On Fri, 6 May 2011 15:13:03 +0100
"tim...." wrote:
As of June you will no longer be able to pay your fare "on the bus". You
either buy a ticket from a station or pay with (their) Oyster equivalent (or
walk)

Sounds like another place where the convenience of the operator is more
important than that of the paying passenger.

B2003

On Fri, 6 May 2011 05:33:07 -0700 (PDT), Paul Corfield wrote:
Having looked at the TfL website I wonder what more TfL could do in
terms of making getting an Oyster Card easy for visitors and providing
pretty clear info on the system's rules and features. OK it is all in
English

They have information, including an Oyster PDF, in Polish, French,
Spanish, Italian, German, Turkish, Chinese, Arabic, Greek, Urdu, Tamil,
Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati and Punjabi.

There is a box on the front page.

David

wrote in message
...
On Fri, 6 May 2011 15:13:03 +0100
"tim...." wrote:
As of June you will no longer be able to pay your fare "on the bus". You
either buy a ticket from a station or pay with (their) Oyster equivalent
(or
walk)

Sounds like another place where the convenience of the operator is more
important than that of the paying passenger.

Seems to have been imposed upon them by the Swedish equivalent of H&SE :-(

(can't find out why)

Mizter T wrote:


Perhaps there's some issue w.r.t. the settlement of monies which makes
accepting credit/debit card payments more troublesome (e.g. TfL want the
money for Oyster card purchases before the retailer has got it from their
payment card processer).

FWIW this is what it says on the Oyster Ticket Stops section of the TfL
website:

---quote---
How to pay
Please check with individual retailer which types of payment are accepted.
---/quote---

Source:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14434.aspx

If Oyster Ticket Stops (OTS) weren't permitted to accept credit/debit card
payments for Oyster top-ups at all, then one wouldn't expect the above text
to appear. That's not to say that the local relationship manager or whatever
doesn't just say to OTS shopkeepers that accepting debit/credit cards is
more trouble than its worth (for whatever reason). One possibility is that
to accept credit/debit card payments for Oyster top-ups, OTS shopkeepers
have to pass a more rigourous credit test, and many/most don't bother with
that - in which case they'd be right in saying that TfL rules meant that
they couldn't accept credit/debit card payments for Oyster.

OK, that does sound plausible. Thanks for that. I'll have to think
about it.

On 06/05/2011 13:33, Paul Corfield wrote:
Having looked at the TfL website I wonder what more TfL could do in
terms of making getting an Oyster Card easy for visitors and providing
pretty clear info on the system's rules and features. OK it is all in
English but many visitors will have a smattering of the language or
they can use an on line translation facility. It's not absolutely
perfect (show me a transport ticketing website that is) but neither is
it some sort of disaster zone where information is virtually
impossible to obtain or understand.

I'm not sure what more TfL could do: the Oyster system is,
unfortunately, extremely complex when you consider all the possible ways
you can use it. And visitors are quite likely to use it (or try to)
when going to places like Greenwich or Windsor, in awkward combinations
of tubes and buses and national rail trains and maybe even trams, so
they run more than a tiny risk of encountering the rough edges of the
scheme.

And that's not to mention boats - I realised too late last time I took a
boat along the Thames that I could have done it more cheaply using my
Oyster card than by paying cash. I don't think that any of the Oyster
Card literature that I'd read told me that.

Regards

--
Clive Page

On Fri, 6 May 2011 15:13:03 +0100, tim.... wrote:

Don't got to southern Sweden then!.

As of June you will no longer be able to pay your fare "on the bus". You
either buy a ticket from a station or pay with (their) Oyster equivalent (or
walk)

Or pay with your mobile.

--
jhk

Paul Corfield wrote:

On Fri, 06 May 2011 22:13:59 +0100, Clive Page wrote:

On 06/05/2011 13:33, Paul Corfield wrote:
Having looked at the TfL website I wonder what more TfL could do in
terms of making getting an Oyster Card easy for visitors and providing
pretty clear info on the system's rules and features. OK it is all in
English but many visitors will have a smattering of the language or
they can use an on line translation facility. It's not absolutely
perfect (show me a transport ticketing website that is) but neither is
it some sort of disaster zone where information is virtually
impossible to obtain or understand.

I'm not sure what more TfL could do: the Oyster system is,
unfortunately, extremely complex when you consider all the possible ways
you can use it. And visitors are quite likely to use it (or try to)
when going to places like Greenwich or Windsor, in awkward combinations
of tubes and buses and national rail trains and maybe even trams, so
they run more than a tiny risk of encountering the rough edges of the
scheme.

Let's take a step back. At the most basic level Oyster is not that
complicated.

You buy a card, pay a deposit and add money or a Travelcard on it.
On rail journeys in the zonal area you must touch in and then touch out.
On a tram journey you touch in.
On a bus journey you touch in.

You can add more money at a LU station, at ticket machines at stations
across the zonal area and at shops with signs saying Oyster Ticket
Stops.

Oh and Oyster will add up your daily PAYG travel and will ensure you pay
the cheapest total fare.


It _should_ add up your daily PAYG travel and ensure you pay the
cheapest total fare. But it doesn't always do that in practice, does
it?

I've mentioned faulty pads that seem to read the card and open the
gate, but don't always write back to the card. There's one at Gipsy
Hill, one of my local stations, and it's caught me out a few times.
I've stopped using that particular gate whenever I'm on Oyster now,
but how's someone unfamiliar with the system supposed to know that?

How many other faulty pads are out there that we don't know about? If
the system doesn't even know where you've been, how's it going to work
out the right fare?


The above concepts are common to many smartcard systems elsewhere in the
world although few systems have as many validator only systems as
London. However they're more likely to be in the suburbs than in the
centre.

I tend to visit "off the beaten track" areas when I visit somewhere so I
might well fall across the apparent exceptions or complications in other
systems but I stress again - I haven't been caught out.

Are you talking about London or other places when you say you haven't
been caught out? If you mean London, then I just plain don't believe
you.


Now I accept that there are complications beyond what I have written
above but really how many tourists are going to fall across those
issues? How many tourists venture beyond zones 1 and 2? How many will
rove around the system breaking the maximum journey time rule or
tripping through OSIs? There may be a few but they will be very much
in the minority.

Is there still an OSI between the "entry" and "exit" barriers at
Oxford Circus? I got caught out by it last December, when I went to
collect some goods I'd ordered from John Lewis. Touched out, went to
the store, queued up, got my goods, touched in not knowing about the
OSI, and later found I had an unresolved journey.

I can see why TfL might think this OSI was a good idea for people who
got confused by the one-way layout of the station and were
accidentally channelled outside when they just wanted to change
trains. But I bet it catches out a lot of tourists doing Oxford
Circus.

But whether or not Oyster catches out tourists, it's still catching
out ordinary Londoners like us. That's the real problem.

In message , at 22:08:46 on
Fri, 6 May 2011, Paul Corfield remarked:

If people don't research before travel I wonder why we get so many posts
on here from potential visitors about how tickets work, what trains to
catch, how to use the buses etc etc?

Because this is a self-selected group of people who are interested in
researching fares.

I never cease to be amazed at the majority of people I travel with
abroad just jump into taxis and are aghast at the idea they could work
out how to get a train or bus (even when there's a very obvious
point-to-point service between the airport and their destination).

For example, there's a much under-used machine by the exit of Geneva's
baggage reclaim hall that dispenses a free public transport ticket.
There's a railway station (all the frequent trains stop at the city
centre) under the concourse, and buses and trolleybuses right outside.
Some people are being picked up, but loads head straight for the taxi
rank.
--
Roland Perry

Paul Corfield wrote:

On Fri, 6 May 2011 06:13:21 -0700 (PDT), solar penguin
wrote:


Paul Corfield wrote:

On this basis I have a RATP Mobilis card (their version of a ODTC but
you have a ID card), a Singapore EZ Pass, Hong Kong Octopus and Tokyo
Suica. I've had magnetic Metrocards in Hong Kong and paper "seasons"
in other cities. I cannot claim to know all the ins and outs of these
fare systems but I do what most people will do and that is search the
web and do a bit of research beforehand.

Is that what "most people" do? Really? Have you got any surveys to
back you up on this?

No surveys to prove it. Do you have some surveys to disprove my point?
We can trade points like this all day if you'd like ;-)

_You're_ the one making the claim. It's _your_ claim so it's up to
_you_ to prove it, not up to me to disprove it.


I know I've never looked up how to pay for the local public transport
before taking a trip somewhere. Check whether there is any public
transport nearby, yes. But nothing more. And I know people who don't
even do that much.

OK so some people are different. If people don't bother to the extent
that you are suggesting I do rather wonder why operators in all these
foreign places bother to put any helpful info on their websites in
English for visitors. Why not let them wallow in their ignorance and use
taxis rather than public transport during their visit?

If people don't research before travel I wonder why we get so many posts
on here from potential visitors about how tickets work, what trains to
catch, how to use the buses etc etc?

I never said that no-one ever does research. I'm just questioning
your claim that "most people" do it.

While I suppose I might be deemed an "expert user" here in London I
can't be said to be that in these other places. I cannot recall ever
being wrongly charged nor have I been caught out by the system other
than a couple of times in Paris.

Compare that with how often London's Oyster goes wrong, and it's
obvious that TfL must be doing something wrong somewhere.

So you're prepared to accept my single example based on a few trips as
some sort of proof that TfL's system is broken.

At least that _is_ a real example based on real trips, not something
you've just made up with no evidence at all.

Even a little evidence is still better than none.

There may be all sorts
of problems going on with these other systems that I have never fallen
across.

But compare that with how easy it is to fall across problems with
Oyster PAYG. It's unlikely you could use it for even a few trips
without coming across some sort of problem. That's the difference.

You just don't like Oyster - that's fine. However don't try to
"get me" over having survey evidence and then using a sample of one to
support your dislike of Oyster in the same thread!! It's not exactly a
consistent position.

I'm sorry for thinking "a sample of one" was more than nothing at
all. You see, I have this old-fashioned idea that one is somehow more
than none. Obviously that doesn't apply in the topsy-turvy world of
Oyster...

In message
,
solar penguin wrote:
But compare that with how easy it is to fall across problems with
Oyster PAYG. It's unlikely you could use it for even a few trips
without coming across some sort of problem. That's the difference.

I spent a week in London just before Easter. 15 Underground train
journeys (i.e. more than "a few"), 3 buses, all on Oyster. Zero
problems.

Indeed, none of my family (two of whom live in London and commute daily
on Oyster) have *ever* had a problem.

You just don't like Oyster - that's fine. However don't try to
"get me" over having survey evidence and then using a sample of one to
support your dislike of Oyster in the same thread!! It's not exactly a
consistent position.

I'm sorry for thinking "a sample of one" was more than nothing at
all. You see, I have this old-fashioned idea that one is somehow more
than none.

"The singular of 'data' is not 'anecdote'."

--
Clive D.W. Feather | Home:
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