Visitor Oyster card in London - where from?

[FrumpyPumpy]

Hi,
I've left it too late to get a visitors Oyster card delivered to my home without paying the £9 charge. I'd rather spend that on prosecco so anyone know whether I can get one in London please? Can't work it out on th TFL site

Tia

Use a contactless debit card if you have one? Works like an Oyster.

Will bear in mind, thanks, but I wanted some of the discounts too ????

I don't know what a visitor Oyster card is, but a normal Oyster card is available in most newsagents - small ones - cigarette and newspaper type places, not WH Smith types. But most people use a debit card.

With a contactless debit card, you should only pay the same the as the lowest Oyster fare. That's what it says on the posters on the tube anyway.

My friend from canada got a normal oyster card and at end of trip returned it and received his £5 deposit back.

What discounts?

A contactless debit card gives the same fayres as an Oyster card.

You can buy normal ones from the staffed window in tube stations. Some stations have machines that you can buy them from too. You'll always have to pay a deposit, but you can either keep the card forever, or just hand it back when you leave and get your money back.

I know visitor's Oysters offer some discounts at restaurants and things. I would expect you can buy them at the travel centres in the mainline stations - I'm pretty sure they have a travel centre at Victoria, Kings Cross/St Pancras and Paddington.

Can you not just buy one from a machine at the tube station

I have done this a couple of times.

Just looked at the website and it says

"Buy a Visitor Oyster card before you leave home to take advantage of these great offers and discounts. It is not possible to buy a Visitor Oyster card in London"

Tbh I would just buy a normal one, and forget about the discounts - how much more than £9 would you be likely to save anyway? Or if you are coming by train, maybe they will sell them onboard? I have bought one on the Eurostar before.

By discounts do you mean the discount on the ticket price with a railcard? Which you add to your Oyster card, by filling a form in from a ticket office. This can't be done with the contactless bank card.

With a contactless debit card, you should only pay the same the as the lowest Oyster fare.

Potentially lower, depending on how long you are staying and how much travelling you are doing. Oyster only does daily capping: once you have spent the price of a day travelcard further travel is free that day.

Contactless payment does weekly capping: once you have spent the price of a 7 day travelcard, further travel is free that week - and better, as I recall, that's any consecutive 7 days, whereas I think you can only buy 7 day travelcards for Monday to Sunday.

However, you can't load a 16-25 or 60+ railcard onto a contactless card and it's not likely you ever will be able to, so if you hold one of those, it's probably cheaper to use a real Oystercard and get the railcard loaded. There's some complex dance I can't recall the details of (as I'm no longer eligible for one) about the best way to buy underground tickets with an F&F railcard; perhaps losing any MSE cred I ever had, I never bothered, and just used standard Oysters even when travelling en famille.

I believe it's now easier to get a 12-16 Oyster for children who don't attend London schools than it used to be. I was very annoyed that it was easier to get a child Suica card when visiting Tokyo than a child Oyster when visiting London, and in the end gave up and just paid adult Oyster rates for my children. They now have Oysters with their 16-25 loaded.