Yes all good and well if you're going across the whole network but for £2.30 for one stop is a lot. Why should it cost £4.80 cash from London Bridge to Bond Street? But £2.30-£1.50 with Oyster? Its totally insane.
It's not just transport in London that has that problem. Something like 10% of my phone bill is some made-up nonsense figure slapped on by BT because I pay it in cash.
There is no way on earth I would have an oyster card even if I did live in London, for two reasons:
- It takes away my control over my own money. If I'm going to pay for anything then the person or system taking my money must inform me that the price is some specific amount and then receive my permission to take that specific amount. A system which just puts its hand in my pocket and takes what it wants without either telling me how much it's taking or allowing me to say yea or nay is totally unacceptable.
- It collects personal information without my permission. This is also totally unacceptable.
Seems there is no way to prevent either of these other than forcing it to act like a normal ticket, by buying one card per journey and paying onto it, in cash, only the cost of that one journey, then throwing it away afterwards. (Or, better, giving it to someone else so as to corrupt the personal data collection.) I don't know if this is even possible, let alone convenient.
There ought to be a law that the price charged for anything must always be the same regardless of how you pay for it, in order to prevent these kinds of scams. (Indeed I have half an idea that there used to be, but they either got rid of it or made it ineffective just at the time when it would have started to be really useful...)