London Underground - Oyster Card?

[Disaster]

Hi edugeekers,

 

I'm off to London soon for 3 days and need to something about travelling the underground. Is using a contactless debit card as cheap as getting an oyster card?

 

Many thanks!

[elsiegee40]

It costs the same on a contactless card as on an Oyster. Don't bother with Oyster unless you already have one. I use my contactless card all the time

[JoeBloggs]

My second time ago trip when I went to London we got Oyster Cards - there was a £5 deposit.

 

Although my girlfriend didn't swipe out properly at a station (not sure how as it opened the gate for her) and ended up charging her £10 so the card was at -£7.50 or something so she just threw the card away at a loss of £5 instead of the £7.50.

 

If that had been her debit card it could of taken it from there, and potentially been a larger amount?

 

Last time we just used our debit cards though and made double sure we swiped out of each station properly.

[Disaster]

Thanks, that's what I thought, but the TFL website isn't especially clear on that. Debit card it is!

[sippo]

There's a link on the home page.

 

https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/

[FN-GM]

You could also use Apply Pay if you wish.

[Davit2005]

I use an Oyster card, you can just set it to autotop. I know you can use credit/debit cards but I prefer keeping seperate so I can just leave the Oyster card seperate.

[dry]

Yeah, they could make it a bit clearer. If you fail to tap in/out then you'll incur the maximum fare for that time/place: https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/maximum-fares

 

95% of the people infront of you in the station (unless it's a particularly touristy station) will be using Oyster or contactless payment so if you aren't a Londoner it's easy to be intimidated by what everyone else is doing and this is when you're likely to forget to tap out. You don't need to tap out when leaving a bus, just tap in when you board.

[sted]

You could also use Apply Pay if you wish.

 

just don't let your battery go flat

 

also with debit cards if you have more than one contactless it might be worth separating them so you don't just plonk wallet on reader and it reads the wrong one

[elsiegee40]

It costs the same on a contactless card as on an Oyster. Don't bother with Oyster unless you already have one. I use my contactless card all the time

 

I should add that it's worth setting up an account on the TfL website IN ADVANCE and registering your card on it. You can then see exactly what has been charged to your card. Registration after using it doesn't work.

 

If you have more than one contactless card, make sure you always use the same card otherwise you won't benefit from multi trip discounts.

 

Remembering to tap in and out is only usually a problem on the DLR and outer zone stations. You go through barriers on the rest. The exception being at big events. For example, if you go to a football match the barriers will be open near the stadium and you have to tap out/in while the paper ticket holders walk through.

Edited February 2, 2016 by elsiegee40

[CAM]

Link your debit card to an account on the TFL site and you can challenge one transaction per month if you believe you have been wrongly charged maximum cash fare. It also shows a breakdown of your journey costs.

 

Points to remember:

 

- Card clash is caused by multiple contactless cards in one wallet and can cause you to be charged maximum cash fare.

- Allow the gates for the person in front to close before tapping in and wait for the single beep to be sure it has correctly registered. Screw the person behind, they can wait that extra second.

- If you have heavy luggage, politely decline the staff member using his card to tap you through. This was a problem early in National Rail's adoption of Oyster and they were still used to customers with paper tickets, hopefully less of a problem now. This got me charged double max fare on the first day of operation even though I tapped my card.

- Beware of stations with no gates. You must tap in and out on the nearby readers. Custom House is a great example, it's a long walk from the platform to the ticket machines where the readers are located.

- Use the correct reader where there are gates but they are left open, don't tap in on the exit side and vice versa.

- Don't be tempted to just walk through open gates without tapping.

- National Rail fares (Southern, Thameslink, etc) vary depending on where you travel within the London zones. They do not follow the standard fare model displayed on the TFL site. Use National Rail Enquiries - Official source for UK train times and timetables to determine how much your fare will cost.

- Watford Junction, Redhill to Gatwick and Chafford Hundred can be reached outside the travel zones using Oyster but again, they do not follow the standard fare model.

[Disaster]

Good work you lot.

I used to go to London quite a lot and have an oyster card somewhere (not likely to find it again). I'll deffo register my debit card!

[Nixon77]

Use debit card, it just works.