Re. requirement to 'renew' Oyster 60+ card?

katejo

martindow said:

The cheap Friday travel is not very definite at the moment as rail companies also need to agree as travel within London is not exclusively on TfL services, so will be well into the future and may not happen at all.

You already get a better deal than the rest of the country as your card allows free tube as well as bus travel.  It would be good if my national bus pass was valid on local rail services and the tube when I come to London ...

Yes I am aware of the difference. If you have a senior railcard, you can ask for this to be loaded onto an Oystercard account. That  can then give you modest reductions on off peak journeys on the tube and Network South East.

Lucy_Lockett

Just to pick up again on the renewal situation, I commuted on my card and have had to renew it every year. My husband who only used it occasionally never had to renew it so it must be based on usage.
On another point because my husband never renewed his card when he got to 66 and was entitled to the Freedom Pass he never got automatically transferred across to the local councils system as we had not ticked the appropriate box on his age 60 application form but because i had been renewing each year and had ticked the box we thought he had. As a result it was problematic and caused us travel problems.
From memory I think the government made TFL withdraw the pre 9am travel in response to the huge bailout that TFL got during lockdown. Which brings me to my final beware point. When we arrived at Gatwick 3am and travelled into London (the start of the journey on a pre paid ticket) we thought we could get out of the LU station on our cards but it was 6am and therefore pre 9am!

katejo

Lucy_Lockett said:

Just to pick up again on the renewal situation, I commuted on my card and have had to renew it every year. My husband who only used it occasionally never had to renew it so it must be based on usage.
On another point because my husband never renewed his card when he got to 66 and was entitled to the Freedom Pass he never got automatically transferred across to the local councils system as we had not ticked the appropriate box on his age 60 application form but because i had been renewing each year and had ticked the box we thought he had. As a result it was problematic and caused us travel problems.
From memory I think the government made TFL withdraw the pre 9am travel in response to the huge bailout that TFL got during lockdown. Which brings me to my final beware point. When we arrived at Gatwick 3am and travelled into London (the start of the journey on a pre paid ticket) we thought we could get out of the LU station on our cards but it was 6am and therefore pre 9am!

The requirement to renew every year only applied to people who reached 60 in 2019 or later. I know of one person who has just reached 66 and got the Freedom Pass but has never had to pay a renewal fee on the 60+