Friday, May 22, 2009

The World Is Not Barclay's Oyster

Does Not Play Well With OysterI started using a new wallet recently. And my oyster card stopped working. My being a cyclist combined with the rush usually associated with public transport I didn't have a lot of opportunity to investigate. It was a bit confusing though as it is just a standard leather wallet. It recently occurred to me however that it could be down, not to my wallet, but my new Barclay's debit card, which has these wavy lines on. I called Barclay's only to be told, rather condescendingly that the two cards will not interfere. So I off I trotted to Blackfriar's station, had a little chat with the guard and did some testing. Sure enough, the Oyster card was fine when my Barclay debit card was not in my wallet. The card reader even stated "Too many oyster cards" when my debit card was present. So I called Barclay's again to request a new card sans "wave and pay" technology. No deal. But I was told that I needed to call Oyster and give them my card details which would sort the problem. Needless to say I was not convinced. I called Oyster, but unfortunately I don't seem to have the right sort of card, you have to have a OnePay card to be able to pay for Oyster directly from your Barclay card. I am now bored of talking to people in call centres, do I really have to move banks to fix my Oyster card?

UPDATE: My third phone call to Barclay's got the answer I was after: Apparently I can request to "downgrade" my debit card, but only at my local branch.

See also my further update.

5 comments:

Yvonne said...

fantastic! too much technology.

Anonymous said...

Cheers for that -- I've been having the same problem since Barclays sent me a card with the wifi/wave symbol on the front of it.

It causes the Oystercard to fail about 50% of the time. I'm just going to cancel the Barclaycard and move elsewhere.

Jamie said...

I have found that it does actually work, it's just that it may report it hasn't worked initially, you just have to wait a little while.

daryl said...

I disagree with jamie

i have to try about 6 times when i get on the bus, even after it works it then goes on to throow up an error message.

Strangely the readers on the tube are slightly more likely to work.

Any going to downgrade ASAP

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I have the same issue. As if the PINsentry wasn't irritating enough, Barclays roll out another new technology that makes the lives of their customers more difficult.