tubechallenge.com

Starkey7 wrote:I have to say that I'm still sceptical about this Oyster business. It's annoying when they don't seem to work properly, and your money is spirited away without trace. Only the other day Logsfan touched in and out at Wimbledon and was charged £4. Didn't seem fair really.

Interesting. I had forgotten about an incident this May when I and Lars were leaving our hotel near Ken (O). We went to the shuttle and touched in. Then we realised this was right after the 8:08 left and the next one is at 8:42. So we touched out and went for the NR. I think we touched in again and the balance was way down. I asked an attendant and was adviced to contact London Transport (or whatever) to get a refund. Anyway, arriving at Wimbledon (change at West Brompton), we touched out and suddenly every this seemed back to normal. I'm pretty sure the day ended with the properly capped fare... Clearly, the Oyster can be a dodgy affair...

It's a bit weird if you've got a reduction on your Oyster card, too, as I found out in May. If you pair your Oyster with a Young Person's Railcard (or similar), the off-peak, all-zones daily cap becomes £4.80. However, in order to trigger the reduced cap, you actually have to reach the normal cap... which, if travelling from Zone 9, is £6.80 (from memory). If you've spent, say, £5.80, it is actually in your interests to make one extra journey, because you'll save a pound. Weird, huh? This also means you can't set off with only a fiver on your card - you have to have the full amount.

That's an amazing find; well observed. I find all these curiousities deeply curious.

Hi, is Oyster Pre-Pay completely useless for most of the challenges due to the time limit? I am thinking you could save a few seconds at the barriers if you could use this.

Depends what challenge you are doing. The problems arise if you spend more than two hours underground without exiting the system.

Did they not extend that time limit?

Last time i checked it was 2 hours. I say checked, i mean got caught out doing an back2back All-lines challenges....

Annoying, as you're right that it would definitely save a few seconds at barriers and worrying about paper travelcards not going through the barriers.

I read that as, "...spend two hours on the Underground without exciting the system."

I think that that'd be quite difficult.

How many threads do we have about this now?

Following Ollie's post about how many threads we have for Oystercards, I did a quick search and found seven or eight threads all containing the same posts.

So, I have merged all the posts from those threads into this one thread. Because the posts have been inserted in date order, some of them may make no sense but that's not my problem. From now on this thread is the ONLY thread to discuss Oystercards and their suitability for tube challenges. In fact, anything to do with Oystercards now goes in this thread, unless you need to mention Oystercards in another thread of course. I'm not that anal.

Please DO NOT START ANOTHER THREAD ABOUT OYSTERCARDS OR I WILL GET ANNOYED. Any new Oystercard threads will be merged into here and the topic starter will be banned from the forum for a week. In fact, anyone who asks the question "can you use Oystercards for tube challenges" from this point on will be banned for a week too.

I have made this thread sticky so that you can all see it at the top of the list, and will remain in the Off Topic area.

May I also remind people that we have a wonderful SEARCH facility on this forum, enabling people to see if something has already been asked before starting a new thread. Please use it.

Finally, you may all wish to view the following, if you haven't already done so:

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting

tubeguru wrote:Following Ollie's post about how many threads we have for Oystercards, I did a quick search and found seven or eight threads all containing the same posts.

DO NOT START ANOTHER THREAD ABOUT OYSTERCARDS In fact, anyone who asks the question "can you use Oystercards for tube challenges" from this point on will be banned for a week too.
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting

Im half tempted to ask the question just so i can get banned for a week

Feel free. We'll wait for your return next Friday evening.

Just noticed this press release from TfL:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/media/n ... 12483.aspx

It details how there are now pink Oyster readers at nine key locations. The aim is to touch in en route at these pink readers, so the system 'knows' you have avoided Zone 1, and therefore charges PAYG users less money.

Sounds good in theory (sort of), not sure what they'll be like in practice

What's stoping me getting of my train, swiping on the pink reader, getting back on the first train and going through zone 1 anyway.

I forsee the removal of the pink readers by the end of the decade

mullardo wrote:What's stoping me getting of my train, swiping on the pink reader, getting back on the first train and going through zone 1 anyway.

That would be your lack of stupidity.