"Clive Page" wrote in message
...
In message , "tim (moved to sweden)"
writes
Can I just suggest that it is silly to buy strip cards in the
first place if you are unceratin that you are going to use them.

In many European towns the strip card discount is no more
than 10%. Risking wasting 50% of a strip ticket to save
10% just doesn't seem very sensible.

Is that really so now? In London carnet tickets give you something like
a 30% discount, in Paris it was slightly more last time I was there.
Cities with strip cards like Munich and Amsterday seemed to be

In Munich a single ride is 2.20
2 strips of a strip-ticket is 2.00

giving similar discounts last time I visited - and if you are not sure
exactly how many trips you are going to make, it's very easy to end up
with unused strips. It's certainly easier than trying to find ticket
offices or machines which will sell you singles each time.

Don't they always have machines?

And with a day pass at 4.50, if you are sure that you are going
to do at least two trips (and most people *are* making at least
an out and back trip) you can buy one of these and at worse
you lose 0.50, far less than you can lose by buying a strip-card
and not using it.

Back to the main point: visitors to London faced with a single fare which
is half the price or less when using an Oyster card will, in many cases,
try to grapple with the system, rather than purchase what will seem to
them outrageously expensive singles. And since the rules for Oyster
cards are too complicated even for experienced natives to grasp in their
full glory, what hope is there for the visitor for a couple of days?

TBH, if they have any sense, they will look at the price of a
single (3.00) and the price of a ODTC (6.20) and buy the latter.

Tourists like an easy life, buying a Travelcard meets that in
spades.

tim