On Dec 5, 4:09 pm, Mizter T wrote:
Nonetheless I'd suggest that for some people the expenditure of a bit
of advanced planning, £1 or £1.50 for a single stop Tube journey and a
short walk might be worth it in order for them to set up Auto top-up
on their Oyster cards.

Some limitations for people who only use oyster very occasionally.

It can be hard to know when you are next going to use oyster until you
are remote from the ability to get online and set it up.

It limits you to a minimum of 20GBP top up. For occasional users this
is a ridiculous amount. In my case this is something like six months
of oyster usage[1]. Given that when you initially setup auto top up
you can add 10GBP, it should be possible to auto top up with a similar
amount.

[1] This will change from tomorrow when I intend to try PAYG from
Watford Junction before deciding whether to renew my season ticket.


Other problems with very limited usage is that you don't know about
unresolved journeys. My partner used Oyster PAYG for the first time
last Thursday from Euston to WJ at about 19:50. She topped up the card
yesterday and just happened to ask what the balance was - when it was
obvious to me that her journey had been charged 5GBP instead of 3GBP.
This is, beyond any doubt whatsoever, a fault in the oyster system
because I saw her use the barriers at each end and she successfully
opened them with her Oyster card. However, as she will now not be
within 200 miles of London until February it would have been very easy
not to know that this had happened.

(Additionally, after 24 minutes in the queue to the oyster helpline,
when she was third in the queue, she was suddenly disconnected. We
realized that she was disconnected because it was now 8pm. IIUC,
that's an 84p call (3.5p per minute that should have cost 5p via 020
7227 7886 - which she now has written on her oyster card) plus another
three or four calls before we worked out what was going on - selecting
option 6 just disconnects you with no message, selecting option 5 at
least gives a message that the office is closed and gives the hours of
opening, can't remember exactly what those options were)

Tim.