to think that if TFL is going to charge such exorbitant prices

[Clossaintjacques]

for people without oyster cards then they should have the station ticket office open to allow people to actually buy an oyster card.

So, the situation is, if you travel with an oyster you pay £1.80 for a zone 1 one way ticket and without an oyster it's £4.00...yes that's £4.00 for what could be a one stop journey of a few hundred meters. That is more expensive than a black cab.

Now, I understand that the price reduces if you get an oyster but the new policy is to have unmanned stations for much of the day. AIBU to that if they are pushing everyone to travel with oysters there should be somewhere around to buy them from during all daytime hours?

Hunty, sorry, I understand now, you meant a street map.

Best buy an "A to Z of London" then. It is quite big, because London is. The bigger hardback one with colours is easier if your sight is poor, but the little paperback is cheaper and easier to carry in a coat pocket.

YABU - loads of places sell oyster cards, including unmanned ticket booths (where I got mine) at many stations, and most countries I've been to which have oyster-like cards charge you a fair whack more for using singles rather than the card.

As other people have said, you can buy Oysters elsewhere and definitely in all major stations into London. Anyone can have them- they're little check-in cards with a magnetic identifier, like most security passes for big workplaces. There are a few stations where you can also buy an Oyster from a dispensing machine (Euston Square is one) which is quite useful. To be honest I am slightly surprised that it's possible to get to a tube station which has a closed ticket office without first being on the tube/having an Oyster but do understand TfL continually mess about with things in an annoying way.

The prices do totally take the piss and I am getting increasingly wound up that neither the station near my work nor the station where I live apparently count as TfL stations (despite both having two tube lines running through them ) so that whenever I need to sort an Oyster problem I have to first get on transport to find somewhere that will deal with it, plus the increase to a £5 deposit for an Oyster is riling me mightily. However, given the high frequency of services and (despite works and delays etc) genuine non-shitness in comparison to the rest of the country (where frankly you're lucky if a bus runs after 6pm and a monthly bus pass in my parents' village used to cost £72 even for a young person) it does sort of work out, albeit only in a competition as to who has the crappest public transport.

Word of advice: save your Oyster Card number. Anyone else with a travel card who assumed the form they filled in at the station is enough to recover it with: it's not. Ended up in a 'shouting and tears' situation over my monthly pass a few weeks ago after some bastard nicked it and discovered they won't let me have it back unless I've got the number...

"desperately
So if you don't know where you are going by foot, have very heavy shopping or it's dark and you feel safer going one or two stops by tube rather than walking then you 'deserve to pay £4 for being lazy."

Er... what do you think we do outside of London where there isn't a reliable public transport system?

We walk. In the dark. With heavy shopping.

I suppose I could get a London A-Z - but it's easier to use the transport that is there. I can read a tube map - I'm not totally useless! It's more that every time I have tried to walk in London, I have got myself lost! Getting to Kings Hospital from Liverpool St was a great one. And for some reason, the tickets I seem to get given at my train station are accepted on the tube, but the last London bus I got on refused the ticket and made me pay, even though it was meant to be able to be used on Train, Tube AND Bus.

HuntyCat "I suppose I could get a London A-Z...every time I have tried to walk in London, I have got myself lost!"

I live in London and I loathe Oyster. Pay a fortune or carry around a piece of plastic that logs all your movements and, if it's registered, can be monitored remotely. It's quite a hefty surveillance tool.

I didn't think unmanned stations were allowed to have closed gates.

why? To be fair,as I only go to London about once a year, it hadn't occured to me to BUY A MAP! . And I am slightly, erm, directionally challenged. Couldn't find my way out of a paper bag.

Ffs it's London not Beirut...pretty easy to manage the ticketing system with a basic command of english and a debit card! How do you survive foreign holidays?!

And for you walkers in the dark...that's cos you have no choice. We do. We get the tube or bus. Big deal.