General News

New helpdesk number

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The Oyster helpline can now be reached via the TfL main number which is 0343 222 1234.  This is treated like 01 and 02 numbers for inclusion into free minutes on mobile and landline plans.  The Oyster helpline is under option 1 on the initial menu, along with ticketing and contactless payment.  Remember that Oyster … Read more

New “Low Balance” display

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Since the beginning of July there has been a slight change to the display when you touch in or out.  I’m still trying to get full details, but this is what I’ve worked out so far.  Whenever you touch in and your balance is below the maximum journey charge the system will display a “Low Balance” warning message.  This also happens on touch out.  There appears to be account taken of whether you have already capped or are close to doing so, certainly on touch in but possibly also on touch out.  If you have auto top-up enabled then it is unlikely that you will see this warning as the top-up will happen before it decides whether to display it.

This isn’t all good news though.

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Happy 10th Birthday Oyster

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Yesterday (30th June) saw the 10th anniversary of the introduction of London’s Oyster card. Originally it was a medium to store travelcards and bus passes with pay-as-you-go introduced in 2004 but only valid at Underground and DLR stations (plus a limited number of inter-available National Rail stations where routes run in parallel with Underground lines).  … Read more

Weekly Journey History not run

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Thanks to regular visitor Phil who spotted that the normal Monday distribution of weekly journey statements had not run this week.  According to the helpdesk there was a problem which meant Oyster online was unavailable for some of Monday.  It appears that this included the time when the statements are generated. Hopefully they will now … Read more

Spam protection measures

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With a heavy heart I have decided to add a captcha test on registrations and comments on this site.  The number of spam comments received each day had risen dramatically over the last few months although they were being properly detected by the Akismet plugin.  Unfortunately the last few days has seen a meteoric rise … Read more

New address for single fare finder

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TfL have made a bit of a boob when switching between the 2012 and 2013 fares.  The old link with “current” in the address still points at the 2012 fares.  What’s worse is that if you search for “single fares” on the TfL home page, the first result takes you to the 2012 fare finder.  … Read more

TfL admit ELLX overcharging

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I’ve been informed by a site visitor that changes are on the way for people who travel between the Morden end of the Northern line and stations east of Clapham High Street on the Overground extension.  He enlisted the help of his London Assembly member and received the following response:

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Pink Route Validator Change

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On Sunday I travelled round the new overground orbital route starting with the newest link from Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction.  I also tried out exceeding the normal one zone journey time but not the extended time allowed near Central London.  Somewhat disappointingly this worked, meaning that the issues some people have had with Whitechapel … Read more