Even more Oyster woe

Back in March Oyster overcharged us for a trip and because of that cock-up the gate at Bank station did not open for Justina who was then accused of being a thief because the TfL staff seem to believe that the Oyster system is perfect. It's not.

So, after several months, and the involvement of London Travel Watch, Oyster finally agreed to refund the overcharge ... by a cheque in the mail, which never arrived. As for the abuse directed at Justina, the response was "Not our problem. See TfL".

It now turns out that the cheque did not arrive because Oyster sent it to an old address they had on file. They sent out the cheque without confirming the postal address. It would have been easy for them to check, but they chose not to. They could also have chosen to simply credit our oyster accounts, but that would have been too easy for the customer.

It's starting to look like the Oyster bureaucracy are trying to win out by making the process so painful that nobody can possibly see it through to the end. To send out a new cheque Oyster are demanding that I write them a snail-mail letter. They are currently refusing to accept the correct address via their (really horrible) email based system despite the fact that they have been forcing me to use it for the last few months as I tried to persuade them to pay back what they owe. It seems that I must be punished for their mistake.

... and on top of all that they keep trying to mark the case as closed - no doubt to make the problem clearance rates look good in their reports to the board.