Post by andypurk on Aug 3, 2009 20:39:13 GMT
Sorry, a bit of a long post / rant.
I've just had a great deal of hassle with getting a failed Oystercard changed.
First the details: An Oystercard with a zone 1-5 Annual Travelcard and £5.10 of pre-pay with auto-topup enabled. The travelcard on the Oyster was purchased in March this year from Harrow & Wealdstone. In hindsight, it started to show signs of failure a few weeks ago (not always opening the gates when touched quickly) before finally giving up the ghost yesterday or today (not being read at all by any gates or the ticket office machines)
The following attempts were made to get the card replaced.
1) Harrow & Wealdstone last week, where I was told that the Ex National Rail ticket offices can't replace failing/failed Oystercards. I thought this was fair enough as although Harrow and Wealdstone is now run by London Underground, the ticket issuing equipment is still based on the old Silverlink kit. Harrow-on-the-Hill was suggested instead.
2) Harrow-on-the-Hill. Refused point-blank to replace the card, as the travelcard bit was issued at a National Rail station.
3) Phoned the Oyster helpline to check. Was told that Harrow-on-the-Hill should not have had any problem. A travelcard on Oyster can be replaced wherever it was issued. Was told to get booking office staff to ring the Oyster hotline if there was a query.
As I didn't have the chance to get to Harrow-on-the-Hill again last week:
4) Euston LU station this morning. Was told no problem, given the failed Oyster form. Filled in the form, handed it over and was then told that I had to fill in another form to register the replacement card, despite the information all being on the 'failed' form and already in the database. As time was pressing on (queueing and form filling had taken 20 mins), declined to fill in yet another form and rushed to work, taking forms with me.
5) Phoned Oyster helpline again to query the need for the second 'registration' form and was told that the new card would automatically be registered during the replacement process. Also asked if the replacement could be done by the phone, but was told that this could only be done for lost cards, not failed ones.
6) Holborn station this evening. Handed over just the failed card form plus Oystercard. Other than querying the fact that the Gold record card had been printed on the wrong sort of blank (i.e. a normal paper Annual Goldcard blank rather than an gold Oyster recordcard blank), everything was done in about five minutes with no hassle.
So my questions are:
Why could Holborn deal with the replacement process so quickly and efficiently, whilst Euston seemed to want extra, unnecessary forms filled in and Harrow-on-the-Hill didn't even want to it?
Does anyone know how often cards fail?
There seemed to be no problem with getting hold of the failed card form, just with the actual replacement process itself. Do station staff get any refresher training (on top of their original training) on what to do in my sort of situation?
I've just had a great deal of hassle with getting a failed Oystercard changed.
First the details: An Oystercard with a zone 1-5 Annual Travelcard and £5.10 of pre-pay with auto-topup enabled. The travelcard on the Oyster was purchased in March this year from Harrow & Wealdstone. In hindsight, it started to show signs of failure a few weeks ago (not always opening the gates when touched quickly) before finally giving up the ghost yesterday or today (not being read at all by any gates or the ticket office machines)
The following attempts were made to get the card replaced.
1) Harrow & Wealdstone last week, where I was told that the Ex National Rail ticket offices can't replace failing/failed Oystercards. I thought this was fair enough as although Harrow and Wealdstone is now run by London Underground, the ticket issuing equipment is still based on the old Silverlink kit. Harrow-on-the-Hill was suggested instead.
2) Harrow-on-the-Hill. Refused point-blank to replace the card, as the travelcard bit was issued at a National Rail station.
3) Phoned the Oyster helpline to check. Was told that Harrow-on-the-Hill should not have had any problem. A travelcard on Oyster can be replaced wherever it was issued. Was told to get booking office staff to ring the Oyster hotline if there was a query.
As I didn't have the chance to get to Harrow-on-the-Hill again last week:
4) Euston LU station this morning. Was told no problem, given the failed Oyster form. Filled in the form, handed it over and was then told that I had to fill in another form to register the replacement card, despite the information all being on the 'failed' form and already in the database. As time was pressing on (queueing and form filling had taken 20 mins), declined to fill in yet another form and rushed to work, taking forms with me.
5) Phoned Oyster helpline again to query the need for the second 'registration' form and was told that the new card would automatically be registered during the replacement process. Also asked if the replacement could be done by the phone, but was told that this could only be done for lost cards, not failed ones.
6) Holborn station this evening. Handed over just the failed card form plus Oystercard. Other than querying the fact that the Gold record card had been printed on the wrong sort of blank (i.e. a normal paper Annual Goldcard blank rather than an gold Oyster recordcard blank), everything was done in about five minutes with no hassle.
So my questions are:
Why could Holborn deal with the replacement process so quickly and efficiently, whilst Euston seemed to want extra, unnecessary forms filled in and Harrow-on-the-Hill didn't even want to it?
Does anyone know how often cards fail?
There seemed to be no problem with getting hold of the failed card form, just with the actual replacement process itself. Do station staff get any refresher training (on top of their original training) on what to do in my sort of situation?
