MSE News: Got a London Oyster card you don't use? Get your share of £124m back

Former_MSE_Helen

Oyster card customers can reclaim both their pay-as-you-go balance and their deposit from Transport for London...

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Got a London Oyster card you don't use? Get your share of £124m back



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Pincher

Personally, I wish they would merge it with Wave and Pay.
I would use it with Auto-TopUp disabled, so any theft is limited.

callum9999

You should probably clarify that 034 numbers are geographical numbers and are therefore included in the free landline minutes most people have from their landline or mobile.

em6

My card corrupted and I lost £20. The people at Oyster could not have cared less. They had absolutely no intention of refunding me, however much I complained. They kept telling me it was my fault for using up the money. Which, as I had only loaded it the day before, was a bit rich. They are con artists and they will do everything they can to avoid giving you your money. They'll call you a liar, they'll call you deluded, they'll call you stupid. They will take your card from you and give you no receipt or paperwork or proof it ever existed. The man at the counter just threw it in the bin and shrugged his shoulders. I have never been so royally conned as I was by TfL when my card went wrong. Please don't tell people that getting a refund from them will be an easy process. It won't.

callum9999

em6 wrote: »

My card corrupted and I lost £20. The people at Oyster could not have cared less. They had absolutely no intention of refunding me, however much I complained. They kept telling me it was my fault for using up the money. Which, as I had only loaded it the day before, was a bit rich. They are con artists and they will do everything they can to avoid giving you your money. They'll call you a liar, they'll call you deluded, they'll call you stupid. They will take your card from you and give you no receipt or paperwork or proof it ever existed. The man at the counter just threw it in the bin and shrugged his shoulders. I have never been so royally conned as I was by TfL when my card went wrong. Please don't tell people that getting a refund from them will be an easy process. It won't.

If you think that's remotely what their typical refund process is like, then they were quite right - you are delusional!

While I can clearly see why it's incredibly annoying, I hardly see why that means you should try and put other people off getting their money back.

JezR

Shouldn't be long before the underground accepts payment by contactless card as the buses already do meaning many occasional users won't need to bother at all with Oyster.

mileslondoner

I also share the view that TfL makes it extremely difficult and close to impossible to get a refund on your old oyster cards.

My experience was:

1) I approached the member of staff in the ticket hall but he told me that he is not ticket sales trained so cannot help me to get my deposit back.
2) I returned in the evening and a staff in the ticket office told me simply to call the number at the back of the card or to go to Kings Cross or Liverpool Street as they can process refunds there.
3) I tried a different station and the lady in the ticket office explained that I can only get a refund if I bring my passport/driving licence and a copy of my tenancy agreement. I explained that I do not have a tenancy agreement and the advice was to call oyster helpline again.
4) I called the helpline and after a lot of voice recognition problems I got to talk to the gentleman who said that the easiest and quickest way to get my deposit back is to go back to the station.
5) I gave up for some time but then had another oyster to give back as my sister left it with me. So again, I was asked if it was registered to which I replied I did not know and the staff made me feel like I was a fraudster or a pick pocket trying to steal a 5 pound deposit. In the end I was told that I could not get back the deposit but I can get back whatever has been left on pay as you go but the refund can only be processed to the debit card that had been used to top up.

I think the staff in general do not want/like to deal with oyster refunds and not because they are unhelpful or want to improve TfL's cash flow but because they have an easy option of saying - go to a ticket machine if you want to top up or call oyster helpline for anything else.

Believe me if it was so easy and straightforward to get money back from TfL we would not need to discuss this problem here as everyone would simply return the oyster to the ticket office and get their money.

If you need to find an open ticket office, bring some supporting documents, remember passwords, have the same debit/credit card you used to top up then it is just structurally customer unfriendly.

Voyager2002

Another issue: Martin's blog says that refunds are made by the original payment method. I paid my deposit with a credit card that no longer exists: I suspect that many people are in this position.

armyknife

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Another issue: Martin's blog says that refunds are made by the original payment method. I paid my deposit with a credit card that no longer exists: I suspect that many people are in this position.

I'd suggest people be cautious about how they get a refund, two/three years ago I 'cashed-in' my oyster card to get back the original deposit, as I was no longer using it.

Because I'd got it on-line, I had to fill in a form and post it off to them, as noted they wanted to refund by the original method.
What happened next, made me seriously doubt their internal security methods/trustworthiness, as within a few days several fraudulent transactions had been charged to my credit card. First time ever in a dozen years of extensive on-line use and what's more the items charged were expensive train tickets, hmm.

Maybe their internal security is poor enough that anyone dealing with the transactions can see all of the details, enabling new fraudulent ones to be made?

JezR

It used to be the case that if you had filled up the Oyster from multiple methods, ie cash + card(s) that it couldn't be refunded in a station but only at the main centre. Not clear whether this is still the case but they only refer to one payment method.

Ultimately the problems is that the value is carried on the card rather than centrally, which is why they need it to be returned.

Former_MSE_Helen

Hi Voyager2002, we've now added the following info into the news story to answer your question.

The initial method used to pay for the card will be the same method used to refund both the credit and deposit. If the payment method you originally used was a debit or credit card that's since expired, you can ask for the refund to be transferred to a nominated bank account or to receive it via cheque. If you haven't registered your card, you'll need to show some form of ID in order to get the refund. You can't get a refund on behalf of someone else.