wrote:

Boltar wrote:
Its simply going to screw money out of tourists or visiting
businessmen who don't know about Oyster
B2003

Is there anything wrong with this in principle, given especially as the
former are unlikely to have paid the extortionate subsidy that those of
us living in London have to pay to finance public transport?

IMO yes. The fare should be the same no matter how you pay. I don't go
into a shop and have to pay double for a coffee just because I paid
with cash and not a smartcard so why should it apply to the tube and
buses? Also if the mayor wants to stiff tourists why not take it to its
logical conclusion and just charge them an entry fee at airports? As
for subsidies , all public transport is subsidised around the world by
the local population. If you use your argument you might as well say
anyone foreign can't even walk on the pavements here since they didn't
pay the tax to build or maintain them.

B2003

Boltar wrote:

wrote:

Boltar wrote:
Its simply going to screw money out of tourists or visiting
businessmen who don't know about Oyster
B2003

Is there anything wrong with this in principle, given especially as the
former are unlikely to have paid the extortionate subsidy that those of
us living in London have to pay to finance public transport?

IMO yes. The fare should be the same no matter how you pay. I don't go
into a shop and have to pay double for a coffee just because I paid
with cash and not a smartcard so why should it apply to the tube and
buses? Also if the mayor wants to stiff tourists why not take it to its
logical conclusion and just charge them an entry fee at airports? As
for subsidies , all public transport is subsidised around the world by
the local population. If you use your argument you might as well say
anyone foreign can't even walk on the pavements here since they didn't
pay the tax to build or maintain them.


Get an Oyster, use an Oyster, tell your friends and family to do the
same, or be a mug and pay the higher fares.

Regarding foreign visitors to London:
"In partnership with Visit Britain, TfL now offers visitors from
selected countries outside the UK the option to buy an adult Oyster
card before arriving in London."
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/fares-tick...7/visitors.asp

With Mayor Ken the price differential is here to stay. If you don't
like it, vote him out. Whether any of the other candidates will offer a
promise to abolish the price differential remains to be seen.

And if you don't live in Greater London and hence can't vote in the
Mayoral elections, then you can always stop coming into London.

Mizter T wrote:
Get an Oyster, use an Oyster, tell your friends and family to do the
same, or be a mug and pay the higher fares.

Get mugged when you buy an oyster from the theft that originates
1) When they oyster is deducted at the barrier, but the gates don't
open, you get "seek assistance", the gateline ****s force you to touch
the bi-directional paddel, and you have an unresolved journey which
means an annoying and expensive phone call, or a long queue at the only
window left open and hope that the guy is feeling generous enough to
give you your own money back that his company just stole.

2) When the line is suspended, and you exit the same station you just
entered

3) When the line is suspended, and tickets are valid on other routes.
Apart from the fact they aren't, as you have to pay when you get on the
bus

Mizter T wrote:


Get an Oyster, use an Oyster, tell your friends and family to do the
same, or be a mug and pay the higher fares.

I had an Oyster once. I bought it because everyone said "Oh they're so
great!" But I ever only needed to use it two or three times in the two
years I had it. Then next time I tried to use it, it just plain didn't
work at all. The card had just died, and wouldn't respond to the
readers. And I still had nearly five quid on it!

I suppose I should have tried to register it, and sent off to get a
replacement. But why bother for something I never use and probably
won't work anyway...? Far simpler just to write my five pounds off as
lost to the system.

And in the the year since it's broken down, I've only _once_ been in a
situation where I could have saved any money by using Oyster. I'd
probably lose more money on faulty cards in the long run...

So I _will_ be telling my friends and family to do the same, and stay
well clear of Oyster. It's the most useless and over-rated piece of
technology ever inflicted on the travelling public. And the sooner
we're rid of it the better.

I had an Oyster once. I bought it because everyone said "Oh they're so
great!" But I ever only needed to use it two or three times in the two
years I had it. Then next time I tried to use it, it just plain didn't
work at all. The card had just died, and wouldn't respond to the
readers. And I still had nearly five quid on it!

I suppose I should have tried to register it, and sent off to get a
replacement. But why bother for something I never use and probably
won't work anyway...? Far simpler just to write my five pounds off as
lost to the system.

And in the the year since it's broken down, I've only _once_ been in a
situation where I could have saved any money by using Oyster. I'd
probably lose more money on faulty cards in the long run...

So I _will_ be telling my friends and family to do the same, and stay
well clear of Oyster. It's the most useless and over-rated piece of
technology ever inflicted on the travelling public. And the sooner
we're rid of it the better.

Since I moved from the South East, I only go to London about once a
month now, and since I got my Oyster in Feburary, every trip, bar 1 I
have had a problem on.

First time, the gates weren't working at Tott Ct Rd and I got an
unresolved jrny (charged 50p too much), another time I had an odd
journey: -
"Canary Wharf - Unfinished
Unstarted - Cockfosters" - ended up being overcharged by 50p
One time, I was interchanging between NR and LU at Elephant & Castle,
and didn't realise they were 2 separate stations, so didn't touch out
when leaving NR station - paid another 50p.
My last trip. Due to Overcrowding at Bond St (IIRC), they were exiting
everyone by the Fire exit - couldn't touch out, and ended up with a 70p
charge. Later on the same day, I did a journey Westminster - Canary
Wharf, Heron Quays - Cockfosters. It got put down as Westminster -
Heron Quays, and Unstarted - Cockfosters, paid another 50p.

And the ripoff about it - trying to call their phoneline would almost
certaintly end up costing more than the 50p you've lost, so most people
(Including me) don't bother.

On the last occasion, I went to the Ticketoffice to see if he could fix
it, he seemed bemused about all of my problems, and said "That's Oyster
for you" - which sums it up nicely for me.

wrote:

On the last occasion, I went to the Ticketoffice to see if he could fix
it, he seemed bemused about all of my problems, and said "That's Oyster
for you" - which sums it up nicely for me.

Exactly. I'm starting to get a theory that some people are just
magically lucky when it comes to new hi-tech gadgets. The equipment
just always works _perfectly_ for them, while the rest of us have to
struggle with all sorts of errors and failures and crashes and bugs and
breakdowns.

Of course, the magically lucky elite have an unfair advantage over the
rest of us -- and they don't even know it. That's why they see no
problems in forcing us to use the advanced technology that works for
them, even though we would be _much_ better off sticking with older,
more reliable technology that we're comfortable with.

Oysters are just one example of this. But the problem's everywhere!

solar penguin wrote:
I'm starting to get a theory that some people are just
magically lucky when it comes to new hi-tech gadgets. The equipment
just always works _perfectly_ for them, while the rest of us have to
struggle with all sorts of errors and failures and crashes and bugs and
breakdowns.

Of course, the magically lucky elite have an unfair advantage over the
rest of us -- and they don't even know it. That's why they see no
problems in forcing us to use the advanced technology that works for
them, even though we would be _much_ better off sticking with older,
more reliable technology that we're comfortable with.

Oysters are just one example of this. But the problem's everywhere!

Based on my experience of living in London, commuting in London using
Oyster, and being surrounded by friends and colleagues who do the same,
the people for whom Oyster works fine nearly all the time
encompasses... err... all of them, while the people who are cursed with
errors and failures and crashes and bugs and breakdowns are... two
people on Usenet.

(the only problem I've had with Oyster was forgetting to renew my
season ticket, not touching in at Finsbury Park because you don't need
to if you have a season ticket, being stopped by inspectors while
changing trains at Green Park and PF-d £20 for using PP without
touching in. Which was more my fault than Oyster's anyway...)

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

On 29 Dec 2006 07:21:29 -0800,
John B wrote:

Based on my experience of living in London, commuting in London using
Oyster, and being surrounded by friends and colleagues who do the same,
the people for whom Oyster works fine nearly all the time
encompasses... err... all of them, while the people who are cursed with
errors and failures and crashes and bugs and breakdowns are... two
people on Usenet.

(the only problem I've had with Oyster was forgetting to renew my
season ticket, not touching in at Finsbury Park because you don't need
to if you have a season ticket, being stopped by inspectors while
changing trains at Green Park and PF-d £20 for using PP without
touching in. Which was more my fault than Oyster's anyway...)

I work in London and have a prepay Oyster but almost never use it (about
40GBP/year in total which is why I no longer bother with Z1-6 on my Gold
Card) - and when I do use it it's typically 3 journeys in one day so I'm
using it less than once per month.

The problem is that when you use it so infrequently you don't realise it
hasn't worked properly. I've (only) had two problems - one at Leicester
Square where the barriers were open and my card obviously didn't
register when I badged in - I now know to watch for the green light to
come on - but I had no idea at all that there had been a problem until a
couple of months later when I went to top up and saw that there was an
unresolved journey.

The second problem was at Euston where again my card obviously didn't
register properly - the barrier definitely beeped and the green light
was on but the barrier slammed on me (it hurts). Clearly the person
behind me didn't realise I'd done it wrong either because they'd already
put their ticket into the barrier so then I was trapped between the
closed barrier saying "take ticket" and the person trying to get out.
(I then had to queue for the ticket office to find out whether I had an
unresolved journey - I didn't. I could, in theory have used one of the
machines but, of course, they weren't working properly either)

The only problems I've ever had with paper tickets (on NR or the tube)
is, a) my gold card fades and needs reprinting after about 6 months as
it's unreadable although it still works fine in the barriers, and b)
when travelling on a single ticket, usually they are swallowed by the
barrier but occasionally you have to take the ticket and I usually spend
an extra 5 seconds working out what has gone wrong before I see the
ticket and the gate opens.

I'm tempted to go back to an all zones travel card. I'll see how oyster
works this year and then, if I'm still seeing occasional problems I'll
probably go back to travelcard. OK, it will cost me about another
250GBP/year but the knowledge that I definitely won't have to queue for
ten minutes to work out what has gone wrong is worth far more to me.

(Actually I'd like to see the ability to buy paper tickets using oyster
- I don't care about the cap and usually when I am travelling I'm with
other people so the ability to go up to a machine, press Z1 single and
then badge my oyster and get a paper ticket would be ideal particularly
as I can then buy tickets for others as well.)

Tim.

--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://tjw.hn.org/ http://www.locofungus.btinternet.co.uk/

In article .com,
() wrote:

Since I moved from the South East, I only go to London about once a
month now, and since I got my Oyster in Feburary, every trip, bar 1
I have had a problem on.

First time, the gates weren't working at Tott Ct Rd and I got an
unresolved jrny (charged 50p too much), another time I had an odd
journey: -
"Canary Wharf - Unfinished
Unstarted - Cockfosters" - ended up being overcharged by 50p
One time, I was interchanging between NR and LU at Elephant &
Castle, and didn't realise they were 2 separate stations, so didn't
touch out when leaving NR station - paid another 50p.
My last trip. Due to Overcrowding at Bond St (IIRC), they were
exiting everyone by the Fire exit - couldn't touch out, and ended up
with a 70p charge. Later on the same day, I did a journey Westminster
- Canary Wharf, Heron Quays - Cockfosters. It got put down as
Westminster - Heron Quays, and Unstarted - Cockfosters, paid another
50p.

And the ripoff about it - trying to call their phoneline would
almost certaintly end up costing more than the 50p you've lost, so most

people (Including me) don't bother.

On the last occasion, I went to the Ticketoffice to see if he could
fix it, he seemed bemused about all of my problems, and said "That's
Oyster for you" - which sums it up nicely for me.

When I had an unresolved journey (partly my fault as I entered using the
wrong ticket) I got a full refund and a free extra credit of the same £1
50, all from the phone line. My card is unregistered.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article .com, solar
(solar penguin) wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

Get an Oyster, use an Oyster, tell your friends and family to do
the same, or be a mug and pay the higher fares.

I had an Oyster once. I bought it because everyone said "Oh
they're so great!" But I ever only needed to use it two or three
times in the two years I had it. Then next time I tried to use it, it
just plain didn't work at all. The card had just died, and wouldn't
respond to the readers. And I still had nearly five quid on it!

I suppose I should have tried to register it, and sent off to get a
replacement. But why bother for something I never use and probably
won't work anyway...? Far simpler just to write my five pounds off
as lost to the system.

And in the the year since it's broken down, I've only _once_ been
in a situation where I could have saved any money by using Oyster. I'd
probably lose more money on faulty cards in the long run...

So I _will_ be telling my friends and family to do the same, and
stay well clear of Oyster. It's the most useless and over-rated piece
of technology ever inflicted on the travelling public. And the sooner
we're rid of it the better.

If you want to throw your money away, it is of course your inalienable
right to do so. However, why didn't you go to a ticket office?

I use my Oyster pretty infrequently (about 10 journeys in 2006) and it
works fine technically.

--
Colin Rosenstiel.