Oyster Card "Topping Off"

I have used the online topup (not top off...) facility once. You have to specify which station you will be travelling through as part of a normal journey, where the topup is added to your card. I chose Waterloo, my normal commuting station, but for some reason it didn't work. Now, it may have been a one-off, and I'm sure that it works correctly for millions of people, but since then I've always gone to a ticket machine at any Tube or train station and topped up there with my debit card, or at a ticket counter if there isn't a long queue.

Maybe things have changed, but last summer we could purchase Oyster cards online but not "top them off" or register the ones we already had from the US. As Kevin said, there are ticket machines that are quick and easy to use and we did not have to queue to use them. We were on our way in a couple of minutes.

Thanks all of you for your comments. I will try that again, Elle. It didn't work for us when we did that but perhaps we did something wrong. I will say, we did not enter a station we would be traveling through as you mention, Kevin. I'll try again, otherwise we will purchase there. Thanks!

Interesting. Ours were purchased in the U.S. Well, I'll give it a try.

No, three of the ones we tried were purchased in London. Were you actually able to add to yours, Elle, because I did read somewhere after I tried, that it was not possible to do from the US, but then things change. I might add that the machines that we used to add to the cards were at Heathrow and I was able to use my debit card to pay for the transaction. There were lots of machines available and it took no time at all.