Refunds to Oyster Web Account no longer available.

[bakerstreet]

Just some information for those people who may have used this facility in the past.

This will only affect those who still pay with an Oyster card rather than contactless. Those using contactless will probably never have used this facility.

Background

For a number of years, it has been possible to obtain a TfL refund in such cases of a maximum fare being charged, or some other overcharging issue, or to receive a service delay refund, credited to your Oyster Web account.

This is useful because a refund made back to your oyster card itself, rather than to the Oyster online web account, must be “collected“ from the gate line within between three to four days of the refund being processed.

If the refund is not collected in that time, the refund is no longer available to collect from the gate line, and will not appear again (unlike some other payments to the Oyster card, which do re-queue I believe after the next touch).
You would need to apply again for this refund.

When you next top up your Oyster online, the amount in your Oyster Web account will be deducted from the amount you need to pay for the top up.


Now, the only options are

– a refund back to your oyster card, needing to be collected within 3 to 4 days
– a refund back to your bank account, you’ll need to supply sort code and account number on each occasion.

Hope this is of some use to somebody.

 

[OscarH]

The one time I needed a TfL refund I asked for this, because I wouldn't have been in London anytime soon, and customer service phoned me while I was outside and it was windy so trying to give a sort code and account number sounded like a nightmare.

The credit never actually appeared in my account. I didn't chase TfL, it wasn't worth the effort, I just wrote it off, but I wonder if it was more generally unreliable than just me

 

[Hadders]

Couple of years ago I was overcharged following an OSI issue at Elephant & Castle. TfL sent a refund to my Oyster card but I was not in London for a few days so was unable to collect the refund. Ended up getting the refund via BACS payment which I seem to remember was a bit of a faff.

Seems to me that a better way would be to allow longer than 3-4 days for a refund to an Oyster card to be collected.

 

[AlbertBeale]

Couple of years ago I was overcharged following an OSI issue at Elephant & Castle. TfL sent a refund to my Oyster card but I was not in London for a few days so was unable to collect the refund. Ended up getting the refund via BACS payment which I seem to remember was a bit of a faff.

Seems to me that a better way would be to allow longer than 3-4 days for a refund to an Oyster card to be collected.

If you top up your Oyster at a station within those few days, even if you're not going through a gateline in that period, will the refund work out then?

 

[gordonthemoron]

Couple of years ago I was overcharged following an OSI issue at Elephant & Castle. TfL sent a refund to my Oyster card but I was not in London for a few days so was unable to collect the refund. Ended up getting the refund via BACS payment which I seem to remember was a bit of a faff.

Seems to me that a better way would be to allow longer than 3-4 days for a refund to an Oyster card to be collected.

Transport NSW allows 60 days

 

[Hadders]

If you top up your Oyster at a station within those few days, even if you're not going through a gateline in that period, will the refund work out then?

I've no idea, but I wouldn't have thought so. I've got auto top-up on my Oyster card so I never physically top-up at a machine.

 

[bakerstreet]

If you top up your Oyster at a station within those few days, even if you're not going through a gateline in that period, will the refund work out then?

I don’t think so, I believe it has to be on a card reader either on a gateline, a standalone reader, or on a bus for example.
I think ticket machines (for some reason?) Simply won’t process credit in that way to the Oyster card.

 

[Recessio]

Thanks for the thread, this will affect me as I use the web account on the few occasions it's happened.

3 to 4 days seems an arbitrarily low limit.

 

[Mcv378]

How come this is being removed, it's been useful to me in the past.

 

[Mojo]

ls the content in the OP an official quote from TfL or your own supposition of the current position?

On the applicable page in my account it used to show any previous refunds l had collected and it also had a link for me to click for a previous failed refund (it was about 10 years old and dated from the time you had to nominate a specific station and collect it after the following day) to get this refunded to my card. Now when l go into it, none of the previous refunds were listed and the outstanding one has vanished too.

 

[Adam Williams]

– a refund back to your bank account, you’ll need to supply sort code and account number on each occasion.

Was it really beyond to TfL to find half a day of engineering effort or so on a way for folks to save two pieces of data against their account to make this less of a faff?

I genuinely think they're trying to make it as difficult as possible for end-users to use Oyster. This, on top of it being poorly designed in the first place and never getting modernised after its first introduction (leading to this problem where you can "collect money onto the card too slowly" which is a real pain when you don't live anywhere near London).

customer service phoned me while I was outside

Novacroft seem to really like phoning people who write in to TfL customer services, I have no idea why. I'd have thought trying to get details communicated clearly over the phone was much more difficult than e.g. a chat based support system.

 

[bakerstreet]

ls the content in the OP an official quote from TfL or your own supposition of the current position?

On the applicable page in my account it used to show any precious refunds l had collected and it also had a link for me to click for a previous failed refund (it was about 10 years old and dated from the time you had to nominate a specific station and collect it after the following day) to get this refunded to my card. Now when l go into it, none of the previous refunds were listed and the outstanding one has vanished too.

This was from an email sent to me by TfL when I asked if I could have the refund to my web account. They said that unfortunately it’s no longer an option. I haven’t seen it documented online but they have now refunded to my bank account.

 

[rebmcr]

3 to 4 days seems an arbitrarily low limit.

Oyster was built using '00s technology, the gatelines have limited space for the list of pending card actions (top ups, refunds, deny-lists, etc) so they need to be kept on a fairly prompt schedule.

Attempts to upgrade the tech are reliant on longstanding customers taking up TfL's invite to swap their 'version 1' cards for the newer type (with a D symbol on the back), but that has proved more difficult than originally hoped for. Some features that were originally planned to be 'D'-only (eg weekly capping) have had to be bodged with backoffice workarounds instead.

 

[jon81uk]

When I did have an Oyster card instead of using contactless I had a travelcard loaded to it, so any service delay refunds I wanted as bank transfers anyway, never seemed like much of a fuss to type in my sort code and account number.
I do the same now with Delay Repay refunds for trains, get it as bank transfer.