Alighting at South Bermondsey this evening I was greeted by a group[1]
of ticket inspectors complete with those hand-held Oyster readers.. On
extracting my Barclaycard/Oyster OnePulse card from my wallet the
inspector grunted "Oh, it's one of those" and waved me on.
Are the handheld readers somehow incompatible with these cards then?
Or is it just a ticket inspector who's faced with something slightly
different and doesn't think it's quite worth the effort...?

-cj

[1] Is there a collective noun for grippers/ticket inspectors?

cosmo.johnson@googlemail.comtyped


> Alighting at South Bermondsey this evening I was greeted by a group[1]
> of ticket inspectors complete with those hand-held Oyster readers.. On
> extracting my Barclaycard/Oyster OnePulse card from my wallet the
> inspector grunted "Oh, it's one of those" and waved me on.
> Are the handheld readers somehow incompatible with these cards then?
> Or is it just a ticket inspector who's faced with something slightly
> different and doesn't think it's quite worth the effort...?

> -cj

> [1] Is there a collective noun for grippers/ticket inspectors?

A clutch of grippers?

-- 
Helen D. Vecht: helenvecht@zetnet.co.uk
Edgware.

On 3 Jun, 19:09, cosmo.john...@googlemail.com wrote:
> Alighting at South Bermondsey this evening I was greeted by a group[1]
> of ticket inspectors complete with those hand-held Oyster readers.. On
> extracting my Barclaycard/Oyster OnePulse card from my wallet the
> inspector grunted "Oh, it's one of those" and waved me on.
> Are the handheld readers somehow incompatible with these cards then?
> Or is it just a ticket inspector who's faced with something slightly
> different and doesn't think it's quite worth the effort...?
>

That's interesting, I haven't ever observed this happening, but then
again it would happen in a flash, and I don't knowingly know anyone[*]
who has a OnePulse card so I can't ask anyone for their experiences on
this. Given that the OnePulse card obviously has to be compatible with
Oyster and presumably works fine on the Oyster readers elsewhere then
it's hard to see why a handheld reader wouldn't work with them.

Maybe it's a given that Barclaycard holders are all honest!


[*] Is this a phrase worthy of Rumsfeld?

On Jun 3, 7:09 pm, cosmo.john...@googlemail.com wrote:
> Alighting at South Bermondsey this evening I was greeted by a group[1]
> of ticket inspectors complete with those hand-held Oyster readers.. On
> extracting my Barclaycard/Oyster OnePulse card from my wallet the
> inspector grunted "Oh, it's one of those" and waved me on.
> Are the handheld readers somehow incompatible with these cards then?
> Or is it just a ticket inspector who's faced with something slightly
> different and doesn't think it's quite worth the effort...?
>
> -cj
>
> [1] Is there a collective noun for grippers/ticket inspectors?

I was gripped on a bus recently. The gripper scanned my card in the
same way as a normal Oystercard without any problem.

I used to have a problem with the first Oystercard I got - I was a
fairly early adopter. It would work fine on the station gates and the
driver's machine on buses, but never registered with the hand-held
machines the grippers use. I ended up replacing it after a discussion
with an inspector who advised me to get a new one, as the next person
who checked it may not "let me off", as he did.

On Tue, 3 Jun 2008 11:09:49 -0700 (PDT), cosmo.johnson@googlemail.com
wrote:

>[1] Is there a collective noun for grippers/ticket inspectors?

A swarm, I think.

James Farrar  wrote in 
news:odii44do527kuhqhnqqdub9nudaaeualvd@4ax.com:

> On Tue, 3 Jun 2008 11:09:49 -0700 (PDT), cosmo.johnson@googlemail.com
> wrote:
> 
>>[1] Is there a collective noun for grippers/ticket inspectors?
> 
> A swarm, I think.

A hassle of grippers?