Oyster on the trains from 2nd Jan

[ed_pete]

As only an occassional train user I'm slightly confused about using Oyster when its comes in on Saturday however I have found this information on Southern's website that might be useful to others like me.

http://www.southernrailway.com/tickets-and-fares/ticket-types/oyster-card/

http://www.southernrailway.com/download/4313.4/oyster-pay-as-you-go-faqs/

[Peckhampam]

Thank you...ed or pete or both

[Gimme]

Does anyone know if you can now buy a weekly travel card on an Oyster? It would be a lot easier than carrying around the paper ticket which doesn't work on a number of the turnstiles at London Bridge...

[KidKruger]

I've been getting a weekly 1 and 2 zone travelcard renewal on Oyster for i think a couple of years.

I don't think ED station has facilities for the oystercard refresh though, so you'll have to get it somewhere else like LB station or a tube stn.

[Michael Palaeologus]

Many of the local newsagents have an Oystercard machine, however you will charged for use of a credit card.

[OutOfFocus]

You can buy an oyster travelcard from the ED ticket machine. Up to 7 days in advance it seems

[bawdy-nan]

but probably worth noting that if you travel with kids you'll probably need to get them a kids photo oyster as you will still need to buy a ticket for them if you are travelling via your oyster. The cost is capped at a pound off peak.

[telegramsam]

So it's good bye to the off peak travel card after all these years. Can anyone tell me what is the oyster daily rate capped at? Currently my off peak (or weekend) daily travel card is ?6.30. I can't find an actual figure anywhere.

Thanks

Sam

[mlteenie]

you'll find that info on oyster website, I was looking the other day.

[GregI]

The cap would be at ?6.30 (the price of a travelcard to cover the zones travelled in, 1-4 in this case).

There are off-peak and peak price caps. However, if you begin your journey off-peak, then the off-peak cap applies even if subsequent travel that day takes place in peak hours.

[Bic Basher]

The paper one day travelcards are still available from ED. At ED station today, the ticket machine now has a notice saying that "This is an Oyster PAYG station"

Incidentally, if you use Forest Hill, which is managed by London Overground, you can use Oyster PAYG at the gates, but the ticket office and machines are not Oyster enabled, so you'll have to top-up at local newsagents instead.

[Ginster]

I'm really disappointed about how the scheme is going to work. I assumed I could just swipe my card (I have a zone 1 and 2 annual card on my oyster) and get on the train and as long as I touched out the other end it would work it all out. Unfortunately after doing some reading today it seems whenever I want to go outside of zone 2 I have to get an "Oyster Extension Permit" from a machine, ticket office or newsagents. So really, that isn't going to save me any time or effort from before when I had to queue up to buy an extension (and as ticket machines have never sold extensions I've always had to queue at the office or when that has been closed I have to hope that the station at my destination "believe" me (as I don't see why I should have to buy the full ticket from the machine when I already have part of it paid for.)

Does anyone know if this is permanent? Why can't the machines work all this out and charge me accordingly? I'm so disappointed that this isn't as good as I thought it would be.

[Applespider]

Ginster - that's bad news. I'd assumed that it would work like Oyster on Tubes etc and figure out that you just need the extension.

So if you did just swipe in and out, it would charge you the full PAYG fare?

[Bic Basher]

It's a petty way of protecting their penalty fares scheme by the sound of it, it will catch out plenty of passengers used to how the scheme works on the Tube and DLR. I suspect one of the reasons why it took so long for the operators to accept Oyster was introducing the OEP, which TfL don't use on their services.

If you don't have the permit, I'd assume that the gate wouldn't open, so that the staff can charge you the penalty fare, although I can see passengers winning their appeals as it can be proved they have the right amount of money to cover their fare regardless of the OEP.

[Nero]

If you have a reserve of ? in your Oyster top-up, I suspect that you would then not need to do anything if you want to go outside the zone you have paid for, as long as you stayed within the Zones 1-6 (or is it 9 now) that Oyster covers.

Please advise!

[sophiesofa]

Yes otherwise, what's the point of it?

[Applespider]

Nero, that's what Ginster is saying - that's what most sane people would expect to happen but it doesn't.

If you have no Travelcard on your Oyster and it's entirely PAYG, then you just touch in/out.

If you do have a Travelcard and start a journey inside your zone but finish it out of your zone, then you need to get a free OEP before you travel which will be removed from your card when you touch out and used to calculate what you need to pay. It's not clear (to me at least) what happens if you don't have the OEP - whether you won't get out at all or whether it will charge you the full PAYG fare.

If you start a journey outside your zone and finish inside, then I don't think you need the OEP from some of the links I've read - others are ambiguous. I can't entirely see why the system is smart enough to do it this way but not the other?!?

If you are doing a journey entirely outside your travelcard zones (i.e. zones 3-5 with your 1-2 Travelcard), then you don't need the OEP either - it will work just as a PAYG.

It is a nonsense - overly complicated with little benefit since you're still going to have to queue somewhere to get one which defeats the hassle-freeness of Oyster - and it penalises those who are probably the least likely to fare-dodge since they've actually gone to the bother of getting a Travelcard for their regular journey.

[ianr]

> and as ticket machines have never sold extensions I've always had to queue

> at the office or when that has been closed I have to hope

In one of the current threads on the topic in Usenet uk.transport.london newsgroup, someone does mention "OEPs rapidly becoming available on automatic ticket machines across London".

[OutOfFocus]

Really pleased that the forum has pointed out that you need to jump throught the hoop of buying an OEP. I would have been caught out.

The newsgroup also mentions

have a Zone 1 and 2 Travelcard on my Oyster and wanted to travel

from Charing Cross to Catford Bridge this Saturday evening and was

hoping to be able to put an Oyster Extension Permit on at one of the

ticket machines at Charing Cross but this option wasn't available. I

did manage to top up my PAYG balance though. I decided then to go to

the ticket office and (surprise, surprise) nobody in the ticket office

knew what an Oyster Extension Permit was. I told them my situation and

one of them said I could just touch in and touch out at the other end

while someone else told me it would be cheaper if I bought a paper

ticket extension. The TfL website still mentions OEPs so it amazes me

that at a big mainline station like Charing Cross the staff haven't

been trained properly for the launch. Has anyone had similar issues on

other routes?

[Medley]

To be fair, it is explained on the Oyster website.

It is overly complicated.

But if you're doing this with any regularity, would it not be cheaper and simpler to have a Travelcard covering more zones?

[JohnL]

Further info 1. you need a 1.50 balance 2. you can stick the OEP on at a quiet time ready for use when required

Quotes

"Also, whilst OEPs themselves are free, in order to have an OEP added to your Oyster card, you will also need a minimum PAYG balance on the card of ?1.50 ? this is because OEPs aren't really a ticket (they don't carry or contribute to your fare), they are effectively simply an electronic ?permit to travel.?

In expiry terms, OEPs are effectively ?one shot? - the OEP is removed the first time you tap out outside your zones. They do not, however, carry a time-linked expiry. This means that one can be added to an Oyster Card at any point and it will not expire until it is either used, or removed by a member of staff. LR also understands that only one OEP can exist on an Oyster Card at any given time."

[sophiesofa]

Thanks JohnL for the info

[New Bhoy]

What a grade A waste of time! The whole point of PAYG surely is so you dont have to queue up to buy tickets! Why do they need to make things so fecking complicated. How hard can it be to work out where you clocked in and out, where your card covers you for and debit the difference. Fools!

[ianr]

If you're on PAYG, you don't have to get an OEP. They're for travelcard holders who want to leave their paid-for zones via National Rail. The NR operating companies want to protect their revenue: a significant number of NR stations don't/won't have electronic gates.

[Ginster]

Hey all,

So an update from me, with 4 minutes to spare before a train I put my oyster on the panel on the new ticket machine and could I find where to get an OEP from? Of course not! I eventually managed to get a single gold card ticket to North Dulwich (which I think is the equivalent of boundary zone 2) and ~just~ made my train.

So after doing the right thing, reading up on this, finding out the ridiculousness of the scheme I wasn't actually able to do it. Then reading above with the mess at Charing Cross with the staff not even knowing these existed? Does not bode well...

I will try the idea of getting an OEP on well before I need it and hope that works (thanks JohnL). I have also written to TFL.

Applespider - thanks for the backup.

Bic Basher - I think we'll have quite a few appeals. I don't even know why I checked the website, thousands won't so won't have a clue about this situation.

Medley - I use zones 1 and 2 for work, otherwise I don't go outside that often, but when I do it annoys me that I have to go through all this. Basically I feel nothing has changed for me with the introduction of Oyster at train stations!

And incase anyone suggests going to PAYG - I get a great discount buying an annual travelcard and also as it is a gold card (becuase it's annual) I get a third off off-peak rail travel for me and 3 others so it has those benefits I don't want to lose.

Will be interesting to see if TFL get back to me, they haven't on the other occasion I wrote to them about something... Must keep my eyes open at London Bridge in the mornings for the next "Meet the Managers" session as I will definitely take time out to talk to someone about it all!