Refunding an Oyster card

[island]

I recently saw a notice at Hammersmith station stating that photo ID and proof of address will be required to refund an Oyster card. When did this rule come in?

(It also said, rather threateningly, that fraudulent refund applications would be reported to the BTP.)

 

[maniacmartin]

Hopefully this is only for Oyster cards that are registered. I will see if I can grab a picture of the sign today

 

[bicbasher]

I suspect Hammersmith has had a run of stolen Oyster Cards which thieves have used to get the £5 deposit and any PAYG back. So of course the customer reports it stolen, but isn't blocked until after the card has had the deposit refunded.

 

[RJ]

I saw the same sign at Warren Street on Sunday. There was little to stop people finding or stealing Oyster Cards and handing them in for a refund. A keen criminal could quite easily obtain the extended product detail receipt in order to circumvent being caught out by any questions posed by suspicious clerks. TfL are quite rightly putting the kibosh on this sort of thing.

 

[A1]

TfL are quite rightly putting the kibosh on this sort of thing.

There are reasons why people don't register Oyster Cards. Why should they be disadvantaged and told to provide their details because of some criminals?

If TFL really wanted to care, perhaps require ID for registered cards, or only issue cheques for cards over a certain PAYG value.

 

[island]

I understand that refunds of more than £10 (i.e. £5 PAYG plus the deposit) are already only done by posting out a cheque.

I was more interested to know when this rule had come in and if it's a TfL policy or just something a station has cooked up for itself.

 

[paddington]

I posted about this before. I have also found this relevant thread:

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTo...er_Card_Refunds_Confusion-London_England.html

 

[island]

Right, time for an FOI I think.

 

[Be3G]

I understand that refunds of more than £10 (i.e. £5 PAYG plus the deposit) are already only done by posting out a cheque.

BACS too. I should know, I had great difficulty trying to get £27 on an Oyster refunded recently! Switching to one of the 150th anniversary cards ended up being more trouble than it was worth…

 

[phil35]

I've had a spare Oyster card lying around for a while, and decided that I would get my £5 back plus the PAYG credit on there. I tried at Stockwell twice (two different staff) and at Euston once to refund my Oyster card, and all three of them said that I needed drivers licence and a bank statement / utility bill. As I didn't bring a bank statement with me down to London to see a friend, I couldn't get it refunded. I tried one last time at Kings Cross St Pancras before my train back home and the guy did actually refund it, he just asked me to confirm some details and write down my current address.

I think I got lucky finding someone who would do it. I asked the lady at Stockwell if this was a recent thing, and she told me that it had been in place for a few years, but only recently have they been asked to enforce it by their bosses.

This got me thinking, what happens to the tourist visiting London for the weekend? I thought the idea was that you could refund them easily and at any time. There's going to be a lot of tourists out there stuck with an Oyster card they're never going to use again because they didn't bring a bank statement with them.

I should mention the Oyster Card I wanted to refund is registered, but they never even took it off me to check that it was or not, as soon as I mentioned I wanted a refund, I was always told if you don't have a bank statement or utility bill I can't refund it. No questions at all about whether it was registered or not.

 

[phil35]

Quick question - I've got two people visiting me next weekend in London, neither of who are from London and have never had Oyster cards before. I was hoping to get them one from Kings Cross on Friday night, and refund it on the Sunday, getting them their remaining credit and the £5 back. Do you know if this will be possible, or will they won't be allowed if they don't have their driving licence / utility bill with them? Is there an official line on this somewhere?

It just seems silly that they can get an oyster card with no ID, yet to give it back, they need to provide two forms of ID. Can anyone shed any light on this?

 

[Be3G]

I agree it does seem daft. I tried to get an unregistered/unprotected Oyster refunded a few weeks ago and, echoing your previous experience, the clerk didn't want to know unless I could show ID (despite the fact the card had no ID attached to it…).

 

[maniacmartin]

If you refund the Oysters instead of your friends then you can use your ID.
Also, dont get a 'Visitor' Oyster card, as AFAIK they are non-refundable.

 

[Be3G]

Refunds of remaining credit are available for visitor Oysters, but only by sending them in, and there's no word about the deposit. Mind you, the ‘card fee’ is only £3 compared to a traditional Oyster's £5 deposit, so maybe that's why.

 

[phil35]

I just can't get my head around this at all, it's ridiculous. They won't even have anything to check the details against, so what's the point?

Eurgh.

 

[Deerfold]

Refunds of remaining credit are available for visitor Oysters, but only by sending them in, and there's no word about the deposit. Mind you, the ‘card fee’ is only £3 compared to a traditional Oyster's £5 deposit, so maybe that's why.

There's no refund of the £3 as it's a fee, not a deposit. I'm not sure if it helps pay the costs of the extra vendors who sell the visitor card.

 

[maniacmartin]

I just can't get my head around this at all, it's ridiculous. They won't even have anything to check the details against, so what's the point?

Eurgh.

Tracing money laundering I suspect.
Load cards to the brim with stolen credit card details online, then cash them out in the station....

 

[island]

Tracing money laundering I suspect.
Load cards to the brim with stolen credit card details online, then cash them out in the station....

Can you load unregistered cards online?

I wonder whether this practice is compliant with Part 1 section 3 of Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998.

 

[phil35]

I just spoke to them and they're going to bring a bank statement each, along with their drivers licence that, to be fair, they'd have brought anyway.

Especially with all the talk about buses going cashless, I find this hard to get my head around. People are supposed to bring bank statements with them on their romantic long weekend away to London are they? :roll:

 

[button_boxer]

People are supposed to bring bank statements with them on their romantic long weekend away to London are they? :roll:

No, they're supposed to get an Oyster card the first time they come to London and then hang on to it for use on future trips.

 

[MikeWh]

Especially with all the talk about buses going cashless, I find this hard to get my head around. People are supposed to bring bank statements with them on their romantic long weekend away to London are they? :roll:

Buses going cashless is more to do with contactless bank cards which will be able to cap like Oysters in the future. Then, rather than being money tied to a particular card, it will just be your money. The capping will be done in a back-office process which will look at all your travel and work out what you should have paid, rather than being worked out on the hoof as at present.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Can you load unregistered cards online?

I wonder whether this practice is compliant with Part 1 section 3 of Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998.

You can't load unregistered cards online, but you can do it at a ticket machine.

The practice fully complies with the DPA as it is for a specific purpose, namely to control money laundering, which is a specific statutory obligation. All companies which deal with refunds need to have laundering controls in place, as these types of refunds are the most common way of cleaning up dirty money, and they typically ask for name and proof of ID.

Bear in mind that it is a criminal offence to facilitate money laundering, and you can be deemed to facilitate it by not conducting appropriate checks. This is a personal liability- so would fall on a clerk who didn't ask for ID- not a corporate one.

 

[island]

You can't load unregistered cards online, but you can do it at a ticket machine.

The practice fully complies with the DPA as it is for a specific purpose, namely to control money laundering, which is a specific statutory obligation. All companies which deal with refunds need to have laundering controls in place, as these types of refunds are the most common way of cleaning up dirty money, and they typically ask for name and proof of ID.

Bear in mind that it is a criminal offence to facilitate money laundering, and you can be deemed to facilitate it by not conducting appropriate checks. This is a personal liability- so would fall on a clerk who didn't ask for ID- not a corporate one.

I am not sure how accurate any of this is.

(1) The Data Protection Act as well as requiring data be collected for a specified purpose requires that the data be appropriate and not excessive for that purpose. The highest refund you can get on the spot is a tenner. Anything more (which can be at most £95) and you get a cheque in the post after appropriate checks have been made. I put it to you that taking this amount of data for such a small transaction without there being a specific suspicion is disproportionate.

(2) Money laundering rules apply to specified institutions, not everyone. The list of such institutions is here: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/mlr/getstarted/register/who.htm#1 and TfL does not fall into any of these categories.

(3) You say all companies dealing with refunds ask for proof of ID. This is wrong. I have returned items for refunds to M&S, John Lewis, Argos, etc. and was not asked for any proof, and the only time I was asked for personal details was for my name and postcode at Argos.

 

[maniacmartin]

I know people who have got much more than a tenner refunded on the spot, however this was to a credit card so is traceable.

 

[orpine]

I
This got me thinking, what happens to the tourist visiting London for the weekend? I thought the idea was that you could refund them easily and at any time. There's going to be a lot of tourists out there stuck with an Oyster card they're never going to use again because they didn't bring a bank statement with them.

I don't think you're cynical enough. The more people who have Oyster cards, especially visitors/tourists, the more money that TfL gets to hold onto on behalf of those people. 1million tourist/visitors with a £5 deposit is 5million in cash earning interest. They learnt from the banks it seems.

This may be for money laundering purposes, but it has the added benefit of making it less likely many of those people will claim/get refunds in a timely fashion.

 

[Deerfold]

I don't think you're cynical enough. The more people who have Oyster cards, especially visitors/tourists, the more money that TfL gets to hold onto on behalf of those people. 1million tourist/visitors with a £5 deposit is 5million in cash earning interest. They learnt from the banks it seems.

This may be for money laundering purposes, but it has the added benefit of making it less likely many of those people will claim/get refunds in a timely fashion.

Perhaps, but with TfL's income of around £4.5 billion a year, £5 million earning interest is chickenfeed.

 

[Goatboy]

I bought 2 Oyster cards with £5 of credit at Heathrow Airport.

The next day, after using them both for two PAYG journeys, I was given a refund of the deposit and the 50p of credit on each card, no questions asked, no ID required, at Paddington station.

Exactly how it should be and simplicity itself.

 

[paddington]

Perhaps, but with TfL's income of around £4.5 billion a year, £5 million earning interest is chickenfeed.

I suppose so, but they can record it as an asset

Anyway, there are far more than 1 million oysters (though not all of them will have a £5 or even £3 deposit). I personally have 10, mainly because they used to ask you to apply for a new student one every year... though I will admit that on one I was charged a maximum cash fare for some reason and it was cheaper to just never use that oyster again.

 

[Mojo]

I don't think you're cynical enough. The more people who have Oyster cards, especially visitors/tourists, the more money that TfL gets to hold onto on behalf of those people. 1million tourist/visitors with a £5 deposit is 5million in cash earning interest. They learnt from the banks it seems.

This may be for money laundering purposes, but it has the added benefit of making it less likely many of those people will claim/get refunds in a timely fashion.

I think London is very good for tourists in comparison to the majority of other developed cities in terms of public transport ticketing. I went to two popular tourist cities abroad in the Spring.

In one city, you HAVE to pay for the rail-based transport systems with a Smartcard. If you want a new one, it costs the equivalent of 65p, non-refundable. The card also expires after three years so is no good if I want to go back at a later date. Any remaining balance is also non-refundable, although can be transferred to another card.

In the other city, you can buy single-ride paper tickets, however only from the machines (there are no ticket offices at all, even at the airport, where there was what looked like a ticket office but was staffed by someone who insisted it wasn't, and also insisted he couldn't leave the booth to help you operate the machines). There is a charge of the equivalent of £1.30 for the Smartcard, again non-refundable, but at least it is optional. Although, the ticket machines will try and 'trick' you into taking the Smartcard by adding the cost to the ticket price if you select the 'wrong' option. Any remaining balance is also non-refundable.

 

[maniacmartin]

The non-refundabile thing is why I'm only putting small amounts on my New York MTA Metrocard. Annoyingly, you have to top up in $11 amounts if using a machine, but journeys cost $2.50!