Discussion
Being a country yokel who vists London 2 or 3 times a month I thought I should get an Oyster card. Clearly the system is desinged as an 'urban living test' for country muppets like me?
1. The £20 I loaded Wednesday evening did not magically appear with a green light when it was validated at the gate at Kings Cross the next day (and Yes I did buy it before 11pm)
2. The staff had no idea why but manageed to get me to waste another £10 by going in and out of various different gates to the Picadilly Line and reassured me it would appear after 11pm.
3. The TFL and Oyster Help pages on the web site are both broken.
How the feck do they work?
1. The £20 I loaded Wednesday evening did not magically appear with a green light when it was validated at the gate at Kings Cross the next day (and Yes I did buy it before 11pm)
2. The staff had no idea why but manageed to get me to waste another £10 by going in and out of various different gates to the Picadilly Line and reassured me it would appear after 11pm.
3. The TFL and Oyster Help pages on the web site are both broken.
How the feck do they work?
They do seem incapable of dealing with problems, especially at the stations - however, once sorted you'll rarely have trouble (in my experience anyway..!)
Register the card online, set up an automatic top up from a credit card (so you can get them to argue if it all goes wrong) then just use it.
The auto top up triggers when the card drops below £5 and I think you can specify how much goes on again, £20 in my case. You'll get an email when the top up happens, well... a few days after, and that more or less matches up with when the £20 appears on your credit card as well.
...just don't forget to swipe it when getting on the DLR if you use it; oh, and don't be too hasty getting through the normal tube gates or you'll get a commuter pile up, or better still the chap in front does a miss-swipe and then goes through on your swipe and you get stuck in the gate - this I should add, is painful, embarrassing, and quite difficult to explain to the ever helpful staff, especially during rush hour with a queue of floor staring commuters behind.
I find a tatty Barbour jacket always commands a good bit of free space on a packed tube too.
Register the card online, set up an automatic top up from a credit card (so you can get them to argue if it all goes wrong) then just use it.
The auto top up triggers when the card drops below £5 and I think you can specify how much goes on again, £20 in my case. You'll get an email when the top up happens, well... a few days after, and that more or less matches up with when the £20 appears on your credit card as well.
...just don't forget to swipe it when getting on the DLR if you use it; oh, and don't be too hasty getting through the normal tube gates or you'll get a commuter pile up, or better still the chap in front does a miss-swipe and then goes through on your swipe and you get stuck in the gate - this I should add, is painful, embarrassing, and quite difficult to explain to the ever helpful staff, especially during rush hour with a queue of floor staring commuters behind.
I find a tatty Barbour jacket always commands a good bit of free space on a packed tube too.
thewilly said:
SWH said:
I find a tatty Barbour jacket always commands a good bit of free space on a packed tube too.
Nothing beats a healthy fart.
king laugh. You'd give you personal details and CC details to TFL 
Gassing Station | Finance | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff