The oyster-only tube
 

In message .com,
writes

Ian F. wrote:


You must be doing it wrong.



How on earth do you know that? No system is infallible.

This is what I did: my Oyster card is registered. I used the Oyster
website and asked it to add some credit to my card. I selected my local
station. All this was confirmed. After the usual period (something like
a week) when I had swiped the card at my station twice every day, I
received the email from Oyster that says that for some reason the
increase in credit failed to take effect.

I cannot see what I *could* have done wrong. I followed the
instructions to the letter and the system failed me.

My suspicion is that either (a) it can't cope with the fact that I am
using a season ticket and for some reason doesn't understand that it
needs to credit me; or (b) there is some problem with the fact that my
card is a replacement (after the old card stopped working).

I have also tried buying a new season ticket online and had the same
experience (it failed to be added). It took me ages to get it sorted
out and a refund.

I can try again if you like, but really don't expect it to work. Can
you suggest anything I might have done wrong?

Francis

I believe if you don't swipe your card with a few days the transaction
is cancelled. If my memory serves its less that a week.
--
martyn dawe

The oyster-only tube
 

Steve Fitzgerald wrote:

Now Paul C might be able to shed more light on this but I suspect you
are still trying to put credit on the old card and not the new one
that's been issued. I think I saw (hereabouts?) that you need to
re-register the replacement card and have the Oyster helpdesk 'unlink'
the old one from your account.

If you blindly attempt to put money/travelcards onto a cancelled card,
it's not surprising if it won't work.

I'm not blindly doing anything. I am following the instructions on the
Oyster website. As I recall, whenever I access it, I am asked which
card I want to deal with. Of course I have checked that carefully.

The new season ticket failure happened when I had only one card btw.

It all seems rather ghastly to me.

Francis

The oyster-only tube
 

wrote:

Steve Fitzgerald wrote:

Now Paul C might be able to shed more light on this but I suspect you
are still trying to put credit on the old card and not the new one
that's been issued. I think I saw (hereabouts?) that you need to
re-register the replacement card and have the Oyster helpdesk 'unlink'
the old one from your account.

If you blindly attempt to put money/travelcards onto a cancelled card,
it's not surprising if it won't work.

I'm not blindly doing anything. I am following the instructions on the
Oyster website. As I recall, whenever I access it, I am asked which
card I want to deal with. Of course I have checked that carefully.

When your oyster card was replaced the number will have changed (same
happened with mine). Register your *new* card with it's *new* number
and apply auto topup to that card.

The oyster-only tube
 

Chris! wrote:


When your oyster card was replaced the number will have changed (same
happened with mine). Register your *new* card with it's *new* number
and apply auto topup to that card.

That is what I did do. I checked the number on my card against the
number I was applying auto topup to.

Is it worth me having another go?

Francis

The oyster-only tube
 

In article ,
(tkd) wrote:

Ran out of credit on my prepay oyster this morning, so I was
faced with a 10 minute queue to one of 2 machines that can do topups
at Oxford Circus. Almost everyone else in the queue was topping up.

There were 8 unused cash ticket machines. What a waste of space,
why haven't the majority (or all) of these been converted to
card/oyster machines? Is it a deliberate decision to raise more
money from those in a rush?

Or is it a deliberate decision to encourage you to sign up for auto
top up?

For those of us living outside London auto-top-up is impossible. I don't
know which tube station I will use next for the rare occasions I use my
Oyster card. Since I have no desire to lend TfL any more money at no
interest than absolutely necessary I buy top-up as I use it only,
keeping a minimum £1.50 balance so I can always start a journey if I
can't get top-up at the station I do arrive at.

Why auto or web top-up can't just work at the tube gate that next sees
the card (I realise it might be asking too much for buses to do this) I
don't know.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

The oyster-only tube
 

In article ,
(Peter Frimberley) wrote:

It's only rubbish in that you have to go down to £5 to trigger the
next top up

Why? My card only very rarely has as much as £5 credit on it. I make
little use of Oyster because I have paper tickets for the great majority
of my London tube and bus journeys.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

The oyster-only tube
 

Peter Frimberley wrote:

They did announce a new type of ticket machine a few weeks ago that
will fit into many of these spaces. You expect them to do it
overnight?

Call me mad, but I would personally consider it essential to have all
required infrastructure in place before launching a new ticketing
system, and *certainly* before raising prices on the old system to an
effective penalty rate.

TfL have not done this.

Why don't you just register for auto-topup and avoid the problem
altogether?

Others have stated good reasons why not.

Neil

The oyster-only tube
 

On Fri, 15 Sep 2006 00:57 +0100 (BST), (Colin
Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(tkd) wrote:

Ran out of credit on my prepay oyster this morning, so I was
faced with a 10 minute queue to one of 2 machines that can do topups
at Oxford Circus. Almost everyone else in the queue was topping up.

There were 8 unused cash ticket machines. What a waste of space,
why haven't the majority (or all) of these been converted to
card/oyster machines? Is it a deliberate decision to raise more
money from those in a rush?

Or is it a deliberate decision to encourage you to sign up for auto
top up?

For those of us living outside London auto-top-up is impossible. I don't
know which tube station I will use next for the rare occasions I use my
Oyster card. Since I have no desire to lend TfL any more money at no
interest than absolutely necessary I buy top-up as I use it only,
keeping a minimum £1.50 balance so I can always start a journey if I
can't get top-up at the station I do arrive at.

Why auto or web top-up can't just work at the tube gate that next sees
the card (I realise it might be asking too much for buses to do this) I
don't know.

It does work at any tube gate, and buses now too. I think it is just
the very first auto topup instruction that needs to be done at a
nominated station, presumably because there is more data to be
transmitted to the card, and if they had all oyster readers
network-wide looking out for all cards needing this special data
transfer, the whole system would be that much slower, perhaps
unworkable. By keeping a more manageable list of cards needing any
rare "special update" operations at individual stations, the whole
system can run more efficiently.

I don't think it's particularly onerous to have to collect the first
auto-top up instruction from a particular nominated station.

The oyster-only tube
 

On Fri, 15 Sep 2006 00:57 +0100 (BST), (Colin
Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(Peter Frimberley) wrote:

It's only rubbish in that you have to go down to £5 to trigger the
next top up

Why? My card only very rarely has as much as £5 credit on it. I make
little use of Oyster because I have paper tickets for the great majority
of my London tube and bus journeys.

Because for regular Oyster users, £5 is gone in no time.

I would just prefer if I could choose the "refill now" point myself.

But as in my previous posts, it would probably not be an efficient
system to allow user-settable limits such as that, as it would
introduce a whole raft of extra lookups.

The oyster-only tube
 

On 15 Sep 2006 00:49:16 -0700, "Neil Williams"
wrote:

Peter Frimberley wrote:

They did announce a new type of ticket machine a few weeks ago that
will fit into many of these spaces. You expect them to do it
overnight?

Call me mad, but I would personally consider it essential to have all
required infrastructure in place before launching a new ticketing
system, and *certainly* before raising prices on the old system to an
effective penalty rate.

TfL have not done this.

Having oyster machines sit there unused during the transition phase,
taking spaces from the cash only machines, would also have provoked
heaps of complaints.

They converted all/most (?) of the "big" ticket machines (which used
to have a button per station) to new hybrid Oyster/Credit Card/Cash
Sales machines; they also put in loads of those "Quick Fare" machines,
or upgraded existing "Quick" machines to Oyster features.

It's a balance, they can't please all of the passengers all of the
time. We are in a migratory phase. Right now the only people still
suffering problems are those who can't or won't use the facilities
such as auto-topup which have been made available to them. I fear you
fit into the latter "won't" category for reasons best known to
yourself.


Why don't you just register for auto-topup and avoid the problem
altogether?

Others have stated good reasons why not.

And have been discounted or discredited.

What are *your* reasons for not using auto-topup, just to prove you're
not on some anti-TFL rant purely for the sake of it.