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Oyster railcard discount and refunds at TVMs now (with staff assistance)

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Brucey

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According to the video posted recently on Twitter by TfL (see https://twitter.com/TfLWaystoPay/status/570561646613143552), it is now possible to load your railcard discount onto your Oyster card at a TVM. Similarly, they now offer refunds of up to £10 (including the deposit).

Does anyone know if these are the old machines upgraded or whether new machines have been rolled out? Does anyone have any photographs of the user interface?

Since moving away from London and mainly using outboundary Travelcards, I haven't had to need to visit a LUL ticket office for a while, so have lost touch with the latest developments.
 
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theageofthetra

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When I had a refund done at Cannon St a few weeks ago the TFL staff member entered some sort of pin code into the TVM and went into a set of 'staff' screens. All very quick and painless.
 

Mojo

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Does anyone know if these are the old machines upgraded or whether new machines have been rolled out? Does anyone have any photographs of the user interface?

The public user interface has changed, although this only extends to the buying of tickets. The machines are all the same as before.

The Poms (Passenger Operated Machines - LU equivalent of TVMs) offer this functionality only where you are assisted by a staff member who has received the required training; you cannot add the discount yourself. The ability to add a discount has existed for some years now, but the ability to process low-value refunds at the Poms is new. TVMs, which only exist on LU at the ex-Silverlink stations, cannot do such transactions.

It is only available for London Underground station staff - TfL staff are not be able to assist with ticketing issues other than at the Visitor Information Centres.
 

JaJaWa

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TfL have just put out a video showing that you can now load a Railcard onto an Oyster card yourself at their ticket machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N2MeBna0DY. You can also now refund your Oyster card on them too. Not sure how new these features are but I wasn't aware of them.

This post of mine a couple of weeks ago is eerily similar. I think we reached the same conclusion that the video is misleading and you can't do it yourself.
 

Dent

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How does the machine process refunds? None of the machines I have seen have the necessary hardware to physically retain a returned Oyster card.

Also I have not found the claim that you can buy extension tickets to stations outside London to be untrue. If you have a paper travelcard then it will only offer LU zone extension tickets. For an Oyster travelcard all it does is give you a list of stations in the zones to search, then either tell you you're already covered or tell you to use prepay credit. None of the options lead to the issue of an extension to anywhere outside the zones.
 

Brucey

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How does the machine process refunds? None of the machines I have seen have the necessary hardware to physically retain a returned Oyster card.

The video caption suggests it disables the card but does not retain it.

AFAIK, returned Oyster cards are never reused anyway, so retaining it serves little purpose.
 

bluegoblin7

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The video caption suggests it disables the card but does not retain it.

AFAIK, returned Oyster cards are never reused anyway, so retaining it serves little purpose.

Correct, there is no facility to return cancelled cards, but any PAYG credit below £10 (plus the deposit) will still be returned. Cards with active season tickets cannot be cancelled via the POMs.

I've got an ever growing stack of cancelled cards in my locker, this reminds me that I need to take the whole lot over to a ticket office for secure disposal...
 

yorkie

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... it is now possible to load your railcard discount onto your Oyster card at a TVM....
This is great news. I'm aware of several people who were refused this service when it had to be done at a ticket office, with various utterly incorrect excuses rolled out as to why it apparently couldn't be done.

Staff will need to approve the transaction, but at least they won't be denying its existence as it'll be there on the machine!
 

infobleep

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This is great news. I'm aware of several people who were refused this service when it had to be done at a ticket office, with various utterly incorrect excuses rolled out as to why it apparently couldn't be done.

Staff will need to approve the transaction, but at least they won't be denying its existence as it'll be there on the machine!
I've experienced that. Once took 3 attempts to sort it out. On some of the occasions, staff just didn't know how to do it and on another other occasion said my season ticket wasn't applicable.

What are the chances of this being rolled out to non TfL stations? That would be really good seeing as I believe non TfL ticket offices can't currently offer the service of adding discounts via the ticket offices.
 
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MikeWh

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What are the chances of this being rolled out to non TfL stations? That would be really good seeing as I believe non TfL ticket offices can't currently offer the service of adding discounts via the ticket offices.

It will take the DfT to insist on it before it gets done. At the moment TOCs are hell bent on frustrating Oyster users, London Midland being the latest to announce that they are withdrawing Oyster facilities at the ticket offices at Euston and Watford Junction.
 

CyrusWuff

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What are the chances of this being rolled out to non TfL stations? That would be really good seeing as I believe non TfL ticket offices can't currently offer the service of adding discounts via the ticket offices.

Any ticket office using Cubic FasTIS+ as their primary TIS (Marylebone, Northolt Park, London Overground and Barking, among others, if memory serves) can set discounts on Oyster, and Unload season tickets to process a refund. At present, only LU Ticket Offices can process PAYG and Deposit refunds, however.
 

infobleep

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It will take the DfT to insist on it before it gets done. At the moment TOCs are hell bent on frustrating Oyster users, London Midland being the latest to announce that they are withdrawing Oyster facilities at the ticket offices at Euston and Watford Junction.
I wonder why TOCs don't like TfL and Oyster? London Midland and TfL were not good at communicating during disruptions when I use to travel from Harrow and Wealdstone on London Midland services. Whilst a different department, this suggests wider issues.
 

Dent

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It will take the DfT to insist on it before it gets done. At the moment TOCs are hell bent on frustrating Oyster users, London Midland being the latest to announce that they are withdrawing Oyster facilities at the ticket offices at Euston and Watford Junction.

It is really the TOC's fault, or is it a result of Oyster having been exclusively developed and unilaterally imposed on TOCs by TFL?

I get the impression that if Oyster had been developed properly as a fair collaboration between all affected TOCs then none if the current issues with using Oyster on non-TFL services would exist.
 

Deerfold

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I get the impression that if Oyster had been developed properly as a fair collaboration between all affected TOCs then none if the current issues with using Oyster on non-TFL services would exist.

Most of the TOCs seemed to have little to no interest in Oyster.

As no TOCs have yet come together to develop a smartcard it's hard to tell if that would have worked any better.
 

Brucey

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Can these new machines provide a printed oyster history?

The small standalone machine at Lewisham NR used to have an option at the top of the screen (alongside the change and receipts available indicator) with wording along the lines of "Customer Record". This was always crossed out and I had no idea what it was anyway.
 

JaJaWa

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I get the impression that if Oyster had been developed properly as a fair collaboration between all affected TOCs then none if the current issues with using Oyster on non-TFL services would exist.

I get the impression that if Oyster had been developed properly as a fair collaboration between all affected TOCs then Oyster wouldn't exist.
 
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