Oyster Cards

dcmbarton · 27 Feb 2011

I'm sure these questions have been asked many times before...

I'm currently considering getting an Oyster to make life easier when in London. At the moment, I just get a day's off-peak travelcard; often, I'm not always entirely sure where I need to go/will end up, so I like the flexibility of just being able to get 'on and off' where necessary. The downside is that sometimes, I think it's probably terrible value if not used enough. I'm having trouble working out what's best...it's very confusing!

To give two examples, a couple of weeks ago, I ended up travelling between Blackfriars and St. Pancras to get back towards Euston Road - the single ticket cost me £2.20 - would this be cheaper with an Oyster Card?

Also, in a couple of weeks, I have to travel between Richmond and Waterloo - again, would it be cheaper to do it with an Oyster Card, or to just get a return ticket as normal?

It would certainly be much easier to use, but it's just so complicated.

David
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

dcmbarton said:
I'm sure these questions have been asked many
Also, in a couple of weeks, I have to travel between Richmond and Waterloo - again, would it be cheaper to do it with an Oyster Card, or to just get a return ticket as normal?

Actually, I think I've worked this out, as Oyster is showing a single off-peak is £2.30 (so £4.60 return), and an ordinary National Rail return is £6.80

RailUK Forums

jopsuk · 27 Feb 2011

Off peak, if you've got a Network Railcard a travelcard is cheaper if you make more than two journeys. A travelcard Return (from outside the zones) with a railcard will be cheaper than a return +2 oyster journeys I've found.

I've got a 16-25 or one of a small number of other cards you can have the discount applied to the maximum fare on Oyster.

dcmbarton · 27 Feb 2011

Yes, I haven't got any railcards, so that's not really a conisderation for me.

Shrub Hill · 27 Feb 2011

Fare capping
A 'capping' system was introduced on 27 February 2005, which means that an Oyster card will be charged no more than the nearest equivalent Day Travelcard for a day's travel, providing that the card has been touched in and out correctly for all rail journeys.
Price capping does not apply to PAYG fares on London River Services boats.

dcmbarton · 27 Feb 2011

Shrub Hill said:
Fare capping
A 'capping' system was introduced on 27 February 2005, which means that an Oyster card will be charged no more than the nearest equivalent Day Travelcard for a day's travel, providing that the card has been touched in and out correctly for all rail journeys.
Price capping does not apply to PAYG fares on London River Services boats.

Thanks - I think that's what I was trying to understand. So in effect, a PAYG Oyster Card would offer the same as an equivalent day's travelcard, but would be better value if the journeys themselves were less than the cost of a travelcard (if that makes sense!)

Shrub Hill · 27 Feb 2011

you are not going to loose money having one and if like me, you only tend to visit one or two locations on a trip down you will find it cheaper, win win

blackfive460 · 27 Feb 2011

Shrub Hill said:
Price capping does not apply to PAYG fares on London River Services boats.

But you can pay with Oyster and get a discount off the standard fare.

londonbridge · 27 Feb 2011

Shrub Hill said:
you are not going to loose money having one and if like me, you only tend to visit one or two locations on a trip down you will find it cheaper, win win

You obviously mean 'lose'.

'Lose' being spelt or typed incorrectly as 'loose' seems to be on the increase,I see it all the time on another board I frequent,why are more and more people making this mistake??

jd · 27 Feb 2011

As far as I've ever been able to tell, nothing is ever more expensive on Oyster. At worse, it's the same price as a paper ticket - often the same journey is cheaper.

MikeWh · 27 Feb 2011

As others have said, the Oyster fare is at worst the same price as paying by other methods and usually cheaper, especially outside the peaks. The price caps are the same as the relevant one-day travelcards so you can't lose. Also, if you've spent the day going round zones 1 and 2 meaning that you've capped at the cheapest travelcard rate (£6.60) and you then decide to go into zone 3 you'll only be charged another 70p, ie it'll upgrade you to the next cap.

The only times that Oyster is not necessarily the cheapest method of payment is when using a Network card at weekends or when travelling as a family with a family and friends railcard. Neither of those can be added to an oyster, whilst other railcards can be.

yorkie · 27 Feb 2011

MikeWh said:
The only times that Oyster is not necessarily the cheapest method of payment is when using a Network card at weekends or when travelling as a family with a family and friends railcard. Neither of those can be added to an oyster, whilst other railcards can be.

Agreed, although I hear there are certain journeys at times that are considered 'peak' by Oyster but not 'peak' on paper where it can be cheaper with paper, although the person who told me about that was using a 16-25 Railcard so I am unsure if it applies to non-discounted tickets.

londonbridge said:
You obviously mean 'lose'.

'Lose' being spelt or typed incorrectly as 'loose' seems to be on the increase,I see it all the time on another board I frequent,why are more and more people making this mistake??

Yes, it is very annoying when people do mis-spellings like that.

I recommend that everyone who is not using a mobile device gives consideration to using a browser that has a dictionary. For example FireFox has a British English dictionary add-on, which is excellent.

I appreciate that sometimes people use mobile devices and it is not always possible to get decent spelling.

34D · 27 Feb 2011

jd said:
As far as I've ever been able to tell, nothing is ever more expensive on Oyster. At worse, it's the same price as a paper ticket - often the same journey is cheaper.

A further scenario would be journeys that are 'deemed' via zone 1 on oyster, but where one actually travels outside of zone 1. If one had purchased a paper z2-6 ticket one would have been fine, but even if one travelled on oyster services clear of zone 1, one would be deemed to have used zone 1. One chap on here has an excellent website about oyster, which gives an example of this as being something involving changing at East Croydon and heading to Whitechapel.

jd · 27 Feb 2011

34D said:
A further scenario would be journeys that are 'deemed' via zone 1 on oyster, but where one actually travels outside of zone 1. If one had purchased a paper z2-6 ticket one would have been fine, but even if one travelled on oyster services clear of zone 1, one would be deemed to have used zone 1. One chap on here has an excellent website about oyster, which gives an example of this as being something involving changing at East Croydon and heading to Whitechapel.

But that's what the new pink route validators are for - though I suppose for that particular example there's no suitable validator unless you get out at Canada Water...

MikeWh · 27 Feb 2011

34D said:
A further scenario would be journeys that are 'deemed' via zone 1 on oyster, but where one actually travels outside of zone 1. If one had purchased a paper z2-6 ticket one would have been fine, but even if one travelled on oyster services clear of zone 1, one would be deemed to have used zone 1.

Still a problem, but now only for single journeys as the Z2-6 travelcard is no more.

34D said:
One chap on here has an excellent website about oyster, which gives an example of this as being something involving changing at East Croydon and heading to Whitechapel.

That might be me.

jd said:
But that's what the new pink route validators are for - though I suppose for that particular example there's no suitable validator unless you get out at Canada Water...

Yep, they need one at Surrey Quays really, but Canada Water does work.

island · 27 Feb 2011

yorkie said:
jd said:

As far as I've ever been able to tell, nothing is ever more expensive on Oyster. At worse, it's the same price as a paper ticket - often the same journey is cheaper.

Click to expand...

Agreed, although I hear there are certain journeys at times that are considered 'peak' by Oyster but not 'peak' on paper where it can be cheaper with paper, although the person who told me about that was using a 16-25 Railcard so I am unsure if it applies to non-discounted tickets.

That was me; although I was talking about my wife it would also apply to someone holding a Gold card and a few other types of railcard. A railcard-discounted ticket for a journey on National Rail in the evening peak (1600-1900) is available, but on Oyster it charges as peak and no discount is given. Therefore if daily capping doesn't come into play paper tickets will be cheaper in this circumstance. This is mentioned on the TFL website somewhere.

As far as I am aware the only circumstance under which a paper ticket is going to be cheaper than Oyster where no discounts apply is if you're planning on exceeding the maximum journey time for some daft reason.

ashworth · 27 Feb 2011

Last April I had problems when using Oyster on National Rail after midnight. Even though I had already reached the Zones 1-6 price cap earlier in the day I was charged for two journeys after midnight.
I sent TFL an email and here is the reply that I received. I would be interested to know whether the situation has been fixed as I will be in London again this Easter for a week and don't want the same thing to happen again. I did get my money back eventually. I can't really see the problem as how many national rail stations are actually open at 2am! I was using the 0200 from Victoria to East Croydon.

Thank you for your email.
Please be assured that the issue you have described is known to Transport for London’s (TfL) fares and ticketing department who are working on a solution. However, The is a problem in its current state is essentially an unavoidable consequence of the extension of Oyster pay as you go to National Rail (NR). We have done checks and found that it is extremely rare that customers are affected by it. When customers use National Rail in the small hours, the Oyster daily price capping price arrangements occasionally don’t work as intended due to the need to spread the times when the end of day/start of day processing takes place at individual stations. Thankfully we know that most customers using Oyster pay as you go on National Rail overnight are out of the scope of price capping anyway.

When the Oyster system moves over from one day to the next for charging purposes, the processing demands on the system are very heavy and to keep the system operational it is necessary to avoid having one single time point for all stations to change over. The processes have always been spread out for Underground stations, but with no impact on customers because the Underground does not operate at the hours concerned. Just occasionally customers travelling overnight with National Rail will find that the system fails to identify that their journey belongs to its correct day for capping purposes.

Having checked your journey history it has been confirmed that you were charged £4.60 more than would have been if price caps had been applied as advertised. In order for me to arrange the most suitable medium through which you can receive the refund of the above amount, please contact me direct on *********.

Please be assured that the issue is being monitored and accept that if it turns out that significant numbers of customers are being affected, we will need to make arrangements for publicising that overnight NR journeys may fall outside the arrangements for daily price capping.
I hope the information I have provided has been helpful. Feel free to contact me should you have any future queries.

MikeWh · 27 Feb 2011

It hadn't been fixed recently when another visitor to my site reported a similar issue.

LNW-GW Joint · 28 Feb 2011

MikeWh said:
As others have said, the Oyster fare is at worst the same price as paying by other methods and usually cheaper, especially outside the peaks. The price caps are the same as the relevant one-day travelcards so you can't lose. Also, if you've spent the day going round zones 1 and 2 meaning that you've capped at the cheapest travelcard rate (£6.60) and you then decide to go into zone 3 you'll only be charged another 70p, ie it'll upgrade you to the next cap.

The only times that Oyster is not necessarily the cheapest method of payment is when using a Network card at weekends or when travelling as a family with a family and friends railcard. Neither of those can be added to an oyster, whilst other railcards can be.

As an elderly country bumpkin from North Wales I have to say that on my 3 attempts to use Oyster instead of a paper travelcard (all off-peak) I have ended up being overcharged for one reason or another.

The first was Gospel Oak to Fenchurch St (via Barking, where I didn't tap out/in). I got a max fare because it apparently couldn't work out the route. Why should it care what route you take?

The second was pretty complex: Euston to High Barnet (via Mill Hill East!), bus to Cockfosters, tube to KX and on to Tower Hill, then on DLR Tower Gateway-Beckton-Canning Town-Woolwich Arsenal, then SE to Greenwich, then DLR again to Mudchute, back to Cutty Sark (break) and on to Lewisham, then SE to Charing Cross, tube to Edgware and back to Euston. I tapped in and out correctly everywhere, but Oyster gave up at Woolwich, sent me to "seek assistance" and charged a maximum fare. I was told it would "get it right" by tapping out at Greenwich, but it didn't - the journey history stopped at Woolwich.

On the last occastion I did Euston-Morden, then a tour of the Croydon Tramlink and then the Metropolitan lines, and everything went well until I tapped in by mistake at Moor Park, tapped out within 10 seconds but still got charged £2.90 for the privilege!

In my view a paper travelcard is still better for complicated trips, even though you would think Oyster would be ideal. I just don't understand Planet Oyster.

dcmbarton · 28 Feb 2011

LNW-GW Joint said:
The first was Gospel Oak to Fenchurch St (via Barking, where I didn't tap out/in). I got a max fare because it apparently couldn't work out the route. Why should it care what route you take?

Isn't this something to do with route validation, i.e. it doesn't know whether you've been via Zone 1? I looked up Gospel Oak to Fenchurch St on the Single Fare Finder, and the route doesn't exist. I wonder whether it expected you to go via Stratford (where you can validate the route) and West Ham or Mile End?

MikeWh · 28 Feb 2011

LNW-GW Joint said:
The first was Gospel Oak to Fenchurch St (via Barking, where I didn't tap out/in). I got a max fare because it apparently couldn't work out the route. Why should it care what route you take?

There are some journeys that are not programmed into the system. In this case the logical route between those two locations would be via Highbury & Islington, Moorgate and Circle line to Tower Hill. There is no logical single journey ending up at Fenchurch Street because it actually views what you did as two journeys. If you'd touched out and in at Barking you would have been ok. It cares what route you take becasue it tries to charge you for the zones covered. Zone 2 to zone 1 via zone 4 is never going to be regarded as one journey.

LNW-GW Joint said:
The second was pretty complex: Euston to High Barnet (via Mill Hill East!), bus to Cockfosters, tube to KX and on to Tower Hill, then on DLR Tower Gateway-Beckton-Canning Town-Woolwich Arsenal, then SE to Greenwich, then DLR again to Mudchute, back to Cutty Sark (break) and on to Lewisham, then SE to Charing Cross, tube to Edgware and back to Euston. I tapped in and out correctly everywhere, but Oyster gave up at Woolwich, sent me to "seek assistance" and charged a maximum fare. I was told it would "get it right" by tapping out at Greenwich, but it didn't - the journey history stopped at Woolwich.

Without seeing the journey history it's not possible to comment, but I think you probably fell foul of either the maximum journey times or possibly touching on a standalone entry/exit validator (ie not connected to a gate) where you didn't need to. There are some of these in places, including Woolwich Arsenal.

LNW-GW Joint said:
On the last occastion I did Euston-Morden, then a tour of the Croydon Tramlink and then the Metropolitan lines, and everything went well until I tapped in by mistake at Moor Park, tapped out within 10 seconds but still got charged £2.90 for the privilege!

I'm actually waiting on a FOI request to explain exactly what should be charged in that sort of scenario.

LNW-GW Joint said:
In my view a paper travelcard is still better for complicated trips, even though you would think Oyster would be ideal. I just don't understand Planet Oyster.

Actually I agree, and say as much on my website as well. Oyster is designed for journeys from A to B, possibly via C (and D), where everything is in a logical direction. It is not really designed as a rover ticket which seems to be what you have tried to do. In that scenario I would always recommend a paper travelcard, not least because there is pretty much no danger of not getting value for money.

jd · 28 Feb 2011

MikeWh said:
Actually I agree, and say as much on my website as well. Oyster is designed for journeys from A to B, possibly via C (and D), where everything is in a logical direction. It is not really designed as a rover ticket which seems to be what you have tried to do. In that scenario I would always recommend a paper travelcard, not least because there is pretty much no danger of not getting value for money.

I agree too on this point - its inherent within the design of the Oyster system that it cannot cope with the sort of journeys mentioned above.

To be honest, I don't really see why they won't let people add a One Day Travelcard onto their cards if they want to. Obviously the capping system is better for most people because they don't have to decide at the start of the day if they'll be better off with a Travelcard or paying singles, but I think people should be able to load a Travelcard if they *want* to, e.g. in cases where they're planning to do so many journeys in a rover sort of way that they *know* they will need a Travelcard. That then avoids all the problems of touching in and out properly (except where they want to do an extension outside of their zones) and would allow all these complex journeys without a problem. It all already works fine with period TCs, so why not just let people add a day TC to their card if they really *want* to?

LNW-GW Joint · 28 Feb 2011

MikeWh said:
There are some journeys that are not programmed into the system. In this case the logical route between those two locations would be via Highbury & Islington, Moorgate and Circle line to Tower Hill. There is no logical single journey ending up at Fenchurch Street because it actually views what you did as two journeys. If you'd touched out and in at Barking you would have been ok. It cares what route you take becasue it tries to charge you for the zones covered. Zone 2 to zone 1 via zone 4 is never going to be regarded as one journey.

Thanks for the feedback.
I was indeed trying to use Oyster as a "rover" like a travelcard. I though that is what it was for. I have my Oyster card linked with an NR Senior Railcard and was expecting to go anywhere on TfL and NR for the £5.30 off-peak cap.

I know now that I missed a yellow validator at Barking, but it's difficult for occasional visitors to know all the intricacies.

Having worked in the IT industry I can imagine how hard it was to program all the multiplicity of journey options, but it could be more user-friendly for tourists. Anyway it looks like paper tickets still have a purpose.

londonbridge · 28 Feb 2011

MikeWh said:
It hadn't been fixed recently when another visitor to my site reported a similar issue.

To quote your earlier post,that would be me...

Oyster Cards

Member

RailUK Forums

Veteran Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Established Member

Member

Established Member

Forum Staff

Established Member

Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Member

Established Member

Member

Veteran Member

Established Member