Station Master got an interesting piece of mail in the post today from his credit card who informed him that their Oyster-enabled Credit Card (OnePulse) was being phased out and would no longer be valid for use after June of this year.
“It’s being replaced with a new Freedom Credit Card!” said the literature – which sounded a bit close to a ‘Freedom Pass’ for my liking (we’re not that old .. yet), but also highlighted the fact that it would still be able to be used for Contactless journeys on buses (as already) and tube journeys when the system is enabled later in the year.
Card Clash
But TfL are worried that this is going to lead to Card Clash – so much so that signs have been appearing at tube stations already, even though the system isn’t due to go live yet. If you have an Oyster card AND contactless card in the same wallet, and you don’t get an read error on the gate, you could easily fall foul of touching in with one, and touching out with another – leading you to have an incomplete journey on BOTH cards, which (at peak hours) could cost you £8.50 for each – seventeen quid in total! Well done TfL for pointing this out in advance, but it’s not going to stop it happening, and there are going to be some very angry people when this happens to them.
The solution? Keep your Oyster card in a separate wallet (like, we already do) and not in your main wallet or purse, to avoid the clash happening…