Showing posts with label oyster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oyster. Show all posts

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.