On Wed, Oct 08, 2014 at 04:31:05PM -0500, wrote:
In article ,
(David Cantrell) wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07, 2014 at 07:17:53PM -0500,
wrote:
(David Cantrell) wrote:
For most people the cost of auto-topup is pennies, so is far less
than the cost of queueing. Therefore auto-topup is better.
You are forgetting the non-trivial chance of losing or mislaying
the card so the whole value is lost to you, at least temporarily.
You are forgetting the non-trivial chance of losing or mislaying a
tenner so the whole value is lost to you. At least if you lose your
Oyster card it is possible to get a (partial?) refund.
You assume I pay with cash. Why?

You assume that people losing their Oyster cards is so common as to
offset the cost advantage of auto-topup. Why?

--
David Cantrell | even more awesome than a panda-fur coat

Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla.

On 10/10/2014 12:13, David Cantrell wrote:
[...]
I suspect few non-Londoners use Ticket Stops or would know where to
find the nearest.
Lemme go and check again ...
Haha, http://ticketstoplocator.tfl.gov.uk/LocationLocator/ says that
there are no ticket stops anywhere near where I live (CR7 8JH) or work
(E1 6QL) or near Victoria station (SW1E 5ND). If TfL can't find the
damned things, god help any tourist foolish enough to try to use one.
Yeah - it appears to be broken, go here and try again:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/maps/oyster-ti....5217056274414

I'm not so familiar with where all the little shops are near work, but
if I put my home postcode into that, it shows a few. They're all in the
wrong places though.

That's a pretty petulant response - it shows several near your domicile,
including two on the way to the station via Melfort Road, and one
opposite the station.


(Google still picks up the website you indicated, but navigating the
"new" TfL website takes you to the link I've supplied)

So I repeat, god help any tourist foolish enough to try to use one.
People find things via google, not by going to the home page of a web
site and clicking on random links until they find what they want.
Especially tourists who probably don't even know that TfL is the company
they want or that it lives at tfl.gov.uk.


How many of them would be searching Google for a "tfl ticket stop
locator" or similar then?

Looking back on the thread, no-one actually proposed Oyster Ticket Stops
as a magic solution for tourists.

On 10/10/2014 12:10, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 11:08:58 on Fri, 10 Oct
2014, Mizter T remarked:

On 10/10/2014 10:11, Roland Perry wrote:
[...]
And if you got a new Barclays OnePulse card (even a routine replacement)
that had a different Oyster Card number, so you had to ring them up to
transfer the balance and the auto-topup, but I don't think you had to
re-active the auto-topup. All ancient history now of course.

That would have required Barclaycard to send out some replacement
cards with auto top-up enabled, and others without it, to the correct
customers - given how they kept their distance from the Oyster side of
things, I wonder if that was really the case, or whether you perhaps
misremember?

It's possible I had to re-enable auto-topup, now you mention it. I think
I specified the "wrong" gateline at the KGX/StP concourse and thus
ensued a merry dance.

I was never very impressed with the OnePulse card - functionally, it
was just a plastic card that co-hosted two quite separate things, a
contactless credit card and an Oyster card. (Technically it was a bit
more than that, as the EMV contactless bit had to play nice with the
Oyster/Mifare bit.)

Reduces card-bloat.

Though possibly more hassle than it was worth?!


There were plans for London Borough library cards with integrated
Oyster cards - and perhaps few might have actually been issued, I'm
not sure - but again (according to the documentation I saw for them)
it was basically a plastic card hosting two quite separate functions -
library borrower details with a barcode printed on the front, with
Oyster/Mifare innards - and if you had any problems with the Oyster
bit you had to deal with TfL.

These days most Boroughs (and councils elsewhere) don't manage to
combine their library cards and leisure cards.

Nottingham does

http://www.citycardnottingham.co.uk/...-citycard.html

and they've had Smartcards on the buses for a decade. Oddly enough I
think the Nottingham Building Society was the first to introduce online
banking (on Prestel, it's that long ago).

City of the future!

To be fair, some Boroughs in London manage it, for example Hillingdon
and Redbridge:

http://www.hillingdon.gov.uk/hillingdonfirst

http://www2.redbridge.gov.uk/cms/leisure_and_libraries/leisure/the_redbridge_card.aspx

The Hillingdon First card also provides residents with preferential
parking rates at on-street bays and council car parks.

On 2014-10-10 11:07:29 +0000, David Cantrell said:

The railway doesn't provide them. AFAIK ticket machines won't sell you a
new Oyster card, but Ticket Stops are supposed to. And anyway, if having
a station nearby was good enough, then surely ticket stops would have
never existed near any tube station.

I think they're driven more by newsagents wanting to provide a service
and considering it profitable than TfL approaching newsagents asking
them to offer it. So there will be some duplication and gaps.

Neil
--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the @ to reply.

On 2014-10-10 11:13:49 +0000, David Cantrell said:

So I repeat, god help any tourist foolish enough to try to use one.
People find things via google, not by going to the home page of a web
site and clicking on random links until they find what they want.
Especially tourists who probably don't even know that TfL is the company
they want or that it lives at tfl.gov.uk.

Agree. It is perfectly possible to set up a site like that so a Google
search (or the other search engine of your choice if you prefer
another) can hit a useful page directly. I get a bit miffed these
days, for instance, when I Google "shop name location opening
hours" and don't immediately get linked to a page showing that shop and
its opening hours, or a list of the shops if the location was
ambiguous. Most do, a notable few don't.

Neil
--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the @ to reply.

On 2014-10-10 11:25:47 +0000, Mizter T said:

How many of them would be searching Google for a "tfl ticket stop
locator" or similar then?

Tourists? Probably very few.

Londoners, particularly new ones? Quite possibly.

It's lazy not to set your site up so such searches will yield useful
direct results, IMO.

Neil
--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the @ to reply.

On 10/10/2014 14:01, Neil Williams wrote:

On 2014-10-10 11:25:47 +0000, Mizter T said:

How many of them would be searching Google for a "tfl ticket stop
locator" or similar then?

Tourists? Probably very few.

That was the point that David Cantrell was making.


Londoners, particularly new ones? Quite possibly.

It's lazy not to set your site up so such searches will yield useful
direct results, IMO.

I absolutely agree. FWIW the old 'ticket stop locator' webpage was
working last week. Now it should have a redirect put in to the new one,
or at the very least be taken off the web for the google robots to work
out where the new one is.

"Do you do Oyster?", a bit like "Do you do the lottery?" seems like a
common question in newsagents in London - those that don't normally seem
quite happy to direct people to the shop three doors down that does.

On 10/10/2014 14:01, Neil Williams wrote:

On 2014-10-10 11:13:49 +0000, David Cantrell said:

So I repeat, god help any tourist foolish enough to try to use one.
People find things via google, not by going to the home page of a web
site and clicking on random links until they find what they want.
Especially tourists who probably don't even know that TfL is the company
they want or that it lives at tfl.gov.uk.

Agree. It is perfectly possible to set up a site like that so a Google
search (or the other search engine of your choice if you prefer another)
can hit a useful page directly. I get a bit miffed these days, for
instance, when I Google "shop name location opening hours" and don't
immediately get linked to a page showing that shop and its opening
hours, or a list of the shops if the location was ambiguous. Most do,
a notable few don't.

The worst is shop websites that seem solely geared up for online
shoppers, where finding the 'store finder' on said website is far from
obvious.

"David Cantrell" wrote in message
k...
On Wed, Oct 08, 2014 at 04:31:05PM -0500,
wrote:
In article ,
(David Cantrell) wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07, 2014 at 07:17:53PM -0500,
wrote:
(David Cantrell) wrote:
For most people the cost of auto-topup is pennies, so is far less
than the cost of queueing. Therefore auto-topup is better.
You are forgetting the non-trivial chance of losing or mislaying
the card so the whole value is lost to you, at least temporarily.
You are forgetting the non-trivial chance of losing or mislaying a
tenner so the whole value is lost to you. At least if you lose your
Oyster card it is possible to get a (partial?) refund.
You assume I pay with cash. Why?

You assume that people losing their Oyster cards is so common as to
offset the cost advantage of auto-topup.

what cost advantage of auto top up?

when I'm at Vic waiting 20 minutes for my next train home, my time is
completely free

tim

In article ,
(David Cantrell) wrote:

On Wed, Oct 08, 2014 at 04:31:05PM -0500,
wrote:

You assume I pay with cash. Why?

You assume that people losing their Oyster cards is so common as to
offset the cost advantage of auto-topup. Why?

You assume that works for you works for everyone. Please don't.

--
Colin Rosenstiel