[Gllug] Oyster cards vulnerable?

[Christopher Currie]

On Friday 25 Jan 2008, 23:35:03 +0000 "Daniel P. Berrange" <dan at berrange.com> 
wrote:
> > There has to be some reason why paper tickets suddenly became so
> > expensive. 

Not all did (see below).

> > It's not because paper itself is more expensive than the 
> > fancy cards.  It can't be because of the cost of hauling cash around
> > (people still pay for their Oyster top-ups using cash).
>
> They delibrately made the paper tickets more expensive to "force"
> people to switch to Oyster so they could then track you ;-) Clearly
> the solution to this is to get together with a group of friends, all
> buy month long oyster tickets & then randomly use a different one
> each day. At least it'll screw up their profiling :-)

Paper monthly travelcards are the same price as monthly Oyster travelcards and 
are valid on more services (National Rail within the zones, as well as London 
Overground, Tube, bus etc.) You need a valid Photocard to buy or use them.

The difficulty is to know where to get them. You can get them at manned 
National Rail stations, including those that have a ticket office separate 
from any Underground ticket office on the same station (example: Finsbury 
Park). At Euston you can get them from the local (used-to-be-Silverlink but's 
now something else) ticket office as well as the main ticket office for local 
tickets at concourse level. Waterloo or Liv St you have to use the main 
ticket office.

If the station has a combined Underground/National Rail ticket office (e.g. 
Tottenham Hale), they won't sell you a paper travelcard.

You don't have to buy the ticket from the same company or station each month, 
although if you buy  from a company you haven't bought from before, you have 
to fill in a form (this is a bit less bureaucratic than the forms used for 
the pre-Oyster travelcards, where if you bought at a different *station* from 
the previous month (even on the same line) you had to fill in another form.

I think they have now stopped selling weekly paper travelcards at these 
outlets, but I may be wrong.

Christopher
-- 
Christopher Currie	ccurrie at usa.net
"I'm thinking of writing a book on Followership Skills. But I'd hate to be the 
first."

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