Does AT Hop have the worst website in the world?

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#1949108 31-Jan-2018 10:43

sbiddle:

kryptonjohn:

Ok, given that the card itself will get updated when used, I still can't see why the AT website doesn't display your topped up balance immediately. It doesn't matter if the card doesn't have the balance. It will get updated when used next so they should show the balance on the website, shouldn't they?

You clearly missed the huge story last year about online top-ups and credit not being returned when people didn't tag on to apply it? This is a system change as a result of that.

The updated balance should not show on the AT HOP site until the top-up is applied to the card because it's not the balance of the card at that point in time. The old way it worked (showing the balance immediately) was one of people's biggest issues with the system as they didn't understand how it worked.

No I didn't "clearly miss" the story last year and I've now had enough of you talking down to me like a slow-witted child so I won't bother replying to any of your comments in future.

Thank you.

jonb

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#1949120 31-Jan-2018 10:55

For a system that was designed from a blank slate with no legacy problems to carry over it is diabolical, and has been from the day it launched. Old deactivated cards are mixed up with active cards, the auto-topup feature is hidden away in some maze UI to get to, the linked cards may or may not do what you want it to do.

The mobile site for checking bus times uses multiple MB to load and doesn't auto-refresh. Seriously the WAP bus time page from 2008 was vastly preferable. The stupid 'feature' where if a credit card is out of date the entire suite of HOP cards linked against it gets permanently invalidated.

This is just top of my head, give me a day and can double that list.

kryptonjohn

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#1949122 31-Jan-2018 10:59

jonb:

For a system that was designed from a blank slate with no legacy problems to carry over it is diabolical, and has been from the day it launched. Old deactivated cards are mixed up with active cards, the auto-topup feature is hidden away in some maze UI to get to, the linked cards may or may not do what you want it to do.

The mobile site for checking bus times uses multiple MB to load and doesn't auto-refresh. Seriously the WAP bus time page from 2008 was vastly preferable. The stupid 'feature' where if a credit card is out of date the entire suite of HOP cards linked against it gets permanently invalidated.

This is just top of my head, give me a day and can double that list.

Yep all that. And the panel on the web page that takes you to update card details (Name, address etc) looks *exactly* like the panel that takes you to transactional details. So you constantly get the update details page when you want transactions... argh!

As you say, why the hell can't deactivated cards be hidden and displayed when you ask for them to be displayed? It's not hard.

It's extremely difficult to get student concessions applied. It's extremely difficult to transfer balances... it just goes on doesn't it?

tstone

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#1949123 31-Jan-2018 11:03

jonb:

The stupid 'feature' where if a credit card is out of date the entire suite of HOP cards linked against it gets permanently invalidated.

This, in my opinion, is stealing. They "can't" or won't transfer the balance from the invalidated card to the new card I had to get when this happened. How much money are they holding from this rort?

sbiddle

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#1949127 31-Jan-2018 11:08

jonb:

For a system that was designed from a blank slate with no legacy problems to carry over it is diabolical, and has been from the day it launched.

That's because it's not really a blank slate and never was. The backend is a Thales solution that has all the legacy limitations that other Thales deployments have. There were then significant restrictions put in place by NZTA when they became involved and they weren't negotiable because they were funding the system with the intention of rolling it out nationwide.

The decision to go with Thales will do down in history as yet another NZ IT failure.

MikeAqua

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#1949191 31-Jan-2018 12:12

sbiddle:

That's because it's not really a blank slate and never was. The backend is a Thales solution that has all the legacy limitations that other Thales deployments have. There were then significant restrictions put in place by NZTA when they became involved and they weren't negotiable because they were funding the system with the intention of rolling it out nationwide.

The decision to go with Thales will do down in history as yet another NZ IT failure.

I hope the system Auckland uses is never rolled out nationwide.

While it makes perfect sense to have one system usable for all public transport, nationwide ... AT Hop (based on my experience of it) is either not the right system, or not well implemented.

I've used public transport in Auckland (Hop), Welly (Snapper) and ChCh (MetroCard). of the three systems Snapper seems easiest to use - although it could do with being extended to trains and ferries.

I first visited Singapore in 2003 and they had their public transport prepay system absolutely nailed way back then. I don't understand why NZ authorities make such a meal of it.

What would be even better is simply being able to use a contact-less debit/credit card on public transport everywhere.

Mike

sbiddle

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#1949199 31-Jan-2018 12:24

MikeAqua:

sbiddle:

That's because it's not really a blank slate and never was. The backend is a Thales solution that has all the legacy limitations that other Thales deployments have. There were then significant restrictions put in place by NZTA when they became involved and they weren't negotiable because they were funding the system with the intention of rolling it out nationwide.

The decision to go with Thales will do down in history as yet another NZ IT failure.

I hope the system Auckland uses is never rolled out nationwide.

While it makes perfect sense to have one system usable for all public transport, nationwide ... AT Hop (based on my experience of it) is either not the right system, or not well implemented.

I've used public transport in Auckland (Hop), Welly (Snapper) and ChCh (MetroCard). of the three systems Snapper seems easiest to use - although it could do with being extended to trains and ferries.

I first visited Singapore in 2003 and they had their public transport prepay system absolutely nailed way back then. I don't understand why NZ authorities make such a meal of it.

What would be even better is simply being able to use a contact-less debit/credit card on public transport everywhere.

It won't be nationwide - Wellington's refusal to adopt it meant it's effectively been scrapped. Whatever Wellington goes for post 2020 will end up being the new nationwide system so HOP will ultimately be replaced anyway.

Snapper is being rolled out to all buses in the Wellington region from July 2018 which was a requirement from the NZTA for the new public transport tenders.

Moving to tokenisation and being able to use a credit card is the future going forward, but there are plenty of issues and some limitations to overcome. In London with Oyster and Sydney with Opal (which basically is just Oyster) tokenisation is difficult for some complex fare types due to the way they're billed. Sydney is still trialing credit cards, but while credit cards have replaced Oyster cards for something like 40% of casual users, but they can't replace them for all users because of this.

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Senecio

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#1949207 31-Jan-2018 12:31

sbiddle:

You clearly missed the huge story last year about online top-ups and credit not being returned when people didn't tag on to apply it? This is a system change as a result of that.

The updated balance should not show on the AT HOP site until the top-up is applied to the card because it's not the balance of the card at that point in time. The old way it worked (showing the balance immediately) was one of people's biggest issues with the system as they didn't understand how it worked.

How difficult would it be to show both.

Eg.

Your current account balance = $50

Your current card balance = $20

Your account balance will be transferred to your card the next time you tag on

kryptonjohn

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#1949210 31-Jan-2018 12:36

That would help. It would be nice if they just had a reliable system that could assure you that as you have made an online topup that yes, your child will be able to get on the bus tomorrow morning and won't be left on the side of the road.

And while they're at it how about an Android/IOS mobile app that would securely push a topup onto the card with NFC?

MikeAqua

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#1949226 31-Jan-2018 13:13

sbiddle:

It won't be nationwide - Wellington's refusal to adopt it meant it's effectively been scrapped. Whatever Wellington goes for post 2020 will end up being the new nationwide system so HOP will ultimately be replaced anyway.

Snapper is being rolled out to all buses in the Wellington region from July 2018 which was a requirement from the NZTA for the new public transport tenders.

Moving to tokenisation and being able to use a credit card is the future going forward, but there are plenty of issues and some limitations to overcome. In London with Oyster and Sydney with Opal (which basically is just Oyster) tokenisation is difficult for some complex fare types due to the way they're billed. Sydney is still trialing credit cards, but while credit cards have replaced Oyster cards for something like 40% of casual users, but they can't replace them for all users because of this.

It's hard to see Wellington moving away from snapper - unless it's to paywave etc. Something interesting I learned about snapper recently - you can use one card to tag up to 5 people on/off.

Opal card in Sydney certainly seems to work well from visitors perspective. Ditto Myki in Melbourne.

Mike

allan

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#1949232 31-Jan-2018 13:34

My other half has reached the "golden age" and I was surprised to discover that in Wellington they don't track in any way the number of Gold Card carrying passengers on buses (not sure about trains). Apparently you just wave the card at the driver and on you get. Must make it really difficult to know what real passenger loadings are like.

By contrast, when she made a trip to Auckland recently, she had to purchase a HOP card, load it with nominal amount and register the Gold Card against it. At least they know how many Gold card concessions they are dealing with.

sbiddle

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#1949267 31-Jan-2018 13:49

allan:

My other half has reached the "golden age" and I was surprised to discover that in Wellington they don't track in any way the number of Gold Card carrying passengers on buses (not sure about trains). Apparently you just wave the card at the driver and on you get. Must make it really difficult to know what real passenger loadings are like.

By contrast, when she made a trip to Auckland recently, she had to purchase a HOP card, load it with nominal amount and register the Gold Card against it. At least they know how many Gold card concessions they are dealing with.

Gold card usage is tracked. The driver presses a button on his operator panel for gold card passengers when they board. They do obviously miss tracking full usage (tag on / tag off location) with this, so it'll be interesting to see if this changes come July.

sbiddle

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#1949274 31-Jan-2018 13:58

MikeAqua:

sbiddle:

It won't be nationwide - Wellington's refusal to adopt it meant it's effectively been scrapped. Whatever Wellington goes for post 2020 will end up being the new nationwide system so HOP will ultimately be replaced anyway.

Snapper is being rolled out to all buses in the Wellington region from July 2018 which was a requirement from the NZTA for the new public transport tenders.

Moving to tokenisation and being able to use a credit card is the future going forward, but there are plenty of issues and some limitations to overcome. In London with Oyster and Sydney with Opal (which basically is just Oyster) tokenisation is difficult for some complex fare types due to the way they're billed. Sydney is still trialing credit cards, but while credit cards have replaced Oyster cards for something like 40% of casual users, but they can't replace them for all users because of this.

It's hard to see Wellington moving away from snapper - unless it's to paywave etc. Something interesting I learned about snapper recently - you can use one card to tag up to 5 people on/off.

Opal card in Sydney certainly seems to work well from visitors perspective. Ditto Myki in Melbourne.

myki is still regarded as a massive failure though - while it's working relatively well now you have to consider it was $500 million over budget and 3 years late to enter service despite Melbourne having one of the simplest public transport charging systems in the world - two zones (reduced from 3 for myki) and all fares being valid for 2 hours across the public transport network. Even when it was introduced it was plagued with issues and was on the verge of being dumped years after the introduction.

Melbourne and Sydney are both moving to support tokenisation this year and introducing credit card support as part of that. I'm not sure that's going to be viable in NZ until interchange rates are cut, but that doesn't seem to be a priority for the Government at this stage.

Sam91

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#1949311 31-Jan-2018 14:28

kryptonjohn:

It would be nice if they just had a reliable system that could assure you that as you have made an online topup that yes, your child will be able to get on the bus tomorrow morning and won't be left on the side of the road.

Just use the auto top-up system and you won't have that issue.

kryptonjohn

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#1949318 31-Jan-2018 14:35

Sam91:

kryptonjohn:

It would be nice if they just had a reliable system that could assure you that as you have made an online topup that yes, your child will be able to get on the bus tomorrow morning and won't be left on the side of the road.

Just use the auto top-up system and you won't have that issue.

I do but it doesn't push the value onto the card so you don't "see it" until tagged at a reader (and the reader on the bus might not have been uploaded with the topup so it still doesn't become usable). An NFC push completes the whole process in one uninterruptable process/

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