One Week Oyster Card - not available anymore?

I'm not sure what you mean by six-day unlimited use. If you mean a seven-day Travelcard, they are still available for £27.60 for Zone 1-2 only, up to £50.40 for all six zones. The current fares are at http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14416.aspx

Thanks, I guess that is what it was. We got our travelcards on Monday around 4pm and they expired the following Sunday around 2pm, so they advertise it as a 7 day but in reality is a 6 day, which is weird but oh well.

Starting on Monday and ending on Sunday is seven days, not six. Just as you did in 2008, you can load seven-day travelcards on your Oyster cards. You also can load some pay-as-you-go pounds for any rides you take beyond the zones covered by your travelcards. At the end of your stay you can get a refund on any unspent PAYG pounds.

Yeah but to me, the first "day" starts when you buy the ticket, at 4pm on Monday. The second "day" starts 24 hours later, etc etc etc. I guess they don't define a "day" as in 24 hours, just a calendar day. So in addition to the seven day travelcard loaded on the Oyster Card I can add money for trips beyond Zone 2, which is good to know as I plan to visit an air musuem this time, in Zone 4 I believe. Thanks!

If you buy your 7 day Travelcard from a mainline railway station (not Underground) you qualify for the 2 for 1 promotion with 2 for 1 admission to lots of London's main attractions. See: http://www.daysoutguide.co.uk/attraction-types/2for1london.aspx The promotion is sponsored by the railways and really aimed at the British to travel by train for their days out and not use the car, so they make it hard for visitors to take advantage. (cannot get them at airport railway stations for instance) Unlike everywhere else your 7 day Travelcard will come as a card Travelcard, not on an Oystercard. So unlike the 7 day Travelcard loaded on an Oyster Card you cannot also use it as a Pay As You Go Oyster Card outside zone 1 and 2 You get them from the railway ticket offices (not Underground) at the following Central London mainline railway ticket offices.
Paddington, Euston, Marylebone, Kings Cross, St Pancras, Liverpool Street, Waterloo, London Bridge, Charing Cross and Victoria.

I am unsure if the Oyster Card can be used on the buses. The website seemed to suggest buses need a separate travel card, but the guide book says the Oyster Card works on both the tube and the buses. On our only other trip to London we only used travel cards so don't want to buy the OC if it can't be used on both. (We will be there a half day after arrival, then three full days so assume the 7 day OC would be the way to go if it can be used on buses also). Also, the guide book indicates in the OC-pay-as-you-go section that the OC has to be reactivated every two years, and I don't know that we would be back in two years or would have anyone to loan it to. Does that apply only to the pay-as-you-go card or would it apply to the 7 day OC as well? If that's true we probably need to stick with the one or three day travel cards. Thanks.

Delinda, our Oyster Card worked great on the buses and tube. The buses have an Oyster Card reader as you board.

Dellinda, buses do not require a separate travel card. The travelcard that covers the tube also covers the bus. There is also a separate bus-only travelcard that is cheaper than the regular travelcard which you can buy if you only plan to use the bus; however, most tourists will want the "regular" version. The same Oyster card can be used to store a travelcard, pay-as-you-go money, or both. If you don't plan to return to London, then just get a refund on your Oyster when you leave.

The bus only Travelcard was stopped last year.
Instead you get an Oyster card on a Pay As You Go basis and if you only travel on buses the daily cap is much lower than if you travel at anytime on trains. Buses are also not covered by zones, so if you have a zone 1/2 Travelcard you can use it out to zone 6 on buses. Both Travelcards and Oyster Cards can be used on the Underground, Dockland Light railway (DLR) and suburban trains as well as buses. You also get discounts on some scheduled river buses. You cannot use them on HoHo sightseeing buses or dedicated airport trains and buses . e.g you can use Travelcard/Oyster on the Underground from Heathrow to London, but not on the Heathrow Express / Connect trains.

We used our Oyster Card on the bus and the tube, and we loved it! I knew about the 2for1 deal before we went in 2008 and decided it wasn't for us, since I wanted the Oyster Card and not the travel card. Being able to get the one-week travel card loaded into the Oyster Card is super convenient! We will do it again when we get to London in September, this year.

I was pretty sure we had used the same cards for tube and bus but just found the website confusing. Bob, I don't know if the 2-for-1 will still be going on in August when we're there, but if it is you will have saved us quite a bit of money since a quick look at that site showed the discount on a number of places we plan to visit. So even though we purchase the Travelcard at the National Rail stations it still works on the tube and bus as well?? We will be in and out of Victoria station regularly, so that will work. That is amazing! And thanks for a valuable tip!!

tfl.gov.uk still shows a 7 day bus pass (although they don't call it a "travelcard" so I obviously used the wrong terminology) http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14415.aspx

If you buy the Oyster from a person, you can tell him/her on what day you want the 7-day piece to start. That's what I did in September, worked fine, buses too.

We got off the plane at Heathrow and got to Paddington Station where we bought our Oyster Cards. Since we still needed to take the tube to Gloucester Road station to get to our apartment, we needed the Oyster Cards to start that moment. But I didn't know it was by calendar day. And even though the passes started at 4pm, they were expired by the following Sunday morning.

We bought train passes from the Rick Steves store that included the Heathrow Express roundtrip for free...otherwise we'd have taken the tube from Heathrow...much cheaper than anything else!

<<Bob, I don't know if the 2-for-1 will still be going on in August when we're there>> The promotion has been going some years now, so its unlikely to stop by August.
The only thing to note is that attractions come and go on the scheme and the vouchers do have expiry dates. So leave it just before you leave and print out all the vouchers you will conceivably need with expiry dates beyond your needs.

<<We got off the plane at Heathrow and got to Paddington Station where we bought our Oyster Cards. Since we still needed to take the tube to Gloucester Road station to get to our apartment, we needed the Oyster Cards to start that moment. >> For two people a private car from Heathrow direct to your apartment would have been about the same price and faster.
The Heathrow Express is expensive and Gloucester Road involves you backtracking towards Heathrow for Gloucester road from Paddington, the Heathrow Express London terminal. For 3 or more people a private car is usually cheaper than the Heathrow Express to anywhere in Kensington as well as being door to door.

Bob, I started looking at the coupons for the attractions we were going to see, and there were quite a few of them. But all I looked at had expiration dates at the end of April, so I stopped looking and decided I will come back to it in April and May to see if it's still going on. I added the "Days Out Guide" page to my Facebook account so may get updates on it there as well. I hope you're right and that it will still be available later in the year.

Yes the expiry dates in April is quite normally.
The vast majority will be renewed with an expiry date later in the year with a few dropping out and a few new ones joining.

Do you need to have a train ticket in order to get the 2 for 1 deals? We will be in London for three weeks in May and wanted to find some good deals before we left.
Pam

The promotion is run by the railways so a condition is that you have a valid train ticket to and from London covering the period of your visit.
The ability to use the promotion with a Travelcard is a loophole where the railway companies ticket offices in Central London at the main railway termini sell Travelcards with the railways logo on it. If you buy Travelcards from anywhere else (and also Oyster Cards) these are not valid for the promotion as they do not have the railways logo.