Does AT Hop have the worst website in the world?

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › Does AT Hop have the worst website in the world?

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r055b

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#1950962 2-Feb-2018 22:29

KiwiSurfer:

r055b:

Is there something special you have to do to get an auto top up to start working? Our family has 5 cards and we have only managed to get the auto top up working on 1 of our cards after multiple attempts and failures.

It appears you need multiple tag on/off to initiate the process? Is it more than 4?

Recently had another failure. Daughter's card had an auto top transaction pending but after 4 tag on/offs it just refuses kick in and now the card is without balance. Calling CS is absolutely useless. I've have now given up on auto top up and have been forced to load $200 per card and have to keep logging in to check balances.

You typically only need need one tag on/off the next day. If you request it via the web site on Day 1, it will push out an instruction to enable auto top-up on your card to all the stations/piers/buses overnight, and on Day 2 your first tag on will (in >99% of cases) receive an instruction to enable auto top-up.

There are some rare cases where you may get a vehicle that didn't get the instructions overnight but I would be surprised if you came across four of them in a row. Another case where you will not get the auto top-up applied is when you attempt it too soon (e.g. same day).

I would also check that you have requested the auto top-up correctly via the website and try tagging on no earlier than the next day. You can also get a card info printout at a top-up machine which should tell you whether the auto top-up is enabled or not.

No need to keep logging into the website to check balances. The AT machines tell you the balances every time you tag on/off and the balances they report are the exact balances (unlike the website which offers a delayed version of data much like Visa/MC/Amex does).

Thanks, I don't know what I am doing wrong then but I definitely don't find one tag on initiates it. The next tag on sends me this email only:

Auto Top-Up on your AT HOP card xxxxx has been successfully set up.

Once your Auto Top-Up is active, your HOP Money balance will be automatically topped up by $xxx when it reduces to your pre-set threshold limit of xxx " ...along with the a lot of t&cs

Thereafter multiple tag ons which breach the threshold don't actually do the top up and I have to do a manual top up. Like I said, it worked once on one card but I cant get it to work again.

I can see my balance on the bus terminal but asking young kids to check their balance that way is not feasible....

Kyanar

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#1950981 3-Feb-2018 00:22

KiwiSurfer:

Like I said it's one of those features I wish AT never offered as it is a complex beast with horrible edge cases that bite people in the arse pretty harshly. I can see why many systems overseas don't offer a similar feature and I would dare day they look at AT and breathe a sigh of relief that they never implemented it.

- James

Translink's Go Card system is much more sane. If the auto top up fails, the system propagates an instruction to the network to apply an adjustment of NEGATIVE that topup amount on your next touch on, and another instruction to remove the automatic top up configuration. Chances are, this will result in your card going quite far into the negative, meaning your next touch on will apply the adjustment then simply beep "Insufficient" and refuse to open the cattle gates.

Jase2985

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#1950999 3-Feb-2018 06:28

r055b:

KiwiSurfer:

r055b:

Is there something special you have to do to get an auto top up to start working? Our family has 5 cards and we have only managed to get the auto top up working on 1 of our cards after multiple attempts and failures.

It appears you need multiple tag on/off to initiate the process? Is it more than 4?

Recently had another failure. Daughter's card had an auto top transaction pending but after 4 tag on/offs it just refuses kick in and now the card is without balance. Calling CS is absolutely useless. I've have now given up on auto top up and have been forced to load $200 per card and have to keep logging in to check balances.

You typically only need need one tag on/off the next day. If you request it via the web site on Day 1, it will push out an instruction to enable auto top-up on your card to all the stations/piers/buses overnight, and on Day 2 your first tag on will (in >99% of cases) receive an instruction to enable auto top-up.

There are some rare cases where you may get a vehicle that didn't get the instructions overnight but I would be surprised if you came across four of them in a row. Another case where you will not get the auto top-up applied is when you attempt it too soon (e.g. same day).

I would also check that you have requested the auto top-up correctly via the website and try tagging on no earlier than the next day. You can also get a card info printout at a top-up machine which should tell you whether the auto top-up is enabled or not.

No need to keep logging into the website to check balances. The AT machines tell you the balances every time you tag on/off and the balances they report are the exact balances (unlike the website which offers a delayed version of data much like Visa/MC/Amex does).

Thanks, I don't know what I am doing wrong then but I definitely don't find one tag on initiates it. The next tag on sends me this email only:

"

Auto Top-Up on your AT HOP card xxxxx has been successfully set up.

Once your Auto Top-Up is active, your HOP Money balance will be automatically topped up by $xxx when it reduces to your pre-set threshold limit of xxx " ...along with the a lot of t&cs

Thereafter multiple tag ons which breach the threshold don't actually do the top up and I have to do a manual top up. Like I said, it worked once on one card but I cant get it to work again.

I can see my balance on the bus terminal but asking young kids to check their balance that way is not feasible....

so then you need to wait till the money on the account meets the threshold that you have set before it will top up. ie less than $10 will apply $20 credit. remember it can still take up to 72 hours for the money to appear on the card.

KiwiSurfer

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#1951118 3-Feb-2018 14:25

Jase2985:

so then you need to wait till the money on the account meets the threshold that you have set before it will top up. ie less than $10 will apply $20 credit. remember it can still take up to 72 hours for the money to appear on the card.

Incorrect, the credit will be applied to your card straight away when the automatic top-up is triggered. It's only during overnight processing that AT will send batches to banks and credit card providers requesting payment for the credits.

I suspect you may be confused with the 72 hours worst case timeframe given by AT for the card to have the automatic top-up configuration written onto the card.

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