Oyster. WTF?

[Jonny69]

I've been using an Oyster card regularly for just over a year and a half now. Because I'm technically a student I can load on my travelcard for the week or month and get a discount. All great. Except there's nothing to tell you when the travelcard runs out (unless you've kept the receipt or you check it at a ticket machine) because the message on the gate is less than helpful. This resulted in a few expensive on-peak journeys at first.

So I get a zones 2-6 Travelcard because I live in zone 4 and travel to zone 6 for work. Sometimes I travel into London, so I tap my card in and it lets me out at zone 1 charging me £2.60 from the PAYG balance. Any zone 1 travel on top of that is charged on the PAYG balance but doesn't appear to cap at a travelcard rate any more, so I have to plan my journeys if I think it's going to hammer my PAYG balance.

Yesterday I tapped in as normal, arrived at Charing Cross and the card wouldn't let me out. According to the staff, with a 2-6 Travelcard loaded on I should not be travelling into zone 1, the PAYG balance is not there to cover the difference and I was supposed to enable Oyster Extension each time if I wanted to travel to zone 1. Then the guy started to write me out a £20 fine.

Just to put this into perspective: Oyster Extension is something that is free, it's like a switch that you have to flick to give you permission to travel into London. But that doesn't explain why I've been able to use it for over a year and a half?

Who dreams these schemes up? I'm not one for 'money making' conspiracy theories, but for Christ sake there are so many things with Oyster that can catch you out. I've lost count of the times I've accidentally forgotten to tap out when using PAYG because there's no gate (normally don't have to with the travelcard) and it's fined me. I'd then have to go into London to get it rectified which would cost me more and cost me time. What a damn stupid system.

/rant over