Well, that's nice for you, johnfbw. I happen to use it a lot. And it angers me that after having petitioned and been promised by tfl that the ticket office would remain a ticket office, they've gone back on it now.

I am self employed and use public transport frequently, at all hours, but not every day, rather 4-5 days out of 7, so weekly/monthly tickets don't always make sense. The ticket machines at HOP (and everywhere else I've had the misfortune to use them) are terribly unreliable. Half the time only one is in use (leading to queues), sometimes they get stuck half way through a transaction, and they are almost always slower than actually topping up or buying a weekly oyster at the ticket office.

Some of the station staff are wonderful and have been there for years. They are now forced to sit behind the glass with a 'information only' sign on display, which isn't what they're there for or want to do.

It's clearly a first step to get rid of the ticket office and many of the staff there altogether ('it's no longer used so we can close it'), to be replaced with untrained service staff with an i-pad. As friendly as they may be, the results at stations like Westminster (where I happen to get on/off the tube a lot) are confusion, queues and dissatisfaction of commuters and tourists.