Changes to Oyster Auto Top-up from Sun 17 Nov 2019

[hassaanhc]

Morning

I've just received an email from TfL about changes to the Oyster Auto Top-up feature.

From Sunday 17 November 2019, Oyster Auto Top-up will take place when balance falls below £20.
Currently it happens when balance falls below £10.

Looks like I'll have to reconsider using that feature. Having £20 tied up on my Oyster card feels completely different psychologically compared to only £10. No doubt this is linked to the higher fares charged once you go west of West Drayton

Email pasted below:

From Sunday 17 November 2019, the Auto Top-up threshold will change to £20. From this date, your Oyster card will be topped up with your chosen value when your balance falls below £20.

You will also see Auto Top-up charges more quickly in your bank account. If we are unable to collect payment for your Auto Top-up, your Oyster card will be stopped.

If you currently pay an adult fare, you can travel with contactless if you prefer not to continue with Auto Top-up after these changes are made.

When you use contactless to pay as you go, you are charged the same adult fares and daily caps as Oyster. You can also benefit from weekly (Monday to Sunday) capping, meaning you won’t pay more than the price of the equivalent 7 Day Travelcard.

Read the updated Auto Top-up terms and conditions for more information.

Yours sincerely,

Customer Information Team
Transport for London

 

[daveshah]

This might be related to the issue of auto top up not triggering, on cards with auto top up set up, and a current value below the entry threshold but above £10, causing problems at gates with a high entry threshold like Gatwick.

 

[Skimpot flyer]

Those who travel regularly will know this, but I do wish TfL would not keep repeating the mantra ‘you are charged the same adult fares and daily caps as Oyster’ when extolling the virtues of payment with Contactless. Those holding certain railcards are better-off using Oyster. This will be even more true when Contactless is extended out to Reading !!

 

[DaveB10780]

This is a ludicrous email
1) £20 is what I normally use over 2 weeks
2) Since Oyster is not currently accepted on most new extensions fares over £10 are few and far between. What is the maximum possible on 1 journey. How many times does this happen.
3) The line "If we are unable to collect payment for your Auto Top-up, your Oyster card will be stopped." seems well dodgy. Are they really saying my card will be stopped when I have £19.95 to spend just because my linked card has a problem?
4) As in all their emails they fail to add a caveat about contactless not being better for anybody with a linked railcard.

All pain and no benefit great way to announce changes.

 

[Clip]

This is a ludicrous email
1) £20 is what I normally use over 2 weeks
2) Since Oyster is not currently accepted on most new extensions fares over £10 are few and far between. What is the maximum possible on 1 journey. How many times does this happen.
3) The line "If we are unable to collect payment for your Auto Top-up, your Oyster card will be stopped." seems well dodgy. Are they really saying my card will be stopped when I have £19.95 to spend just because my linked card has a problem?
4) As in all their emails they fail to add a caveat about contactless not being better for anybody with a linked railcard.

All pain and no benefit great way to announce changes.

So just cancel the auto top up feature and load on £20 ever time you need to.

 

[JonathanH]

2) Since Oyster is not currently accepted on most new extensions fares over £10 are few and far between. What is the maximum possible on 1 journey. How many times does this happen.

£20.90 single from Gatwick Airport to Shenfield or to Watford Junction in the peak via London although I would imagine there aren't very many people doing this.

 

[matt_world2004]

Oyster top up in minimum values should not be effected by the western extension to TfL rail as it is contactless only

 

[MikeWh]

What is the maximum possible on 1 journey. How many times does this happen.

£20.90 single from Gatwick Airport to Shenfield or to Watford Junction in the peak via London although I would imagine there aren't very many people doing this.

I beg to disagree. £22/£25 singles on Hex are both more expensive and probably more common.

 

[MikeWh]

For what it's worth I've covered this story, with my thoughts, on my website at https://www.oyster-rail.org.uk/2019/11/changes-to-auto-topup/

Anyone using auto topup on an Oyster (or zip) card will have received an email yesterday. The key points are:

From Sunday 17 November 2019, the Auto Top-up threshold will change to £20. From this date, your Oyster card will be topped up with your chosen value when your balance falls below £20.

You will also see Auto Top-up charges more quickly in your bank account. If we are unable to collect payment for your Auto Top-up, your Oyster card will be stopped.

I have seen some comments already on other forums expressing disgust which I must say surprise me somewhat. My first reaction is great, or why has it taken so long. At a stroke it will solve the issues with auto topup at Gatwick Airport and Victoria platforms 13/14. There might still be problems at Paddington HEx platforms but they will be reduced and TfL probably thought increasing the threshold to £25 was a step too far.

The second paragraph appears to be somewhat draconian, but it is in fact similar to the current procedures. At present the auto topup amount is requested as part of an overnight process the day after the credit was applied to your Oyster card. Back in the day many details of touches were only transferred to the central system overnight, but that has long since been superceded by transmission within 30 minutes. Again, it’s perhaps surprising that TfL have taken this long to update the auto topup process. Remember that the credit is applied to the Oyster card and can be used immediately, meaning that TfL take a revenue risk. By claiming the funds quicker they reduce the risk.

The big change is that TfL will no longer send an email if a collection fails offering you the chance to correct the issue within a few days. This is a shame, but is almost certainly due to increasing misuse of the system by fare evaders. You won’t actually lose the upto £20 legitimately on the card, but you will have to liaise with the helpdesk to regularise the issue. It should also be noted that you won’t be trapped in the system if your card is stopped as exit gates are programmed to allow exit on stopped cards. The key is to always ensure that your account has enough money to cover your £20/£40 topup at any time.

Finally, if you aren’t happy with these changes you can always deactivate auto topup. And if you pay full adult fares then using a contactless payment card/device is a better solution than auto topup anyway.

 

[jon0844]

This is a ludicrous email
1) £20 is what I normally use over 2 weeks
2) Since Oyster is not currently accepted on most new extensions fares over £10 are few and far between. What is the maximum possible on 1 journey. How many times does this happen.
3) The line "If we are unable to collect payment for your Auto Top-up, your Oyster card will be stopped." seems well dodgy. Are they really saying my card will be stopped when I have £19.95 to spend just because my linked card has a problem?
4) As in all their emails they fail to add a caveat about contactless not being better for anybody with a linked railcard.

All pain and no benefit great way to announce changes.

I had a limited edition/collectable Oyster killed by this. The top up failed so they blocked the card, which is fair enough.

Problem is I didn't notice the email from TfL. When I did realise, I topped up online and expected to be able to use the card the next time I tapped in. That didn't work, so I used a ticket machine to check the balance and it said it was blocked.

Unfortunately I don't travel using Oyster all the time so a long time had passed (probably a couple of weeks) and I was told there was nothing they could do to reactivate the card, despite the credit on my account (but not the card!).

The solution was to have to get a new Oyster and claim a refund on my account, which invoiced a couple of phone calls to the helpline.

All a real faff, so always make sure you keep the card details up to date and obviously have enough money in that account to pay!

 

[AY1975]

I had a limited edition/collectable Oyster killed by this. The top up failed so they blocked the card, which is fair enough.

Problem is I didn't notice the email from TfL. When I did realise, I topped up online and expected to be able to use the card the next time I tapped in. That didn't work, so I used a ticket machine to check the balance and it said it was blocked.

Unfortunately I don't travel using Oyster all the time so a long time had passed (probably a couple of weeks) and I was told there was nothing they could do to reactivate the card, despite the credit on my account (but not the card!).

The solution was to have to get a new Oyster and claim a refund on my account, which invoiced a couple of phone calls to the helpline.

All a real faff, so always make sure you keep the card details up to date and obviously have enough money in that account to pay!

AIUI if your card has Auto Top-up enabled and an Auto Top-up payment fails, your card will be blocked, but if you don't have Auto Top-up enabled and you end up with a negative balance you can still complete your journey as long as you top up your card ASAP afterwards (though I guess you could be issued with a penalty fare if there is a manual inspection and you are found to have a negative balance).

 

[AY1975]

For what it's worth I've covered this story, with my thoughts, on my website at https://www.oyster-rail.org.uk/2019/11/changes-to-auto-topup/

The big change is that TfL will no longer send an email if a collection fails offering you the chance to correct the issue within a few days. This is a shame, but is almost certainly due to increasing misuse of the system by fare evaders.

I presume this is because previously fare evaders would deliberately try to make a journey with a negative balance and avoid sorting out the problem if they received such an email, and under the old rules they would still be able to complete their journey with a negative balance without being penalty fared provided that there was no manual inspection in operation at the station where they alighted.

But surely this means that you are now unfairly penalised if the payment fails through no fault of your own because there is a problem with your bank account that isn't your fault (for example if your bank decides to put a stop on all payments from your account because of some transactions that they thought looked dubious but that were in fact genuine, or if money had been stolen from your account that you didn't know about).

 

[MikeWh]

AIUI if your card has Auto Top-up enabled and an Auto Top-up payment fails, your card will be blocked, but if you don't have Auto Top-up enabled and you end up with a negative balance you can still complete your journey as long as you top up your card ASAP afterwards (though I guess you could be issued with a penalty fare if there is a manual inspection and you are found to have a negative balance).

I presume this is because previously fare evaders would deliberately try to make a journey with a negative balance and avoid sorting out the problem if they received such an email, and under the old rules they would still be able to complete their journey with a negative balance without being penalty fared provided that there was no manual inspection in operation at the station where they alighted.

But surely this means that you are now unfairly penalised if the payment fails through no fault of your own because there is a problem with your bank account that isn't your fault (for example if your bank decides to put a stop on all payments from your account because of some transactions that they thought looked dubious but that were in fact genuine, or if money had been stolen from your account that you didn't know about).

I'm not quite sure you're understanding the issue correctly. At the moment the Oyster card is the master record. From yesterday, if you start a journey with a balance below £20 your Oyster card will have £20 (or £40) added to the balance. As far as an RPI is concerned your balance is now just below £40. The problem is that £20 of that balance is only theoretical money to TfL. So until you've used all that nearly £40 an RPI isn't going to worry.

As luck would have it, my son's Oyster card had about £15 on it this morning and Oyster online reports that his balance is now about £35. So that part of the system is working. The credit card isn't showing a pending transaction yet, but then an awful lot of cards are going to auto topup today so perhaps there's been a glitch. It's been 6 hours since he touched on a bus so I would perhaps have expected it to happen by now.

The issue about the bank blocking the payment for other than insufficient funds is a good one and I will make further enquiries about that.

 

[MikeWh]

Well I've just checked the old and new terms and conditions and it appears that the instant-ish blocking of the card has been postponed. The only substantive change is where the threshold is upped from £10 to £20.

 

[Cdd89]

I had a bad experience with TfL Auto Top Up, where I was sent an email due to a failed payment. I settled the payment online, which failed the first time and succeeded the first time.

Both £20 payments cleared to TfL and I was sent an automated email telling me that they couldn’t refund me automatically and to call them. It took ages to find someone who understood the history and agreed I had been charged 2x£20.

Since seeing how easy it is to fall through the cracks of Auto Top Up, I no longer use the feature. My complaints are nothing to do with giving TfL a float, I actually top my Oyster card up to the maximum of £90 whenever I remember or have some spare time in a station. Of course I am in a lucky position to be able to do that and those who don’t have such spare funds suffer inconvenience.

If there’s room for improvement, it is that people should have the ability to choose their own topup trigger amount and top up amount, down to some minimum like £5, as long as they tick a box acknowledging they won’t be able to take some journeys without topping up first. That way people who know they never do more than a £2.60 journey at a time wouldn’t feel out of pocket.