Oyster Card. Good in parts, still.

I have had no response at all from Oyster/TFL regarding their overcharge error and the resulting abuse directed at my wife that I reported here:

The OpenSkills Sett: Oyster Card. Good in parts.

This morning I contacted my local council, the City of London, to ask if they could help with this matter. The person I spoke to told me that the City could not help and that there was no ombudsman for such matters. He said that I should call the GLA and speak to their transport department and not let them fob me off. I should insist on speaking to the transport department.

So I called the GLA. I was told that they did not handle complaints about TFL or Oyster (what a surprise) but that in fact there was a body that acted as an ombudsman in such cases: London Travel Watch.

So I have submitted a report to London Travel Watch. Let's see what happens next.

P.S. I have to say that, on the whole, the Oyster does work rather well for us. I can also understand that with such a complex travel network and so many distributed devices (the oyster readers) things will go wrong. What is definitely not OK are the mechanisms Oyster and TFL have in place to handle the inevitable problems.