juliet | (no subject)

(no subject)

Only a year late: Oyster finally introduce fare-capping from 27 Feb (link downloads PDF of guide to fare capping). Hurrah.

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That's kinda cool. And I never realised you could do the pre-pay thing for oyster cards. Since, as far as I can see, they have no expiry it might be worth buying one of those even though I am not that much of a regulaar london transport user.

Cool. :)

Indeed you can - & single journeys with an Oyster are cheaper than single journeys with a paper ticket (by about 20p/journey). No, don't think there's any expiry - you do have to pay a 3quid deposit for the card itself, though.

So I have four pints instead of five :)

Wow. Should probably do that then. I can't see any reason not to get an oyster card. :)

Apart from the intrusive data gathering and lack of proper controls on that data?

There is no requirement for registration for a pre-pay card. It gives you the advantage of protecting whatever money you have on it but as far as I can tell this means you don't have to give them any of your details. Given I'd only want it for pre-pay this seems not a big problem.

What are the problems with their data gathering then? You got a website or something to point me at (to save you writing it out at great length)?

Annoyingly, though, you still don't seem to be able to put a day zone 1-2 travelcard on an Oyseter card. And I can't use pre-pay on National Rail services out of Victoria. Which means that if I (say) want to go to visit

katyha in Wandsworth via the Wandsworth Common station, then I tend to end up buying a single from Victoria to Clapham Junction at the Victoria end, and a single from Wandsworth Common to Victoria at the Wandsworth Common end, even if I end up doing enough travelling in Zone 1 to warrant a zone 1-2 travelcard (I have a yearly 2-3 travelcard on my Oyster card).

I have this problem going down to Croydon to visit

d_floorlandmine too.

Heh. Just after I get an annual 1-3 travelcard, then. Sod's law.

Fare capping only covers day travelcards - if you travel enough to warrant an annual (which isn't all that much, I assume - I know that more than 4 peak (or 2 peak & 2 off-peak) daily travelcards make it worth getting a weekly, & you save a lot more on an annual) then you've saved money anyway.

Yes, because I use my travelcard to get to and from work. It's just that until January, I mostly worked in Zone 2/3 and used pre-pay for odd trips into zone 1.

Yes! I saw a poster to this effect on Saturday.

Now if National Rail would just hurry up and get themselves into the scheme...(says this frequent Surbiton visitor.)

I wonder if I could cheekily ask them for a rebate on my past years worth of journeys where the single trips went well over a travelcard..

I don't think it works like that, any more than you can go into a shop and ask for the price of three bottles of beer because you bought six yesterday and now they're on 'buy one get one free'.

Hmm.. I don't know. I think the analogy might be closer to:

Go into a shop after seeing an advert outside saying "Buy 3 litres of milk for the price of 2!" and then discovering inside, when you get to the till with your milk, that the offer has been delayed..

Excellent! And I should bloody well think so too!

I hasn't realised that they didn't already have fare-capping. Good job I've only used my oyster card when I've only done one journey that day. I wish I could use it for tickets to London from Guildford as the queues at the train station really put me off ever going into London. It shouldn't take half an hour to buy a ticket for a half hour journey. I've even seen queues twenty or thirty people long at the ticket machine mid-morning at the weekend.

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