I got my discount loaded on on Wednesday at Edgware. I tried at Kings
Cross back in December, but was told I had to wait until the new year.
Anyway, at Edgware the first SA insisted he could only sell me a day
travelcard with my YPR, despite me pointing out there was a sign on
the overbridge proclaiming I *could* get it on my card, but of course
I couldn't go back through the barriers to confirm I wasn't mistaken.
So I argued for a bit and then gave up. I started to walk out of the
station and saw another, and then looked closely, saw it said what I
thought it said, and queued up at the other window. In the meantime
the first SA had gone over to the other one and they seemed to be
discussing something, and then the second one pulled down his blind
and got in touch with another station, who told them how to do it. I
should point out that the fellow was really nice about the whole
thing, and said the posters just appeared and that they hadn't been
told anything, so they do have my sympathies.

I got it loaded just fine on my existing card, the only caveat being
that it has to be registered ( my guess so that they can confirm your
railcard details ). Which, along with slyly registering you without
telling you whenever you get a replacement card, seems to continue the
stealthy roll-out of getting everyone registered for tracking.

sweek wrote:

I may try it, but Wanstead Park doesn't have much of a ticket office and
the
queues at Stratford are insane. Where's likely to be a good ticket
office to
try? Preferably somewhere where a lot of students are likely to have
tried?

Mile End or Bow Road for you maybe? Large student populations there. I
do hope they can set it up onto my current Oyster card. I'm going to
try tomorrow at Turnpike Lane or Manor House, and will report back.

Mile End is not a good ticket office for trying anything vaguely complicated
because the station tends to accumulate a long queue with nowhere for people
to easily queue. I could try Bow Road but it's off my beaten track, whereas
central London is less so and, IMHO, tends to be better for doing
complicated things but with a new option I'd ideally want somewhere where
there's a hope of training than where I've got to find and produce a
leaflet.

Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:
Richard J. wrote:

The Fares and Tickets leaflet says "For full details visit
tfl.gov.uk/fares", but I've failed to find a route to the detailed
information from there except by Googling for it. The page is
actually at
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/faresa...ares/6769.aspx It
does say "You will need to get an Oyster card and have your
Railcard discount concession loaded on it", which sort-of implies
that you have to start from scratch with a new Oyster card.

Which will shaft a lot of students who already have the Oyster
photocards (some of us with season tickets loaded onto them).

It claims that you can do this at an LU or LO ticket office, so a
double complaint is justified.

I may try it, but Wanstead Park doesn't have much of a ticket office
and the queues at Stratford are insane. Where's likely to be a good
ticket office to try? Preferably somewhere where a lot of students
are likely to have tried?

Isn't there an LU ticket office at Stratford by the Jubilee gateline?
Doesn't often seem to be a queue there?

Paul S

In message of Fri, 4 Jan 2008
12:46:21 in uk.transport.london, Tim Roll-Pickering
writes

[snip]

Mile End is not a good ticket office for trying anything vaguely complicated
because the station tends to accumulate a long queue with nowhere for people
to easily queue. I could try Bow Road but it's off my beaten track, whereas
central London is less so and, IMHO, tends to be better for doing
complicated things but with a new option I'd ideally want somewhere where
there's a hope of training than where I've got to find and produce a
leaflet.

Bethnal Green surprised me this morning as both ticketing windows were
open at 11.15. ISTR, the same was true at Aldgate East at 9.15. However,
neither operated one queue with two servers. At Liverpool Street, the
single server Central Line ticket office (under platforms 1 - 8 and open
M-F 0700 - 2030) rarely has a queue while the double server Circle, H&C,
and Metropolitan ticket office is always worth avoiding - they never
seem to open the third window, queues are huge and the marshalling
hardware suggests a cattle mart. Euston Square is often quiet but only
has one window.
--
Walter Briscoe

"Jamie Thompson" wrote in message
...
I got my discount loaded on on Wednesday at Edgware. I tried at Kings
Cross back in December, but was told I had to wait until the new year.
Anyway, at Edgware the first SA insisted he could only sell me a day
travelcard with my YPR, despite me pointing out there was a sign on
the overbridge proclaiming I *could* get it on my card, but of course
I couldn't go back through the barriers to confirm I wasn't mistaken.
So I argued for a bit and then gave up. I started to walk out of the
station and saw another, and then looked closely, saw it said what I
thought it said, and queued up at the other window. In the meantime
the first SA had gone over to the other one and they seemed to be
discussing something, and then the second one pulled down his blind
and got in touch with another station, who told them how to do it. I
should point out that the fellow was really nice about the whole
thing, and said the posters just appeared and that they hadn't been
told anything, so they do have my sympathies.

Sadly, the staff at West Hampstead were less then friendly towards me, and
kept on proclaiming about how I was holding up the queue and that they would
rather say no to me and save the company money then try to do what I was
asking and possibly get in trouble for it. (He said that explicitly.)

I got it loaded just fine on my existing card, the only caveat being
that it has to be registered ( my guess so that they can confirm your
railcard details ). Which, along with slyly registering you without
telling you whenever you get a replacement card, seems to continue the
stealthy roll-out of getting everyone registered for tracking.

Yes, I was fairly sure it could be done like that, but they were telling me
that getting a brand new card was the *only* way to do it, so I just
accepted that and went to another station to return my original oyster card
and get my deposit back. Incidentally, they did make me register the new
card, so that does seem to be a proviso.

Best Wishes,
LEWIS

In article
,
(sweek) wrote:

On 4 Jan, 01:28, "Tim Roll-Pickering"
wrote:
Richard J. wrote:
The Fares and Tickets leaflet says "For full details visit
tfl.gov.uk/fares", but I've failed to find a route to the detailed
information from there except by Googling for it. *The page is
actually at

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/faresa...ares/6769.aspx
It does say "You will need to get an Oyster card and have your
Railcard discount concession loaded on it", which sort-of implies
that you have to start from scratch with a new Oyster card.

Which will shaft a lot of students who already have the Oyster
photocards (some of us with season tickets loaded onto them).

It claims that you can do this at an LU or LO ticket office, so
a double complaint is justified.

I may try it, but Wanstead Park doesn't have much of a ticket
office and the queues at Stratford are insane. Where's likely to be
a good ticket office to try? Preferably somewhere where a lot of
students are likely to have tried?

Mile End or Bow Road for you maybe? Large student populations there.
I do hope they can set it up onto my current Oyster card. I'm going to
try tomorrow at Turnpike Lane or Manor House, and will report back.

From recent experience I wouldn't expect a speedy response at Turnpike
Lane.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Hi everyone,

Got mine done at Barbican today and it did require some explanation
and perseverance. Having read the experiences of others on here
(thanks!) I initially explained to the CSA knowing he'd doubt me.
After confirming several times that I wasn't confusing it with my
existing oyster student discount, I showed him the relevant section in
the leaflet. Then he had to contact a colleague in the back office who
showed him how to process the request on their computer. It was a
polite exchange in the end but it's amazing how little information/
training there is about this.

On 3 Jan, 21:05, "Lew 1" wrote:
I assume, then, that the new cap comes into force immediately?
Yes, it seems to have done so.

For anyone intending to go through this process, let me just let you know
what my experience of it was today.

First up, West Hampstead Overground station - where the cashier simply said
"I have no idea how to do that, you'll have to go to the Underground
station". And that was that.

So, I toddled off to the underground, and was told that it wasn't possible..
I tried to explain that it was and even showed the relevant page in the
Tickets and Fares leaflet. They still didn't relent, and after telling me
that I would have to hold up everyone else in the queue while they checked,
still refused to do anything other than sell me a normal travelcard. I
argued the point some more, they did some more phoning, and decided that it
*could* be done, but I would have to get a brand new oyster card to do it.

So, new oyster card in hand (and another £3 deposit paid for the privilege)
they added it on. The whole palava took 15 minutes and as well as appalling
customer service from the staff (who in effect told the rest of the queue
that I was holding them up by being unreasonable) I was also subject to
heckles from other passengers.

Moral of the story? If you want to attempt to add your railcard onto your
oyster be prepared to argue your point, have the relevant page in the
leaflet to hand, have plenty of time to spare - and I would guess try to use
a station with multiple ticket windows. It's not an experience I want to go
through again.

Best Wishes,
LEWIS

I went to Turnpike Lane today, and it all worked just fine. The guy
knew what I was talking about and put the cap on my existing Oyster
card.
I did have to fill in the registration form again, even though it was
an already registered card.

On Sat, 5 Jan 2008, sweek wrote:

I went to Turnpike Lane today, and it all worked just fine. The guy knew
what I was talking about and put the cap on my existing Oyster card.

Lucky you didn't ask him to put a cap in your oyster card. Round that neck
of the woods, he probably could have.

tom

--
Few technologies will ever stand up to the will of adolescents trying
to do things they're told they're not allowed to do. -- Scott Berkun

I tried on Sunday at Brixton, where the clerk seemed to know about it
but refused to do it since there was a long queue. The fact that I
had stood in the queue for 20 minutes cut no ice and he told me to go
away and come back another time.
At Oval the clerk had no idea what I was talking about; I showed him
the page of the fares leaflet and after some consideration he said
that the capbility had been built into the system, but they couldn't
put it on yet (seemed a reasonable response, since he had clearly not
been trained in how to do it.)

Finally went to Green Park on Monday evening, where there was no queue
at the ticket office, and though the ticket clerk hadn't heard of it,
after my showing him the fares leaflet he had a go on the system and
managed it without too much difficulty. Still took long enough that
there were some annoyed people in the queue behind me though!

It seems a great deal - means that if you don't travel in the AM peak,
daily capping will be slightly less (IIRC) than buying a weekly Z12
travelcard. With the proviso of course that it's valid on almost no
NR services south of the river. The recent extensions to oyster
validity seem to have made the system even more biased towards North
London - as the map at http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloa...G-08-01-02.pdf
shows.