Oyster card woes

neilio

I have a PAYG Oyster card with auto top-up enabled and loaded with a travelcard. I was travelling on PAYG but recently moved and now have a travelcard, so intended to cancel the auto top-up. The funds had just dipped below the threshold that would trigger the auto top-up of £40.
At the weekend, I cancelled the auto top-up and selected my nominated station to touch in at to activate the cancellation. I touched in at said station on Monday.
TFL has no record of me requesting to cancel the auto top-up.
They have credited £40 funds to my Oyster card.
The credit card on file had expired and they are prompting me to contact them to make the £40 payment, so I called them to cancel the £40 credit completely.
They cannot remove the £40. I have to pay it first, in order for them to credit it back, but the only way they can credit it back would be if they cancel the entire Oyster card which means refunding me any funds on the PAYG and refunding the pre-loaded travelcard.
If they cancel the entire Oyster card, then I have to pay £5 deposit for a new Oyster card. I would get the £5 deposit on the original Oyster card back as part of the refund.
Very complicated for something that should be very simple. Apparently they cannot just wipe off £40 of credit from an Oyster card.
When I phoned, I told them it was ridiculously complicated. Of course, they disagreed with me.

I think I’ll just pay the £40.

jon81uk

Sounds simple to me, when you touched it downloaded the £40 of credit to the card.
Unfortunately the request to cancel the auto-top-up didn't happen (possibly as you were already below the threshold), You also wouldn't nominate a station to cancel, only to add credit.
As the credit is on your Oyster card, but didn't debit from your bank card you owe TfL £40. They can refund the Osyter card funds, but you still owe the £40 from the expired credit card.

Think of it as three buckets. The credit moved from TfL to your personal Oyster card, but the money didn't go from your bank to TfL, you need to rectify that first before anything else can happen. If you don't rectify the expired bank card then they might even pass it on to the bailiffs.

neilio

My expired credit card issuer, or rather my existing credit card issuer who has since supplied me with a new credit card, did not process the payment nor request that I fulfill any £40 "debt" to them. All TFL needed to do was take back the £40 funds from the Oyster card and put back into its own account.

In the end what I had to do was make a new payment to TFL to fulfill my debt to them, for PAYG funds I no longer need in my Oyster card! Nonsense.

jon81uk

neilio wrote: »

My expired credit card issuer, or rather my existing credit card issuer who has since supplied me with a new credit card, did not process the payment nor request that I fulfill any £40 "debt" to them. All TFL needed to do was take back the £40 funds from the Oyster card and put back into its own account.

In the end what I had to do was make a new payment to TFL to fulfill my debt to them, for PAYG funds I no longer need in my Oyster card! Nonsense.

Thats what I mean, there is no mechanism to pull the £40 back off your card. You can only add when tapping in at a station. Therefore as the money is sat on your Oyster Card, but hasn't been debited from the bank, you owe TfL the money and they are asking you for it. There is no debt with your credit card company as they don't even know the transaction exists, the debt is with TfL as you didn't have an up to date card with them.
The only way to get money off the card is to have the whole card refunded.

neilio

Yeah. I get it. But it still makes no sense to me, the customer. Why can't TFL have a facility where they reverse the crediting of monies to Oyster cards. That's the bit that makes no sense to me.

As it stands, I have a Zones 1-6 season ticket on my Oyster with about £50 PAYG credit which I'll never use (unless I venture out into one of the special fares covered by Oyster which is probably never).

I bought a new Oyster card last week to see if I could transfer the season ticket onto from the old card, allowing me to cancel the card containing the PAYG credit and get my money back. But, no, you can only transfer all products over. So, I had TFL cancel the new Oyster card and refund me the £10 I paid.

And this is where it becomes farcical because I paid the £10 on my credit card but TFL would only refund in cash, transferred into my bank account. So, I think I've just discovered a genius way of taking cash off a credit card, whilst earning miles and other rewards, interest free! Simply buy an Oyster card plus PAYG credit using a credit card, then have TFL cancel card and refund all monies in cash!

£50 does not break the bank for me. It's the principle I'm annoyed at. Looks like the only way around this is to get a new Oyster card next year for my new season ticket when the time comes to renew, then cancel the old Oyster card to get the cash back.

jon81uk

neilio wrote: »

Yeah. I get it. But it still makes no sense to me, the customer. Why can't TFL have a facility where they reverse the crediting of monies to Oyster cards. That's the bit that makes no sense to me.

Oyster is a 13 year old system and for whatever reason auto-top-up was made as a one way system, as soon as it goes below the threshold you set, it adds more credit with no way to remove the credit at the ticket barriers.
The only way to remove credit is via refund at a ticket machine (under £10) or by phone.

With hindsight if you have a z1-6 travelcard you should have not enabled auto-top-up, or should have disabled it as soon as you bought the travelcard. With a travel card there is absolutely no benefit to using auto-top-up. Better off to add as you need it.

When you travelcard expires, buy the new travelcard on a new Oystercard and then get the whole old card refunded.

neilio

jon81uk wrote: »

Oyster is a 13 year old system and for whatever reason auto-top-up was made as a one way system, as soon as it goes below the threshold you set, it adds more credit with no way to remove the credit at the ticket barriers.
The only way to remove credit is via refund at a ticket machine (under £10) or by phone.

Time to update it, then.

jon81uk wrote: »

With hindsight if you have a z1-6 travelcard you should have not enabled auto-top-up, or should have disabled it as soon as you bought the travelcard.

As explained in my original post, I did attempt to cancel the auto-top-up, but it didn't cancel! When I did buy the season ticket, I did disable the auto-top-up.

jon81uk wrote: »

With a travel card there is absolutely no benefit to using auto-top-up. Better off to add as you need it.

Yep. I know that. That's why I wanted rid of auto-top-up because I knew I was to buy a season ticket and not require PAYG anymore.

jon81uk wrote: »

When you travelcard expires, buy the new travelcard on a new Oystercard and then get the whole old card refunded.

Yep. That's what I said I'll do.

jon81uk

As explained in my original post, I did attempt to cancel the auto-top-up, but it didn't cancel! When I did buy the season ticket, I did disable the auto-top-up.

But you said

The funds had just dipped below the threshold that would trigger the auto top-up of £40.

Therefore if you were below the threashold it was probably too late to try and cancel.

neilio

jon81uk wrote: »

Therefore if you were below the threashold it was probably too late to try and cancel.

Obviously I didn't know it was too late to try and cancel.

t0rt0ise

neilio wrote: »

And this is where it becomes farcical because I paid the £10 on my credit card but TFL would only refund in cash, transferred into my bank account. So, I think I've just discovered a genius way of taking cash off a credit card, whilst earning miles and other rewards, interest free! Simply buy an Oyster card plus PAYG credit using a credit card, then have TFL cancel card and refund all monies in cash!

Credit cards thieves already worked this one out which is why you can't get a refund in the first 48 hours of having the oyster card.