a standard Oyster card.

Last week, I decided to try adding it to my online account, and it added
fine, and showed me the balance OK. It even *claims* that the card is
protected against theft, although I'm not sure what to make of that
since I'm sure that the Oyster T&Cs used to say that a visitor Oyster
can't be registered or protected.

But anyway, I successfully activated auto top-up on the visitor card and
I can also confirm that the auto top-up does work.

Just in case anyone's interested...

-roy

On Sep 6, 10:01*pm, Roy Badami wrote:
I thought I'd share the results of an experiment I did.

Some time back I bought a Visitor Oyster Card so I could lend it to
people who were visiting me -- it has the advantage of being visually
distinct from a standard Oyster card.

Last week, I decided to try adding it to my online account, and it added
fine, and showed me the balance OK. *It even *claims* that the card is
protected against theft, although I'm not sure what to make of that
since I'm sure that the Oyster T&Cs used to say that a visitor Oyster
can't be registered or protected.

But anyway, I successfully activated auto top-up on the visitor card and
I can also confirm that the auto top-up does work.

Just in case anyone's interested...

I'm interested - I'm not really surprised that it works, though I did
once think that to create an Oyster online account one needed to have
an Oyster card that at least had a security phrase associated with it
(if not actually fully registered), but recent discussion on here
suggested that one could create an Oyster online account for a card
that's completely unregistered, though I haven't yet played around
with all this myself.

Thanks for sharing your experimentation!

On 06/09/10 22:42, Mizter T wrote:

I'm interested - I'm not really surprised that it works, though I did
once think that to create an Oyster online account one needed to have
an Oyster card that at least had a security phrase associated with it
(if not actually fully registered), but recent discussion on here
suggested that one could create an Oyster online account for a card
that's completely unregistered, though I haven't yet played around
with all this myself.

It makes sense that one of the benefits of registering (by filling in
the paper form at a ticket office) is that it prevents someone else
attempting to set up an online account for your card. This is clearly a
security benefit for those who don't ever intend to set up an online
account.

Online accounts have been promoted for quite a while as an alternative
to registration if you only want to protect your card from loss, and
don't have the need to add monthly or annual travelcards.

I'm curious, though, how to you end up with a card that has a security
phrase associated with it but is *not* fully registered?

-roy