National Rail passengers who hold period travelcards on their Oyster cards can now use Oyster Pay As You Go to travel outside the zones(s) which are covered by their travelcards – as long as they first obtain an Oyster Extension Permit.
A reader of this blog, Sharon, comments:
The Extension Permit system is an utter shambles – so much so, that it genuinely renders the system unusable for me and I expect very many others. I live in SW London, in Zone 3, and travel to work in Zone 2. However, on some occasions I travel into town for this and that and looked forward to being able to use the PAYG credit to do complete the journey into Waterloo.
But it doesn’t work. Like many suburban stations, my local one is unmanned. No ticket office means I can’t buy an extension permit without first walking ten minutes in the opposite direction to the nearest Ticket Stop newsagent. It’s the *exact opposite* of convenient, really.
I should say. The TfL website says:
You can put a Travelcard season ticket on your Oyster card. It will cover your National Rail journeys as well as other public transport.
If you want to travel beyond the zones covered by your Travelcard on National Rail services within London you must set an Oyster Extension Permit on your card before you travel. This means you will use pay as you go once you’ve gone outside the zone.
Oyster Extension Permits
* You can set your permit at any Tube or London Overground station ticket office or touchscreen ticket machine, Oyster Ticket Stops, some National Rail ticket offices or self-service ticket machines
* You only need to set an Oyster Extension Permit when you start a journey within the zones covered by your Travelcard and want to travel outside those zones on National Rail
* Only set your permit to your card just before you make your extension journey
* You must have at least £1.50 pay as you go balance on your Oyster card to set one
* A permit stays on your card until you touch out at the end of your journey
* When touching out, the permit will be cleared from your Oyster card and the fare for the extension journey will be deducted from your pay as you go balance
If you travel beyond the zones covered by your Travelcard without an Oyster Extension Permit you may be liable to a penalty fare or prosecution.
That doesn’t sound too bad, you can get an Oyster Extension Permit from National Rail ticket office or machines. However, a different page on the Tfl website tells us:
Please note: self service ticket machines with Oyster capability are not available at South West Trains stations.
Some SWT stations don’t have ticket offices and others that do have very limited opening hours. How can this new PAYG on National Rail be properly integrated when one of the participating Train Operating Companies has failed to upgrade their ticket machines?
EDIT: Read about diamond geezer’s OEP experiments.
Tags: 26 Comments
26 responses so far ↓
Yep, having examined the helpful poster at Chiswick on the first day it dawned on me that you’d be unable to use Oyster for out-of-zone travel (in either direction) if there’s no local ticket stop. If the southern TOCs are the poor relations, we SWT-ites are the poor relations of the poor relations. It’s possibly best to get a second Oyster, but you need to remember to use the right one in the right place.
I would expect nothing less of SWT. I wonder if they will use it as a reason to say “well, our ticket offices are never used any more, let’s close them”?
Interesting side fact, until the London Overground came along and put in Oyster ticket machines at Clapham Junction, the newsagent in the shopping centre there was reportedly the biggest Oyster retailer in London. It wouldn’t surprise me if platform coffee shops all start getting Oyster equipment.
Looks like it is a similar problem with First Capital Connect not selling the OEP at stations either: http://www.lynnefeatherstone.org/2010/01/oyster-pay-as-you-go-finally-comes-to-alexandra-palace-station.htm
In many ways, the shambolic introduction of PAYG on National Rail has actually made life MORE difficult for SW Trains pasengers. Previously, travelcard holders beginning a journey at an unmanned station could, quite legally, jump on the train and pay the excess fare at the end (ie at the first available opportunity).
A pal tried this the other day and got a stern talking-to from the ticket inspector, who said she could have got an OEP.
This is technically true, but only by adding an additional 20 mins to the beginning of her journey walking to the newsagent and back.
Not to mention that the newsagent closes at 6.30. 1 on Sundays!
I strongly suspect the ticket inspector was talking out of his arse (as they often do) but evidently confusion abounds for both staff and passengers.
Frankly I’m astounded that Boris accepted such a dreadful fudge as the OEP system. Not only does it fail to facilitate the ‘turn up and go’ element that makes Oyster so useful, it actually makes passenger journeys more difficult.
I could see that the OEP would sort of work if it didn’t clear off your card after each journey. If an OEP stayed on unless you failed to touch out (so it was a sort of reserve of cash) it would at least allow you to hop on – hop off once you had got one.
A journey for me with a Z1-3 travelcard to Surbiton (Z6) for a meal with friends means I would have to buy an OEP at Vauxhall when I start, then another at Surbiton to get back. As I leave around 10:30-11 there will be no-where open to buy one at this time.
Does anyone know when the SWT franchise is up for renewal?
This all reminds me of when I first encountered the mire of London public transport – integrated it is not.
I discovered when I bought my zone 1-6 travelcard from a SWT station I was entitled to money back at renewal for ‘late trains’. (if you don’t know, they add up all the lost hours and days and refund them to season ticket holders).
However if you bought the same 1-6 travelcard at a LT station, paying exactly the same price – you are not entitled to the money back each year – at the time you were not entitled to any refund for late running tubes.
This was much to the annoyance of my colleague at the time who bought it from the tube station and did not get the 8 days refund I was given.
Needless to say, there is nothing to advertise this difference at either tube or rail station.
A lot of the time public transport is run to fool those who don’t know (like tourists) into paying over the odds for their travel.
Can someone tell me if I have this correct?
So if I live in Zone 1 and have a Zone 1 and 2 travel card on my oyster and wish to travel to Zone 6 on a National Rail train, I first need to get an OEP. This is easy enough for me to do as there is a nearby tube station.
BUT for the return journey I must first find a “ticket stop” in an area of town I’m not familiar with and get an OEP added to my card so I can use PAYG Oyster on the way home???
Tim: that’s precisely it, yes. It’s as if they’ve deliberately made the system so rubbish you have no practical choice but to buy a normal return ticket instead.
If you could pre-load multiple OEZs on the Oyster then the system
would be confusing and workable. The requirement thy users hold only one at a time, loaded just before travel, makes it useles too. Why anyone at TfL agreed to such a hash is beyond me.
I can only assume someone (Boris?) set an
arbitrary deadline by which a solution, any solution, no
matter how crap, was rolled out.
To clarify:
The requirement is to set an OEP for journeys starting within the zones of your Travelcard that extend beyond the zones on a National Rail train.
So:
Z1-2 on Oyster card:
Travelling from Zone 1 to Zone 6 (travelling beyond Zone 2 on National Rail) – OEP required
Travelling from Zone 6 to Zone 1 – OEP NOT required
Because:
the whole point of setting the OEP is that it then charges an entry fare when the Oyster card is used to enter a station within the Zones of any Travelcard loaded on the card.
It is the entry charge that the National Rail inspectors are really looking for if they scan your Oyster card outside the zones of your Travelcard
The OEP is simply an ‘on’ or ‘off’ setting on the Oyster card chip.
An ‘on’ setting means that an entry fare will be charged when the Oyster card is used to enter a station in a zone covered by any valid Travelcard loaded.
An ‘off’ setting means that no entry fare is deducted when the Oyster card is used to entry a station covered by the Tracelcard.
That is why ‘multiple’ OEPs cannot be obtained in advance.
Not saying I like it – just trying to explain
The OEP is simply an ‘on’ or ‘off’ setting on the Oyster card chip.
An ‘on’ setting means that an entry fare will be charged when the Oyster card is used to enter a station in a zone covered by any valid Travelcard loaded.
An ‘off’ setting means that no entry fare is deducted when the Oyster card is used to entry a station covered by the Tracelcard.
The OEP setting is changed to ‘off’ when the card is used to exit (or enter) at a station outside the zones of the Travelcard.
That is why ‘multiple’ OEPs cannot be obtained in advance.
Not saying I like it – just trying to explain
If it’s just a simple on/off setting, why not allow you to indicate when you buy your travelcard that you want it permanently set, so whenever you travel the entry fee is charged, and then refunded if you exit within your travelcard zones. You would presumably need to ensure you retain a PAYG balance on your card, but for those of us who mix use of travelcards and PAYG this wouldn’t be a big problem.
At least SWT are doing their bit to promote proper tickets for a proper railway, and to fight against TfL reducing the proper railway to an Underground style zonal Travelcard system. And good luck to them. My local TOC Southern has happily turned traitor and is actively promoting these new-fangled Oyster things.
Off topic, but have you seen this enjoyable if politically irrelevant piece of news:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241492/Boris-Johnsons-ex-wife-45-secret-marriage-Muslim-aged-23.html
Weirdly, even though Southeastern has recently upgraded some (all?) of its ticket machines to allow Oyster top-up and weekly travelcard purchases, there’s still no OEP option on the machine at my local station. Last I heard their ticket office couldn’t do *any* Oyster transactions, though I’ve not checked that since the ticket machine was upgraded. So, if I did want an OEP it looks like I’d also have to make a 10-min detour to the newsagent.
For me personally it’s an irrelevance; I’m stuck on paper tickets as I’m determined to continue getting my Gold Card discount!
Great! Now I can use PAYG on my local SWT services but I can’t top up my Oyster or get an OEP from either the ticket office (during its limited opening hours) or the machine *and* I can no longer buy an off-peak day return as they’ve been abolished.
A return from my local zone 5 station to Waterloo on a Saturday used to cost £5.30 – now the cheapest return costs £7.90. Plus, of course, a child off-peak travelcard is now £2 instead of £1.
I noticed that in the Waterloo Travel Centre they’ve stuck up a sign saying “We do not sell Oyster cards. We do not top up Oyster cards.” If you want to put PAYG on your Oyster and travel on national rail you have to go down into the Tube station to use their machine/ticket office and then come up again to the rail platforms. So much for integrated travel. It’s a joke.
The introduction of Oyster on national rail had the potential for many benifits for the TOCs. Less queuing for ticket windows and machines, Oyster tends not to get mangled like paper tickets, Oyster is faster getting through the barriers so reduces queuing again.
But they have kyboshed this with the insistance on OEP, when most of their ticket machines won’t allow you to buy one.
Interesting that in Diamond Geezer’s experiment the gate allowed exit and charged the right amount without an OEP.
As my only normal journey out of my zones will be in the evening peak where as the train is crushed full, the chance of being checked by a guard is remote. So I might experiment myself with not bothering.
Maybe at the first many things will become mass.
But once the after job is well done, these problems will be solved as we want.
But just maybe, not sure.
Helen,
My partner caught the bus to Putney yesterday and only had enough on her Oyster to get her there – which was OK because she was catching the train from Putney.
Filled with my confident words of “It’s OK, you can use your Oyster on the train these days – she set off – only to arrive at Putney station to be told they cannot top up Oyster cards there. Now remember this isn’t an OEP problem as Putney is in zone 3 – and unbelievably whilst the corner shop by my house can top up an Oyster – the transport centre of Putney (the station) cannot!
Now understandably there will be teething problems, but this is a fundamental question that should have been asked. It took so long to negotiate with SWT – what the hell were they negotiating????
It’s not hard, one of those little machines in the ticket office so at least the man behind the glass can top you up.
It seems to me that SWT didn’t like this idea and has been dragging it’s feet about it – and now we’re into the sort of petty and pointless situation where although TFL are publicising the ability to use the Oyster on the trains – SWT are making it as difficult as possible.
Is this Ken’s fault Boris? I mean the Oyster was his idea and the idea of it being universal was also his – so does that mean the (poor) implementation is also his fault?
Never mind, lets hope London doesn’t grind to a halt because you’ve got rid of all the bendy buses and replaced them with ‘more likely to slip’ double deckers – oh and I haven’t seen a grit truck in Wandsworth for days now!
I topped up my Oyster And got my extension to travel out of my zones on FCC today to be turfed off and had to make my journey by tube to find no trains are running north London. As I didn’t touch out of my zone 1-3 annual Oyster deducted all my journeys off my top up. Now I owe TfL £2.60. I Spoke to someone at Oyster and before I can request a refund I have to pay the balance to bring it to zero. How ridiculous. It’s a joke. Luckily at Southern stations you can get extensions from the ticket machines and also top up your Oyster.
It’s petty rubbish really!
Can someone please help me with this:
I commute from Streatham rail station (zone3) to Putney Bridge Tube Station (zone 2) and use a weekly zone2/3 pass on my Oyster. Since January, I have been getting charged £3 off of my PAYG for every journey I make from Streatham to Putney in the mornings. The staff at Putney told me they couldn’t help and I would need to email Oyster. Of course, I’ve yet to get a response. I never would have known this had I not blown through my PAYG credit and asked for a print out of the charges….
LISTEN: There is a very simple solution if only TOCs were willing to spend a few hundred at each station. All you need to activate OEP on/off is to use a oyster swipe point (green for example) located on every platform or entrance to station. Use if you intend to go out of travecard zones, swipe it.
Simples.
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This Oyster Extension Permit has not been over publicised where I travel. The first I became aware of this was last weekend when I noticed a poster mentioning the OEPs at Battersea Park Station. My travel card covers zones 2 to 4 and in the previous 6 months I’ve regularly travelled into central London and exited through the barriers at the likes of Cannon Street, London Bridge, Waterloo, Victoria and Charing Cross and not once has the barrier refused me, still helping itself to money’s on account. I do not see why the OEP is necessary anyway. Either the system can be set up to recognise the presence of a card and then automatically deduct the add-on or customers who travel outside their zones can either be set up with an OEP automatically that stays on the card indefinitely or pay a small annual fee.
It is rediculous system set for TFL. It does not work for me as I have montly Zone 1-4 travel card. I have my occasional job soon after finishing the first. I have to rush to get the next fast train which I keep missing as I am waiting in a que to set OEP for zone 5. I am very frustrated and anonyed by the situation which does not help me at all. Strangley most of the station staff does not understand that if I have money on my oester card why i ask for OEP. Then I have to argue eveytime that the exit station does not allow me to get out at the other end. Now I am informed that I can set it up myself instead of explaining to staff on a oester machine at stations. I just want to ask if someone could write the steps of setting up OEP on machines.
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