Visitor Oyster Cards - how do they work?

kjrann

Hi - can anyone explain to me how these work?

I bought two Visitor Oyster Cards pre-loaded with £10 credit each for a recent day trip to London. The TfL website suggests that £15 credit should be enough to start if visiting London for two days, so I believed £10 each was sufficient for our trip as believed there is a capping system in place and was deemed better value than a one day travelcard? During our day trip we both had to top-up our Visitor Oyster Cards as the credit had run out?

During our day trip we travelled by tube to:

Waterloo to Victoria

Victoria to Kensington High Street

Kensington High Street to Oxford Street

Oxford Street back to Waterloo

I would just like to understand how it works so we have sufficient credit in the future before setting off. Did we do too many trips, if we entered a different travel zone does this make a difference? I emailed TfL about 3 weeks ago to ask the same but still waiting a response - figured they may be some knowledgeable folk on here that could help.

Thanks in advance!

flaneurs_lobster

The Visitor Oyster Card (and the ordinary Oyster) costs £7, did you add £10 credit in addition to this cost?

Your journeys should have capped at £8.90 for the day, you were never travelling outside Zone 1.

An aside, any reason not to use a contactless debit/credit card - same daily cap, no upfront cost.

la531983

Echo the above. Any debit or credit card these days will work fine, just tell them to use one that doesnt charge currency fees and be consistent and use the same one thought the day: if they start off by using the physical card, dont switch to using the contactless on the phone either (and vice versa)

oldernonethewiser

Cost for Oyster or visitor Oyster is £10.50

daveyjp

If the card can be registered set up an account and your journey history and costs can be viewed.

Agree that contactless is easier if no other discounts such as child fares or railcard discounts are required.

maman

If you want to continue with your Oyster card, you can read the balance and top up at any railway station.

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81987938#Comment_81987938

Must have found an old site, last Oyster I bought was a fiver, and it was refundable.

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81987940#Comment_81987940

A Visitor Oyster (the one you can't buy in London) cannot be registered.

Good pace to ask about this stuff is r/uktravel, knowledgeable people over there.

kjrann

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81987920#Comment_81987920

Thank you - the last time I used a debit card in London, it was cloned so I thought a visitor oyster card might be a safer option and they apparently can get you discounts at various tourist attractions (that we didn't use this time 😆). As I don't live anywhere near London, I bought it in advance online and paid for £10 credit for each one. If they are capped at £8.90 a day I've no idea where we went wrong to run out of credit on only 4 tube journeys (we had to tap in/tap out at every one too)?

As I say, I've contacted TfL but had no reply yet as we topped up another £10 on each card and only have £4.00 credit (I think). I'm going to London again in a few weeks so wanted to understand it better so not to be in the same position again but may be I'm better off using a debit card.

kjrann

Oyster Visitor Cards at £10.50 plus any additional credit you pay for

flaneurs_lobster

Definitely sounds like an error, especially since 2 cards were affected. Be interested to hear what TfL (eventually) say.

These days I'm only a visitor to London too. I use Oyster but only because I can add my Railcard details to it to obtain travel discount - were it not for this advantage then I would be using a contactless card.

If you are worried about using your 'main' debit card then there are accounts like Revolut, Monzo, Chase etc that are easy to open and you can use just as a rechargeable cash card.

Any idea how/where your card was cloned, assume it wasn't by using TfL barriers?