To think that they make it purposefully impossible to apply successfully for an over 60’s bus pass?

[GreekDogRescue]

I am over 60 and have been trying to apply for my over 60’s Oyster card for some time now.

I have my passport, my driving licence, utility bills, my NI number and inside leg measurement but the online form refuses to accept the photo of my passport. It also refuses to let accept my driving licence details.

instead of asking for your passport or driving licence number like any ‘normal’ form, it wants all the tiny letters and symbols at the bottom, and they have to be put into 5 special boxes.

it says I can download a form to take to a post office but gives no details of this mythological form.

I went to a post office but they said they stopped doing over 60’s applications ‘ages ago’.

I have paid my taxes all my life and am furious that this is being made so difficult. It is highly discriminatory as there will be many elderly people who just give up. None of my over 60 friends have managed to crack it either.

I would like to sue London Transport for age discrimination 🤬

PS. I did manage to submit my passport application online but this is MUCH harder

Not surprised you've had issues OP, I found TfL supposed customer services about as much use as a chocolate tea pot when I needed them a few years ago in my 20s. A particular highlight was the call centre staffer explaining that I had to final tap out my old oyster before I could activate auto top up on my new one. On repeat. As I explained that I couldn't final tap out a snapped card so he needed to do it his end, hence me ringing. On repeat.

Have to say the actual station/transport staff are nearly all great though!

Living in Scotland, I qualify for a free bus pass, but I live 2.6 miles from the nearest actively serviced bus stop, up a single track road with no footpath. And the twice I have actually tried to catch a bus there, following the timetable published online, it turned out the bus had not run, neither had the next one an hour later. So I walked another 2.6 miles home. Also, the bus I should have been able to catch went to a town 6 miles away, and took almost 2 hours to get there, and the last bus home, from which I would have had another walk of 2.6 miles was at 6.10 pm. I only wanted to visit the pharmacy.

I cannot comment how easy it is to get TFL to sort out an oyster card. I hope you get it sorted OP and enjoy it. My much loved honoury auntie has been living her best life for nearly 15 years now with her oyster card and all the free and reduced things in London she meets her friends to do. It amazes me when I watch the stupid programmes like Escape to the Country people want to move to the middle of nowhere to retire....

Living in a big city in the north, as previous posters have pointed out, it just highlights the inequality. Public transport is extortionate, unreliable and my city is the biggest in Europe without a mass transportation system. I moved here in 2001 and plans where under way for trams, but government pulled funding. Getting to nearby cities takes forever on trains that are basically buses on wheels and mostly are cancelled. Look at the map and Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, liverpool and hull etc should be really quick to get to from each other. But fast trains only run south to north. Sometimes it has taken me longer to get a train from liverpool to leeds than from london.

YABU for misusing "purposefully".

I agree with you that TFL are a nightmare, though.

In most places you have to wait until state pension age which for me was 66. I've only heard of London giving them at 60.

What a palaver.

All I had to do was rock up at the library with proof of my age, name and adress, and a photo, and fill in a form. The librarian ticked the boxes to verify that it was me, and I got my card in the post a few days later.

It's not often my county council is efficient, but they use the libraries as an access point for all sorts of things and it's really handy.

That's what i did. I use mine quite a lot.

I use mine a reasonable amount.

I'd use it a lot more if we had a bus service that ran before 9.30 and after 6pm, and between 2 & 4. The bus is busy being a school bus then, which subsidises the service. Without that, I doubt we'd have a local bus at all and it's a 20 minuted walk to the nearest non-local service (longer on the way back, as it's up a steep hill).

60 in Scotland.

You would have to pay before 9.30 anyway. I use mine when we are away in our camper van, often on coastal routes.

I know I’m a bit off topic but it’s quite a weird benefit. Poor older people do exist but the people I know in their sixties are doing okay - they are earning pretty good money, have paid off their mortgages and their children are either at university or are grown up. I won’t be terribly surprised if it isn’t available by the time I’m sixty. Our population is aging fast.

The well off ones probably use their card, rather than off peak buses.

The majority of volunteers are O-60 , and god forbid older people should get out and about, keeping fit, keeping social as friends due and become incapacitated, keeping their MH in good shape etc.

Most of these people didn’t benefit from the free nursery hours your generation got, or free KS1 school lunches .

I very much hope there is free travel when you reach your 60s. Best to defend it rather than criticise it if you want it to stay in place?

Well said. Anything that reduces the number of car journeys is a good thing.

I'm having difficulties applying for my over 60s Oyster card, I finally worked out where each number needs to be from my passport, and it's not entirely obvious, but it is now saying I have run out of validation attempts.

I'll try again tomorrow but I agree, it's far from the easiest system in the world. Agree with an earlier poster who said station staff are great but the IT systems, not so much.