Free Oyster Card (usually £3) for first timers

Beate

Only one card per person, how are they going to monitor that? No-one I know has had their card registered, as you don't have to. (Of course, if it gets lost or stolen, you don't get compensation.) Anyway, I always thought that once you give the card back you get the £3 back as it's just a deposit, so what's the fuss?

Toxic_Bunni

Blank page for me too.

darkteckno

bump..............

fruitcake_2

Just filled in the form, seems to be working now...:)

Bargain_Rzl

Beate wrote: »

Anyway, I always thought that once you give the card back you get the £3 back as it's just a deposit, so what's the fuss?

But that's a con, unless you're only in London for a short period and are never planning on coming back Otherwise, why would you ever give it back?

For those who asked: an Oyster card is a swipe card which you preload with a season ticket and/or top-up prepayment. It's not a discount card per se, because it's TFL's preferred form of ticket sale, so in effect YOU'RE paying the standard price, and people WITHOUT an Oystercard are paying a premium.

Besides the basic advantage of cheaper fares, its main advantage IMHO is that if you're using it for pay as you go, you don't have to faff about with working out whether you'll be making enough journeys that day to justify buying a 1-day Travelcard instead of single fares Instead, you use it as much as you need to, and it will cap your daily spend at 50p below the cost of a 1-day Travelcard for whichever combination of zones you have travelled through.

Its main disadvantage is that at present, Oyster can't be used on National Rail services unless it's loaded with a season ticket (i.e. not pay as you go) - however there are now plans to integrate London's overground rail services into Oyster. I think this is due next year.

Lots of tourist attractions across London now give discounts or 2for1 deals on presentation of an Oyster card.

I've ordered my freebie. I have an annual season ticket but currently it's still a paper version bought from a rail station, as I used to live on the overground rail network and it used to work out cheaper due to a discount for poor service. Now, I live near Central London and hardly ever use anything except buses. When my season ticket expires in July I'll be loading my free Oystercard with an annual bus pass (£560) and a small amount of top-up credit to be used as and when, on occasions where I need to use the tube/tram/DLR.

VIJAY_FROM_KENT

But say im travelling from Dartford to London, isnt it cheaper to buy a travel card? As you cant use your Oyster from a station outside of London?

Beate

Bargain_Rzl wrote: »

But that's a con, unless you're only in London for a short period and are never planning on coming back Otherwise, why would you ever give it back?

Good point. So I ordered my freebie card now and as soon as I get it, I will empty the one I have and give it back so I can get my £3 back. Then I load up the free card. Clever.

Bargain_Rzl

vjain wrote: »

But say im travelling from Dartford to London, isnt it cheaper to buy a travel card? As you cant use your Oyster from a station outside of London?

It's possible that it would work out cheaper to buy a return rail fare from Dartford to London, then use the Oyster card for buses/tubes once there. However because Oyster Pay as you Go is not yet valid on National Rail, it is indeed likely that a paper Travelcard bought from Dartford station would be the cheapest way of travelling to and around London.

Season ticket Travelcards loaded on an Oystercard ARE valid on rail services. If you had a season ticket Travelcard loaded on your Oystercard (say an Annual, Monthly or Weekly Travelcard for Zones 1-6) then this would be valid throughout the London zones and all you would need to do is buy a rail ticket to the first station within the boundary - using the example of Dartford and a Zones 1-6 Travelcard, you'd buy a rail ticket to "Boundary Zone 6" (effectively Slade Green/Barnehurst/Crayford - I used to live round there myself!)

welshdeedee

Mine has arrived, I'd given up on it!

Testee

You and me both Welshdeedee - I read in the Metro paper that half of the freebie cards have been sent out so was wondering where on earth they'd got to but it turned up yesterday.

Just got to work out how to use it now!