Oyster PrePay

[juliet]

According to the Oyster website, you are supposed to be able to buy Oyster cards at tube stations without registering. However, none of the people at the ticket offices appear to know how to do this - they say their system demands a registration form thingy.

However, they do not actually check the name & address they are given, so feel free to give them a false one. This was a successful approach.[0]

In other Oyster news: as of March 7th, not only will you be able to use PrePay on buses & trams, but it will become Magic. It will keep track of your journeys over the day, & if it transpires that it would have been cheaper for you to buy a Travelcard, rather than single tickets, then that's what you'll be charged for. And if the other way around, then the other way around. This is clearly Good.

[0] why did I insist on bothering? Because single tickets on Oyster cards are remaining at 2003 prices, that's why. And I am broke & also often take single journeys.

Comments

[flick.livejournal.com]

I am liking my new Oystercard...

Do you have hard data on the 7 March date? I've been trying to find out when the travel card thing is coming in and I couldn't find anything...

[juliet]

I emailed the Oyster query people. And they said:

As you are aware from the Pre-pay launch date of January 4th you will only be allowed to use your credit for single journeys made on the LUL and DLR networks. The Bus and Tramlink networks will be added to the scheme on March 7th.

On this date we will also be introducing 'Fare Capping', this means that the card will intelligently work out if single journey fares or a day travel card is the cheapest option for your days travel and deduct that from your pre-pay credit.

So there you go.

[flick.livejournal.com]

Huzzah! Thanks

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

That's jolly good. I was shocked to discover that a single from Angel to tower Hill was 2 quid this morning...

[juliet]

Well - £1.60 still with Oystercard. They are *very keen* to get people using them.

[davorg.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that Match 7th thing sounds exactly what I was waiting for.

[juliet]

It's worth it now, if you ever take single journeys (or, in general, non-Travelcard journeys).

[davorg.livejournal.com]

Depending on my work circumstances, I've either got a monthly 1-3 travelcard on my oystercard or (like now) I'm doing occasional days in town where I need a travelcard. I rarely do one-off journeys.

I was thinking of putting some pre-pay money on it anyway tho' as apparently it will use that money to pay for extension tickets if you go outside of your zones.

[flick.livejournal.com]

But I don't think it works for extensions on trains yet, which is a pain (well, it is for me - that's most of my non-travelcard travel)

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

What do they do if you give them your real name and address?

[juliet]

The Oyster card stores full information about all your journeys. I don't particularly want all that information linked to my identity. I am irritated that I had to go to the bother, when the PrePay is explicitly supposed to not need to be registered, but there we go.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Ah well. Information about when I enter and leave Northampton is already stored either by number plate recognition, or my credit card when I buy the train ticket, and if that wasn't working, they could just follow my mobile phone signal. I've embraced big brother, he makes me feel safe and warm. At least if I turn up in a ditch, they'll know where I was before.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

And which bit of big brother put you there.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

That's really surprisingly unlikely. The organised capabilities of the state to dispose of inconvenient people extrajudicially are staggeringly underdeveloped in this country. And if they were a bit more efficient it still wouldn't be me they were after.

[karen2205]

Why did you mind giving them your real name and address?

I'll admit to being a little disturbed at the level of information my Oyster card stores eg. precise journey times, but it never even occurred to me that I might not want to give them my real address....

[juliet]

Because I don't like the fact that they have full details on every journey I take, linked to my identity. I don't trust what they're going to do with this data, & they *don't need it*. I prefer to limit the amount of information out there about me. Especially information that any LU staff can freely access. General privacy concerns, in short.

And you aren't supposed to *have* to register the PrePay.

[karen2205]

Ah OK - I see where you're coming from.

It's very wrong to claim you don't *have* to register when you do/not train their staff properly.

I thought of them having my name and address as a Good Thing, 'cos in the event of it being lost/ stolen they'd be able to cancel it very rapidly (*mental note* - write the number of my card somewhere sensible). So do make a note of the name and address you gave them, in case they try to make you confirm your identity if it's ever stolen.

I don't have general privacy concerns; I'm just very protective of my telephone numbers to avoid telemarketing calls/spam texts.

[juliet]

Think it's lack of training, in fact.

I'm unlikely ever to have more than 20quid or so on mine, so it's not the end of the world if I lose it. I try to avoid using the tube, mostly, cos it Costs Money. Have bike, will travel, etc.

[wintrmute.livejournal.com]

They appear to have fixed this problem.. When I went to get an oyster card today, they asked me to fill in info, but i explained i didn't want to, and would be OK if i lost the card, so the guy just picked one up from the pile and handed it to me. Yay :)

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Hark at the woman who turns her mobile phone off when she leaves work so that Big Brother can't tell how she gets home...

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

I want my Oyster card to spy on my reading habits until it's got me down pat, and then buy me a present. Amazon is kind of on the right lines except it expects money for the presents. Hrm.

Although it knew I was listening to the Pet Shop Boys on the P13*.

*this is a lie, I PAID 70PENCE IN CASH.

[karen2205]

Well that's just an added benefit:-)

I turn it off because I don't want to be contactable while I'm travelling. I know how much other people's ringing phones irritate me, so I don't allow mine to do the same.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

I wonder if 'Ewt of the Plains' would be a good name...

*grin*

I suppose I ought to get around to registering as well; I just get a weekly travelcard most of the time but I do not like standing fiddling about with the machiens in the station and would prefer to update things online blah blah blah.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

I admit to being rather Tin Foil Hat when it comes to Oysters.

However seeing as half the time it buggers up, they don't even sell it in Sunny Peckham and aforesaid tinfoil hat issues - I am back on the paper travelcard.

Although I am so poor that soon I expect to be walking to work. In my bare feet.

[hypermallard.livejournal.com]

That is very cool, especially the fare-capping on PrePay. I was envisaging being ripped off with multiple single fares.

[wintrmute.livejournal.com]

Getting an Oyster card suddenly rose very high in my priority once the fares went up!
I too will be giving false addresses (well, actually I'll be trying to dodge giving them any at all - possibly showing them the webpage via my phone/WAP or something as proof it says you don't need it)

ta for the news about the auto-travelcard issue - that's actually something I was complaining it *should* do.. glad to see they've implemented it!

Toby

[juliet]

The problem seems to be that they simply don't know how to issue one without registering you, rather than that they believe you have to be registered. So I don't think showing them the webpage would help, sadly.

Yes, the auto-travelcard is Good. For the next 2 months I shall just have to do my customary calculations-in-head re singles vs Travelcard.

[flick.livejournal.com]

Actually, something's just occured to me.

When I registered, I filled in the form with my details. They put my photocard number in the machine, and it came up with an old address, so they put my current address in from the form.

But I went on the website to register to buy travelcards online (that's nifty: they send you an email, n days before your ticket runs out where n is a number of your choice), there was no name or address data associated with my Oystercard. Which presumably means that it was entered on the system but not stored.

Which makes me wonder what the point of it is....

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I got mine at the end of October when I realised Island weren't going to be paying back my travel expenses (and I didn't know how long I'd be staying there), and guessed that soon they'd be switching weekly travelcards onto Oyster-only (like the monthly/yearly ones).

Because I only got Zones 2-6, I was wondering if it would notice me travelling through Zone 1 and out the other side (which I did quite a lot), but it doesn't. So I doubt whether it follows you round that precisely. Surely it just does enough so it knows if you're going somewhere you haven't paid to go to, and can track you down and wring the extra fare out of you. However it doesn't even seem to be doing that!

[wintrmute.livejournal.com]

There's always room for "upgrades" though...