London Travelcard vs Oyster Card

Just to throw something else into the topic....

You can buy a daily travelcard (paper) for £5.70 and it'll cover zones 1-4. Over three days that won't be much more than the AUS$40 for 3 days. Depends on where you want to travel in London. The paper travelcard also means you can use overland trains, which you can't on PAYG oyster.

Buy the Oystercard when you get here, unless you take the train as opposed to the Tube (unlikely for trips around central london) as it always works out cheper than the paper Travelcard. You can in fact easily get a refund of the deposit and any money left on it, or take it home and give to a mate for their trip.As the person in number 5 says, don't forget to swipe out even if the gates are open, as it costs more if you dont. But dont worry too much about it, I'm sure the difference is minimal, remember you can walk around alot in Central London- anywhere from Waterloo to the British Museum if the weather is nice and you'll see alot of the town.

#8 No - capping is done on a daily basis, so it's only one day cards that are undercut.

THANK YOU everyone!

Travelcards - paper or Oyster - can be used for the offers on 2for1 whereas PAYG Oystercards can't.

Even if you go to only one of the attractions in the offer during your stay it'll save a lot more than the savings from using PAYG Oystercard

40AUD BTW is about the cost of 3 one day offpeak travelcards so unless it's offering peak travel it isn't saving you any money

Hey OP,

i am off to London in about a month and have two Oyster cards given to me by a mate who just got back a week ago. PM if you like and i'll send one of the cards to you when I get back in early in October. i won't need them again and i am in Aust too so it makes it easy :-)

Travelcard (on a Oyster card or not) allow you to travel on train (National Rail) within the limit of validity of your travel card (with just some exception), while the Pay-as-You-Go ()
are only valid on a limited number of rail service (listed here).

So, has also explained on fares guide, an Oyster pay-as-you-go may be cheaper than 1 day travelcard, if you are going to travel only where payasyou is accepted. But if you plan to travel on train where a travelcard would be valid and a pay-as-you-go would not be accepted (and so the cost of those journeys not include into the cap) a travelcard may be cheaper.

Make computations about 3-days travel cards is getting more complicated, as then it actually may really change how much you pay depending when and where and how you travel. Again if you are going to use National Rail where a pay-as-you-go would not be accepted but a travelcard will, it may be cheaper to get a travelcard. If you are goinfg to travel a lot just one day and just a couple of journeys in the other two pay-as-you-go for 3 days or a 1-day travelcard plus pay-as-you-go for the other two days may be cheaper than a 3-day travelcard. And buying 3 1-day off-peak travelcards may be cheaper than a 3-day travelcard.

When it came to 7-day travelcard or even longer season travelcards, they are usually cheaper than pay-as-you-go (unless your journey are very strangely concentrated on just a limited number of days)

Note that you are allowed buy a travelcard for just a small zone and pay the extension fare as pay-you-go (this may result cheaper than buy a travel card for a bigger zone. For instance if most of your journeys are in zone 1-2, but you have to do a limited number to zone 4 or 5, it would be cheaper to buy a zone 1-2 travelcard and pay the extension fare as pay-as-you-go

Travelcard entitle you to a discount on some river boat that a pay-as-you-go does not.

After all this rant ... let me get to the OP question: visitor ticket. There is a page titled Visitor tickets on TfL.

Note that the Oyster cards for visitors have different conditions than a normal Oyster card (e.g. you can not put a travel card on it)

() you actually pay before you go, so the name prepaid make more sense to me than pay-as-you-go

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<hr>you actually pay before you go, so the name prepaid make more sense to me than pay-as-you-go<hr></blockquote>
But you don't pay until you use the card and if you don't use it you don't pay anything - I would say that a Travelcard is prepaid

#14
Is the "2 for 1" offers still in place?
I have found that here (not an official source) it is written "The offer's been extended to 3 June 2007"

Moreover I have find some reference on train web sites (such us on One), but no reference on TfL. Is the offer also valid for a travelcard bought from TfL (somewehere on the website of TfL it is written that travelcard bought at train station are a bit different from the one bought from TfL)

#17
Well, I can consider no different than I have paid something when money move out from my pocket. Now when you put money on the Oyster card, money has actually moved from your pocket and entered in the TfL account (or one of their representative) (even if the Oyster card is in your pocket, the Oyster is not owned by you, and you can not use the money on the card as if it were banknote)()

I can agree that you can have your money back, but the TfL itself call it a refund. And I agree that it would much worse if you could not claim for a refund. But all of this do not change the fact that you pay in advance, not when you travel.

()well I have read somewhere on Wikipedia that there is a project to transform it to a credit card.

If you look at the offers they have dates on them, most seem to be 30/09/2007 but many of them are the same offers that originally expired 03/07/2007 so it's likely they'll be extended come the end of September. Simplest thing to do is to READ what it CURRENTLY says on the website to find out if the offer is valid rather than relying on something that has not been updated for several months.

If you read the FAQS you'll see that ALL travelcards - whether on paper or Oystercard are eligible for these offers

Prepaid to my mind means you've bought a service and if you don't use it you lose your money (eg cinema ticket or travelcard). PAYG means the money isn't taken until you USE the service and hence if you don't use it you don't pay anything