TransLink Isn’t Ready
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009TransLink is an ambitious project. Imagine if you had your bank or credit card information attached to one card that you could wirelessly swipe on every bay area transit system: SF MUNI, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, and the list goes on. The service already works in its entirety with SF MUNI. BART just announced support for using your SF MUNI monthly pass added to a TransLink card within the city, making it’s usefulness for in city transit nearly complete. Getting to the point where you can use these services though is where this grand idea falls flat.
What follows is my experience with trying to set up TransLink as a new SF local. I know my story’s not typical, but I know I’m not the only one having these sorts of issues. I’ve been warned by friends who already lived here about some of it’s failings. The worst part about my conversations has been that this is just something you expect out of TransLink. Talk about a bad brand image on a service that’s just now becoming useful with the majority not even jumping on board yet. And they shouldn’t, because TransLink would never be able to support that many people if they’re still sorting out this many issues.
My first experience
It’s the most important impression you can make. It’s also why I even bothered with TransLink in the first place. Being a south bay native, I didn’t need a SF MUNI monthly pass. I rode transit here and there since I only worked in the city during the day, and my commute to work is an easy walk from Caltrain. So, I set up what TransLink calls an e-cash autoload. This feature automatically deducts $20 from your bank account or credit card once your TransLink balance reaches $0. Simple enough to set up on the website despite it’s pretty poor UI, but once I navigated through the ambiguously worded website I was able to find what I needed.
This is where I could start to see beginning of my sour relationship with TransLink. Immediately after setting up e-cash autoload, I’m dropped back to the site’s main account portal which features absolutely zero feedback of the autoload I just added to my account. Now if you read the fine print carefully, they try to tell you that it will be several days before changes to your account show up. That’s great, but no one reads the fine print. It’s pretty much guaranteed that if you put text in big bold letters and flash it, users will still forget it once it’s gone in a short period of time. Having a one time message that tells me it will be several days before account changes show up doesn’t preclude your system from telling me somewhere, anywhere that I have a pending account change. Instead I’m presented with nothing but the same UI as the first time I visited the site telling me how to setup an autoload.
Thinking I must have done something wrong, I attempted the autoload setup process again. After the second try, I came to the realization that I’d get no such feedback and I’d just have to take them on their word that in “5 - 10” days I’d get acknowledgement somewhere on the site that my account changes have taken effect.
Sure enough, eventually, everything worked. I started happily swiping away on busses and trains for several weeks.
Moving to the city
This is where it all went wrong. Quynh (my girlfriend) and I intended to move into our new SF apartment by August 1st, but didn’t quite get the time until the 3rd due to iPhoneDevCamp. No worries I thought, I’ll just buy the TransLink monthly pass that day. It shouldn’t take long since my bank account info’s already verified when I setup the e-cash autoload. I go back to the trusty website, and “autoload” the SF MUNI monthly pass. Strangely, it re-asks for my bank account info. Not sure why it can’t use my existing info, but no matter it’s a few simple steps. This was August 3rd. I know ACH (direct bank to bank routing) takes a little bit longer to verify than credit/debit cards but I prefer to use it for services I want to support. They receive a larger percentage of the transfer since there are no credit card companies in between taking usually between 2-3%. I checked the status of the transfers on my bank’s website and noticed they both completed on August 6th. Thinking our transit pass would activate “any day now,” Quynh and I proceed to use the passes like crazy. Sadly, day after day goes by and each time we get dinged $2 per use. By Monday August 10th, 4 whole days after the money’s been taken out of our accounts, I decided enough’s enough.
At this point, I finally break down and call TransLink’s customer support. The first thing I’m presented with is a request for my account number. This is one of those things I find absurd, as should everybody. I don’t spend all day memorizing 10 digit account numbers, nor should I have to keep them readily accessible. I am not a number. If you need personably identifiable information ask for something I can recite off hand, like I don’t know: my name, or my phone number. Asking for a number I’m very likely to not know is a waste of my time and yours.
Eventually I get an actual human on the line, and my (summarized) conversation proceeds as follows:
Me: I setup my TransLink SF MUNI monthly pass nearly a week ago, but am still being charged each use.
CSR: According to our systems, you setup autoload using your bank information. This can take 5-10 business days.
Me: Did you think it would be prudent to even allow the purchase of a monthly pass online if it would take nearly half of the month to activate? Will I even be refunded any of the charges between now (August 10th) and the 6th, when you finalized the bank transfer?
CSR: Sorry, we say on the website it will take that long to activate. Additionally, we cannot refund any of the charges.
Me: So you have the money from my bank, you’ve verified my bank info already when I setup the e-cash autoload, but you can’t instantly activate my monthly pass now and won’t refund the charges between now and the time when the bank transfer completed?
CSR: Sorry, we cannot. Our systems aren’t setup to support that.
Me: So you’re telling me I bought a monthly pass that’s only good for half of the month, and there’s nothing you can do?
CSR: Well, you can instantly activate a monthly pass by visiting a TransLink “Add Value Machine” (AVM) in the subway stations, or at a Walgreens. We could then move the monthly passes you’ve already purchased to the next month.
Me: You can’t take my credit card information over the phone?
CSR: We can, but it will take 24-48 hours to approve the credit card transaction, and another 24 hours after that is complete the monthly pass will be activate.
Me: So you’re telling me I can’t instantly add anything from the phone or website, but I can instantly do it only in person?
CSR: Basically, yes.
Me: I guess I’ve little choice, unless I want to continue paying $4-10 dollars a day in charges (between Quynh and I’s account) while I wait another 4-5 days for the pass to activate if let you re-verify my bank info.
CSR: I need to confirm with finance that we can push your monthly passes to next month that you’ve already autoloaded using bank info. I’ll call you back today to confirm it will go through.
This whole conversation stretches out for nearly 30 minutes. But, the fun continues.
The wild goose chase
Our first thought is to go to Walgreens. I had to stop by anyways, why not get my TransLink activated while I’m there. So, I go to the checkout counter (where the service rep from my prior phone call told me to go) and inquire about a TransLink MUNI monthly pass. I’m greeted with a rather dumbfounded look, saying all we can do is add cash to a card but no luck on the monthly pass. Who’s misinformed here? More on this, later. Let’s try the Add Value Machines in the subway, a mere block away. At least these remove the human factor. Here’s my “experience” with the AVMs:
- Insert TransLink card
- Find the correct menu option to add a monthly muni pass
- Eventually get to the “checkout” phase
- Remove the TransLink card
- Enter the credit card
- Remove the credit card
- Re-enter the TransLink card
- Wait (literally) 30 seconds while the machine performs a dialup credit card transaction over what appears to be molasses in the winter
- Receive a completely undescriptive error message about how my card was declined, at which point I’m dropped back to a welcome screen.
Um, okay. My credit card’s usually pretty reliable, but being an American Express card I’m used to 50% of people not taking it because they’re too cheap to eat the extra 1% in fees. Now here’s the bad part: this machine doesn’t take Amex which is fine and common but it provided me no feedback of that. It just simply declined me, not really bothering to check that the first two digits of my card began with either a 37 or 34 (and yes, it really is that easy to determine if an arbitrary credit card happens to be Amex). Now, repeat the whole process again but this time with my Visa debit card and all is well. Something finally goes right. A major victory. Now, on to Quynh’s TransLink card! Should be just as easy right? Would be, except entering her card into the AVM gives me an ambiguous at best error: Could not read your card, please contact TransLink customer service. This one’s a head scratcher too. Her card’s been working with no problems for the past few weeks! Hoping it’s an issue with just this machine, we proceed to try every AVM in the Powell & Market station at least hoping for a different answer. Four machines later, no luck. Not much left to do other than call TransLink and hope for the best.
This part of the conversation occurs several hours afterwards, nearing the time when I’m sure most customer service departments close for the day. Still no phone call confirming our monthly passes will be moved to next month, but no matter I’ll inquire about that during my phone call. The new CSR tells me she can find no record of that on my account (good job first CSR) and that there’s nothing she can do to identify who the previous CSR was. Great software these guys have. Though it seems capable of nothing other than taking money - very slowly at that. Rather than dwell on that, I get to the matter at hand. We have a card that strangely has the ability to swipe on busses and trains, but doesn’t work at an AVM. She asks me for the error message and I give her my best recollection of it. Apparently, without the exact error message she claims there’s nothing she can do. I’m sorry I don’t remember word-for-word the exact error message I saw a few hours ago, but I should have known in advance your software systems could only accept perfection. The new CSR re-suggests Walgreens, to which I reply we tried that as well. She confirms that Walgreens can add a monthly pass, and that in fact I should ask for a manager at the photo booth and not a cashier. Ugh (see above, about the cashier claiming this isn’t possible). Who’s to blame, the original CSR who gave me misinformation or the cashier who doesn’t know what services they even offer? At this point I don’t really care. Handling one task at a time, I finally make my way to the same Walgreens. This time, talking to someone who actually knows what their doing.
The manager comes out of the ether and begins ringing me up. We swipe my card (Amex, I love how Walgreens will take it but not AVMs) and she charges me the $55. Great, it must have worked. Except, it didn’t. I wish I recalled precisely what the manager told me, but to the best of my recollection she claims that they can’t do anymore TransLink transactions because this store’s “reached the limit for the day.” What the hell does that even mean? This can’t be Walgreen’s fault, they just take money. Something’s failing in between Walgreens and TransLink. Oh well, now we go through the refund process. Remember, she took my money first. Eventually she tells me I can go down the block to the next Walgreens and try there instead. I walk a block down and go inside and eventually track down the manager (rinse, repeat). Except, this Walgreens doesn’t do TransLink. Great, so only some Walgreens can actually do TransLink transactions. One more block, and I make to a Walgreens I’ve confirmed can do TransLink. The manager first attempts to read my TransLink card in what I can only describe is some sort of mobile terminal. I’m glad he didn’t ring me up first, because we didn’t get much further than that. His handy TransLink card scanner simply informs us that “Error 42” has occurred, and I’m basically out of luck. I try one last time to call customer service, but I’m greeted with nothing but an automated phone system that when attempting to press 0 to get to customer service just hangs up on me. No message to call back during work hours (whatever they are), just a disconnect. A fitting end to a day of frustration.
The next day
Well we’re one for two. At least my multi-hour triathlon of customer-service-hurdle got us somewhere. In my last and hopefully final TransLink call we finally get back to the subject of yesterday’s attempt to move the extra monthly pass to next month. Thankfully this goes without a hitch, but the end of this phone calls leaves me doubting my entire experience even more. I describe most of yesterday’s ordeal, and finally get the word that they’ll attempt to replace Quynh’s defective TransLink card. Great! Except it comes with a catch. They won’t cross-mail me a new card, they’ll only let me send in the old card and only after testing it will they send me back a new card free of charge should they find a problem. Mind you, these things aren’t free. They’re not expensive either at $5, but it’s the principal of not paying for someone else’s mistake. My option is either wait a week or maybe even more to send them the defective card and get a new one back, in which the entire time I’d have to pay for MUNI out of pocket, or to buy a new card while I send them the defective one back. Hell, they won’t even compensate me for the $5 I’d have to spend to buy a new card should they find the one I sent them is defective. I refuse to spend my money to fix their problem. But apparently, that’s the best they can do.
And that’s TransLink for you. The organization seems to fail on every single level. The cards and the AVMs don’t work. The customer service department can’t refund mistakes, and has barely functional systems. The managers won’t approve account corrections. No one knows how the system works. I don’t know what’s going on there, but it’s a long ways off before anyone should consider relying on TransLink alone because the moment you need help you’re in for a bag of hurt.
