[Gllug] Oyster cards vulnerable?

[Nix]

On 30 Jan 2008, Ivan Virgili said:

> Nix wrote:
>> Well, sort of, only exactly the same benefit was available with season
>> tickets. The advantage here is that people can stick huge amounts onto
>> the card (if they're idiots, and some people are!)
>
> I was talking about Pay-as-you-go Oyster cards.

Likewise.

> I am sure all that "business" makes a huge difference.
> I agree with you and for season tickets nothing has changed, unless you 
> put in your card more than you need.

You misunderstand. My point is that both season tickets and Oyster cards
(and, for that matter, supermarket loyalty cards, book tokens, gift
vouchers, and much else) act to convert real currency into a sort of
limited local currency that can only be used for specific limited
purposes. In all cases I'm aware of, the entity issuing the
cards/tickets gets to keep the cash before (often long before) the
services are delivered, keeping any interest on it as well, and the
token is not convertible back into cash[1] so they also get to
maintain a nice predictable cashflow.

(The downside is that if they then don't provide those services, they're
in real trouble.)


[1] actually that would be illegal, as I understand it, so generally
    they're convertible back at an insane rate: Oyster cards are
    technically `worth' something like 0.00001p.

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