Here are a couple of vaguely interesting bits of Oyster information
uncovered whilst on a trawl through London Travelwatch's documents:

- The Victoria-Balham PAYG trial is meant to take place this summer
(this was said on 24 April)
- It is now possible to recover the £3 Oyster deposit and up to £5
credit across the counter at ticket offices, rather than having to send
off for the money; this is specifically designed to encourage short-term
use of Oyster.


--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

In message , at 14:21:07 on Mon, 5 Jun
2006, Dave Arquati remarked:
It is now possible to recover the £3 Oyster deposit and up to £5 credit
across the counter at ticket offices, rather than having to send off
for the money; this is specifically designed to encourage short-term
use of Oyster.

arghhh!

I queued for over ten minutes to purchase a ticket at Russell Square
last week. That's because I wanted a child ticket which the machines
don't sell (nor are there any signs saying the machines don't sell
them!!)

Almost everyone else in the queue was signing up for an Oyster Card;
loads of tourists. They were processing them reasonably fast (two
windows open) but obviously somewhat slower than just selling a paper
Travelcard.
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 14:21:07 on Mon, 5 Jun
2006, Dave Arquati remarked:
It is now possible to recover the £3 Oyster deposit and up to £5
credit across the counter at ticket offices, rather than having to
send off for the money; this is specifically designed to encourage
short-term use of Oyster.

arghhh!

I queued for over ten minutes to purchase a ticket at Russell Square
last week. That's because I wanted a child ticket which the machines
don't sell (nor are there any signs saying the machines don't sell them!!)

Almost everyone else in the queue was signing up for an Oyster Card;
loads of tourists. They were processing them reasonably fast (two
windows open) but obviously somewhat slower than just selling a paper
Travelcard.

I think it would be a good idea to put Oyster "vending machines" at
major tourist starting places so that people could get an Oyster just by
putting their deposit & credit into the machine and getting one "vended"
to them - and could return to such a machine at the end of their stay
and do the reverse process by inserting their Oyster into the machine,
the machine checks that it is undamaged, and returns the appropriate
deposit + leftover credit. Undamaged cards could be automatically reset
(including the journey history) and returned to use.

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

On Mon, 05 Jun 2006 14:21:07 +0100, Dave Arquati wrote:

- It is now possible to recover the £3 Oyster deposit and up to £5
credit across the counter at ticket offices, rather than having to send
off for the money; this is specifically designed to encourage short-term
use of Oyster.

This is excellent news. One of my biggest bugbears with Oyster is now
resolved - it seemed almost deliberately obstructive of TfL to have
such a difficult procedure for refunding deposits (whereas, for
example, in Hong Kong you've been able to get an over-the-counter
refund of the deposit for years, in their almost-identical smartcard
system).

Until now I had been advising visitors to buy One Day or Weekly
Travelcards as needed, as it was usually cheaper than paying the
(effectively non-refundable) deposit and using pre-pay.

I think this move will certainly achieve its objective.