One day I’d really love to write a post about the Hop Card which wasn’t dominated by the utter incompetence of those involved in its introduction. Unfortunately, today is not one of those days.
On Monday sales of the new AT HOP card went live (apparently) and from October 27th (this coming Saturday) you will be able to start using your AT HOP card on the rail system. According to the new AT HOP website, the cards can now be purchased for $10, or for a limited (unspecified) time for $5.
There is a one-off non-refundable cost of $10. However there is a limited promotional period from 22 October where cards will be sold for $5 (that’s half the price of the normal card cost)
As I already have a HOP card (or, as people are starting to call the cards of the HOP/Snapper variety, a “SNOP” card) the idea of forking out more money for a card doesn’t particularly take my fancy so I was happy to read the following buried deep in the FAQs for the AT HOP card:
If I have a HOP bus card do I get a free AT HOP card?
Yes. If you travel on trains and buses you will need to have both the old purple HOP and an AT HOP card. From 22 October free AT HOP cards will be issued to train users who also use the bus. You will need to fill in the form. Terms and conditions apply.
It’d be nice if this was advertised a bit more clearly, but good that there’s a process to enable current SNOP card users to get a free version of the AT HOP card.
Where things get a bit more confusing, and poorly planned in my opinion, relates to your average rail user and how they’re meant to get a hold of this new AT HOP card and put money on it. For a start, the cards are only being sold in a stupidly small number of locations. More from the FAQs:
Where can I get an AT HOP card and when is it available?
From the week commencing 22nd October you will be able to get an AT HOP card from Ticket Offices located at Britomart, Newmarket, New Lynn and Papakura train stations and from sales staff within the rail network.
Let’s just hope there are a whole heap of sales staff on and around the rail network over the next week. Otherwise the queues for cards in these four locations will be eye-watering. I might have to pop down to Britomart during the evening peak to check out the queues.
Where things start to get really hopeless though is in relation to topping up your brand new AT HOP card. You’d think that you might want to get some money loaded up onto it straight away when you purchase it over the next week, so things are ready to go from Saturday onwards. If that was your plan, it seems like you’re out of luck:
How do I load money onto the AT HOP card?
It is easy to load funds onto your AT HOP card to enable you to travel. We call funds loaded onto your card HOP money.
You will be able to do this at Ticket & Top-Up machines located at every rail station, at Ticket Offices at Britomart, Newmarket and New Lynn or online from 27 October.
How do I load a monthly rail pass onto the AT HOP card?
It is easy to load a monthly pass onto your AT HOP card to enable you to travel.
You will be able to do this online or at Ticket & Top-Up machines located at every rail station, at Ticket Offices at Britomart, Newmarket and New Lynn or online from 27 October.
I have highlighted on bold the key date. Remember that you can buy the card now, but not top it up until Saturday. How crazy is that? This will mean especially long queues at Britomart next week I would imagine.
I get really frustrated by stuff like this because it should be so easy to get right. Make the provision of free AT HOP cards for those with existing SNOP cards easy. Start selling the AT HOP cards at all the retail outlets currently selling SNOP scards. For goodness sake let people put money on their new cards and then make damn well sure the rail network is crawling with people who can sell the cards or show people how to top them up at stations for the next few weeks. This stuff isn’t hard and this is a $110 million project. We need to get this right.
Updated:
You can top up your AT HOP card at machines now (even though the FAQs say you can’t). And I’ve updated the link to get your free AT HOP card if you have any current bus pass so it’s now correct.
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I think there is a missing comma in their FAQ answers (there are a number of typos):
“You will be able to do this at Ticket & Top-Up machines located at every rail station, at Ticket Offices at Britomart, Newmarket and New Lynn [I think a comma should be here?] or online from 27 October.”
As I read it, mentally placing a comma in the place noted, you can top up your card at a ticket machine now. Online registration and topup is available from the 27th. Might pay to get AT to verify this (and proofread their FAQ!).
Oh and the “Apply Now” link on their website was there on their website last night and is there now – try clicking Refresh. If that fixes it, then AT need to set cache-control “max-age” and “expires” headers on their site to stop that from happening, as the information changes often.
The correct link (ie. not to the “Sign up for our newsletter” page) is http://www.athopsignup.co.nz/ (according to AT at https://twitter.com/AklTransport/status/260509989435756544)
I read it as the online goes live on the 27th, I assume you can top up before hand at ticket offices and ticket machines.
You can at the machines but your not supposed to. The website won’t be up until the 27th – see this tweet:
https://twitter.com/AT_HOP/status/260539634524749824
Here is the real link for getting your free card: http://athop.uq.co.nz/EntitlementForm (or access via athop.co.nz and click “apply now”)
And here is the link for the timetable of when sales people will be at your station: http://www.maxx.co.nz/media/92689/at_early_bird_ambassador_schedule.pdf.pdf
Note that at http://www.maxx.co.nz/info/service-updates/half-price-at-hop-cards.aspx it says they only accept eftpos, maybe cash is considered too unsafe?
EFTPOS only is for the roaming ambassadors, and makes sense as it’s safer, they’re not a robbery target, and they just need to carry a mobile EFTPOS terminal.
No more of a robbery target than a bus driver is though.
A bus driver is a moving target, a HOP ambassador carrying lots of cash at a train station is a sitting duck. And train staff carrying cash for tickets have been violently robbed a number of times recently.
Managed to eventually find the form yesterday (thanks to twitter) and register for my free one. Note in the terms and conditions that I should allow up to 10 days for delivery. Super helpful. If that’s the case why didn’t they have us registering/applying last week?
I’m of the opinion the full AT HOP website with the ability to apply for your free card, register your card, buy a mail order card, top up your card and set up an auto top up (i.e. full functionality) should have been up weeks ago for pilot users to test and for us civilians to use.
Try being a ferry passenger, Fullers staff informed me you cant buy HOP cards from the downtown ferry terminal (where almost all users pass through) until the day they go live on the ferry network – also the early bird discount only really seems available to rail users unless I take the time to detour to Britomart and then sit on my card for the next month before being given any details of the fare structures for the ferry.
Makes one think that maybe all not as seems re the Snapper debacle.
Dave the snapper debacle has always been a combination of AT’s incopetence and snappers immoral corporate attitude, however snapper come more at fault than AT. Not saying that AT helped the situation at all, but if anything positive comes from it, it is that we wont have a insuperior snapper solution in Auckland.
You can top up now at ticket machines and offices. Ambassadors sell the cards at random stations as well
You can top up your AT HOP card at a Ticket & Top-Up amchine now
That’s good. Then why does your FAQ page say the opposite?
Sharon any chance of updating the SNOP website with a link through to the ATHop website? http://www.myhop.co.nz/Pages/default.aspx still says “AT HOP will become available from late October for train and ferry users only. We will keep you updated on when it will be rolled out onto bus services.”
Besides being incompetent, AT are stupid. These cards cost <NZ$3 in bulk, they should just give them away ($3 x 100,000 customers = $300,000) compared to cash payment terminals ~ $10,000 + installation each, 50+ terminals installed = $500,000+. They could also put them in the coke and chip vending machines that are everywhere. Not having Internet top-up is a VERY big mistake
Your facts are a bit off there pete. The reason AT and Snapper both charge for the cards is so that people don’t just board a bus/train with enough balance for a 1 stage ride then travel for many more, going into negative balance, and then just get a new free card or buy one for less than the amount of negative balance they have. I understand the manufacturing cost is actually much less than $1. Also, where did you get the indea they won’t be able to be topped up online. The website allowing for online top-ups will go up on Saturday.
That go into negative balance is always an issue, but for the 100,000+ current regular users they should just hand them out
Online top-up is coming, good, didn’t know that. Rather last minute if it goes up on Saturday? Sounds like a Wheedle…
There is no way to give each train user only one card.
I too am concerned at how late the AT site is going up. It should have been up for the pilot users
Does anyone know what happens to any money left on the SNOP card when the bus systems eventually change? Will it be transferred to the AT HOP or do we just run down the SNOP balance to close-to-zero? Or preferably below zero…
I am going to do my best to get it as far in negative as I can.
Hey, bus drivers don’t get paid enough as it is. Please pay your way!
HAHA, if those news articles are right, getting paid that much to drive a bus seems like a good deal! I should be considering dropping my structural engineering job, and join NZBus. Given the amount of overtime I work and don’t get paid for (advantage of being salary) I’d earn more as a bus driver per hour. But then I’d prob miss the stresses and responsibilities.
No bus drivers don’t get paid enough, but to think that NZ Bus will increase pay due to increasing revenue is folly. They posted a $43M profit, a few dollars extra is hardly going to change that.
Not that I’m encouraging the suggestion but besides Louis M’s point I would assume it’s not going to make a direct difference to NZ Bus anyway. Unless I’m mistaken while both NZ Bus and Snapper are Infratil subsidiaries, they’re run separately. I don’t really know how the agreement between Snapper and NZ Bus works but I would presume Snapper pay NZ Bus whatever is due for the trip. If the balance is negative or whatever, Snapper is the one which loses out not NZ Bus.
If comparing responsibilities with the different industries, bus drivers are very well paid. Of course everyone would like to be paid more but there has to be a reasonable amount to make you valuable for the company. The more they get paid the higher the cost of the service, the costs will be passed on somewhere. $43m profit seems like a huge number to the layman, but when you look at the amount of capatial tied up in running a bus company as big as NZBus, you would honestly expect more.
In saying that, although it’s not a public identity, they get a fair amount of subsidies from the public domain, so they should be looking to invest the majority of profits back into the services to reduce the subsidies. But we are talking about Infratil, and if snapper has taught us anything, they really don’t care that much about the public as long as they make a buck.
There were plenty of AT ambassadors at Kingsland this morning at ~0845, approaching people about the new Hop cards with EFTPOS terminals in hand.
And I know for a fact the topup machines* are working as I’ve been topping up my (pilot) HOP card for a few weeks now!
*at least in Newmarket, Grafton and Kingsland
Yep and schedule of which stations the ambassadors will be at and on which day on the update section of the AT website.
Bought my $5 Hop card today from the nice girl at Newmarket. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her in carrying money.
I only wish I could start using my card on the 27th but I have a monthly pass which has two weeks to run. Wish I could convert this?
To be honest, the things you have highlighted aren’t that big of a deal. Really making a mountain out of a mole hill with this article, but that’s just my opinion. I was in Auckland last week and didn’t notice any queues at the top up machines, in fact it the so-called queues were nothing compared to the city stations in Sydney on a typical evening peak. That’s not to say they couldn’t do better, but it doesnt seem to be that bad.
Agree, however it is a little bit soon to say that yet, for the general public using these cards, we haven’t yet started. Even in terms of machines only a small number of people have actually started using them as tickets are still available on-board and 10trip tickets are still being sold. This will all change come the 27th so will be interesting.
However a still don’t see it being a huge problem.
Using the pilot I’ve learnt only to topup as you get off a trip. Trying to squeeze it into a run for the train, and not knowing how many people are using the ticket machines makes it too unpredictable the other way round.
Can’t wait to online topup. I just hope they drop the silly 25c topup charge, and offer a free txt alert service when your balance runs low, like the phone companies do. Can’t be too hard….?
The 25c will still be payable for single online top ups, but auto top ups will be free. Both are to become available on Saturday. I don’t see why they need the charge however.
What I really can’t wait for is auto topup. Never have to think about it again.
I am loving using the card too, and am sure that when the dust has settled it will work smoothly, but this phase does seem to be unnecessarily messy. Really what matters is that everything works well when we can use the system on all modes. And perhaps then AT can focus on getting some great deals out there to attract new users!
I want to get an AT Hop card and transfer the balance on my SNOP card (freshly topped up but rejected the last time I attempted to catch a bus) across to HOP. and ditch SNOP entirely. I wonder if I can do this?
AT HOP allows you to hand in the card and get the balance transferred to your bank account, I would assume SNOP cards will allow the same.
Jennifer, IIRC on a prior thread one of the admin guys (Matt L?) said that SNOP users wouldn’t be able to transfer the credit to the AT Hop. It’s probably just best to use what available credit you still have on the SNOP and then get rid of it.
BTW did anyone see on the ATHop website that if AT Hop users show their card, they travel free on the red city link bus, just as SNOP users do.
When GO – Rider went to Snapper, everyone was actively encouraged to run down the balance first, as the entire balance transfer had to be done manually.
http://www.maxx.co.nz/media/92826/at_hop_launch_dl_booklet_final.pdf page 5.
Trains from October 27:
• All train services and red city LINK bus services when you show your AT HOP card to the driver when boarding.
It’s also printed on the side of the city link bus that it’s free for AT HOP users as well
At Manurewa last night one of the “ambassadors” was selling the benefits by saying that it could also be used from next week on the buses.
I put her straight and phoned Maxx who were horrified.
Very poor.
Is there any word on what will happen to paper 10-trip ferry tickets, once the Hop card becomes useable on ferries? Will the paper tickets continue to be valid?
See the FAQ on athop.co.nz for the answer to that one. Physical tentrips will continue to be available, and between the lines it looks like tentrips will provide a much better discount than HOP money. My understanding is eventually the tentrips will become a HOP product, but not straight away.
So I missed the roving ambassador at Baldwin Ave then. It really is stupidly hard to buy these things. Considering that a major function of these things is to get people to pay for a service before they actually receive the service (in other words, to give AT money) it’s hard to understand why they are making it so difficult. Why aren’t they available in dairies? You know, like phonecards and transport tickets in normal cities?
AT being stingy with their budget I reckon. Considering the HOP brand is already tarnished enough from Snapper’s involvement I’m surprised AT hasn’t gone overboard to make things really really easy.
Have to draw the line somewhere, its never going to be easy enough for all commuters, they should be able to do online and get sent to you, I’d think they’d be better doing that than having roaming ambassadors.
However even then people will complain they are not knocking on doors giving you free cards…
I read above about possibly not being able to transfer balance from SNOP to HOP. I presume you will be able to transfer your Ritchies (and H&E, UE) balance when the time comes as was done for GoRider but does anyone know for sure?
Cheers
I presume so also, it’s a pretty safe bet.
I suppose a thought had not gone into the fact that many students travel by train daily…An intermediate kid wanted to buy an AT hop card for $5, but couldn’t because he didn’t have an eftpos card to pay for the card (only option) this would be the case with many other non-eftpos-owning students…so some will miss out on the ‘early bird’ deal…ridiculous..
Entirely agree with your sentiments on the stupidity of not being able to actually put funds on the card until Saturday. What you missed, of course, is when actually doing this on their website there is a message informing that it can take 72 hours to set up the payment – which takes it through to Tuesday. So I set up a payment on Saturday – on Sunday pm the account still shows a zero balance. Twenty minutes or so on the phone to AT today failed to clarify matters at all, so I get to go to the station in the morning and more than likely having to shell out full fare because Auckland Transport can’t think to get some pretty basic timelines coordinated. More focused on finding income sources, than worrying about the customers. Par for the course, I guess.
I still smarting over the whole concept of having to buy the card that makes life simpler for AT – how much would it really have cost AT to give these away, or sell them at $5 or $10 with a preloaded credit to that value. Might have bought them the time (if not the goodwill) to get through the teething problems.
Roger, just do a one off manual top-up at one of the ticket machines (you were able to do this last week, I did on the card I bought for my wife) so your card has a useable balance for the first couple of days, then tag on. The 25c one-off top-up fee is less than the difference between even a one stage cash vs hop fare at 30c, so would be a much better option than buying a cash fare.
The initial cost of the card is crucial to stop people taking advantage of the system. I don’t believe it’s actually about the cost of the card itself, but to stop people buying cards, running them into negative and just getting a new card.
Also Top-ups have been available for over a week, just not online.
Well, I loaded up the card online on the 27th, and my credit card got charged on the same date. It is now 12:41am on the 31st and my account still has zero balance! Is the AT system still living in the batch processing age? Maybe someone should tell them that online real time transactions have been invented years ago!
Have you tagged on since? It won’t change until you tag.
Is that just the very first time you use the card or after every top-up it doesn’t update until you use it next? If so….. that’s totally idiotic
You need to tag on every time you top up for the new balance to show up
Still no definitive answer to question about whether those of us who purchased the snapper reader stick to top up HOP cards from home can still use them for the new ATHOP cards. Or is this yet another rip-off. Notice the readers are being sold for $20 now – a bargain ???
I would say almost certainly no, but you won’t need an extra piece of hardware to top up your card, you can do that online with ATHOP. Just another example of why Snapper HOP was the lesser system.
It would be nice though if you ownder an NFC reader to be able to use it to put top-ups directly on your card and not wait 72hrs.
Pity they didn’t get their act together before we dished out $40!! And to be now selling them at $20 – for a few months’ use beggars belief. The downside of the new system is that we are now charged to top up on line – what for?
The real pity is how Snapper HOP forced itself into the market after they lost the tender to supply cards and then lost their appeal to the tender in court. Or perhaps the pity is how our benevolent cabinet ministers intervened in the proper process to allow the Snapper balls-up to happen. Auckland Transport never wanted the Snapper mess, if you have a problem with being charged $40 for a device for sole privilege of being able to add money to buy a bus ticket, perhaps you should take that up with Snapper/Infratil. AT rejected the Snapper system for good reason, but Snapper insisted on foisting it on their customers anyway.
Auto online topups are free of charge. I believe the 25c fee is to encourage people to set up automated top ups rather than consistently top up manually.
No, the pity is that the public are held to ransom while two companies bicker and argue. We don’t have much of a choice. Yes, auto top ups are free of fees – not sure I want to use the ATHOP card as a banking service. Think my money is better off in my bank account to use as and when I see fit.
There was only one company that held the public to ransom, that was Snapper. If they had simply accepted they lost the tender fair and square then none of this debacle would have happened, and we would have all been using the ATHOP over a year ago. The system we have ended up with is the best one, and the one that we were supposed to have in the first place. The fact that Snapper dived in to try and unilaterally wedge themselves into the market and screw over their customers in the process was a nasty piece of work, but we can’t blame AT for that, only Snapper and the interfering politicians from the Beehive that let them do it. AT and NZTA tried to play ball with them after they forced their way in to the system, but at the end of the day the Snapper system was old and inferior and couldn’t be made to work with the national standard.
If you don’t want to put much money on your ATHOP then auto top up is perfect. You can set the top up level at something low like $5, and set it to only add $10 at a time. That way you’ll never run out of credit on the card, never have to top up again, but only have between $5 and $15 out of your bank account at any given time.
I don’t think Snapper is to blame here. They were only acting in their commercial interest. As their company is basically unprofitable without Auckland there was no point them taking the ‘moral high ground’ as they would not be making any further significant tenders anyway. It is the politicians fault for forcing Snapper on the NZTA and ARTA. You can’t blame a company for lobbying, you can only blame the politicians.
Well I disagree, of course companies will act in their commercial interest, but they also have to be good corporate citizens and contribute to society. There are way to make money without screwing over the citizenry and raiding the public purse.
The Snapper ‘feeders’ were never advertised on the HOP website. Most HOP users don’t even know about them, and for good reason. They have been on sale for $20 multiple times now, including when HOP was first launched back in May 2011.
Purchased a AT HOP card with their introduction for use with Ferry travel just as a backup (since they only do single trip fares at launch). I registered my card online and used a VISA to put $20 on it on Wednesday the 5th of November.
The online site did say it may take up to 72 hours for the funds to appear on the card which I thought was normal “passing the buck” for VISA companies and any possible delays outside of AT’s control. Its now Monday, 132 hours later and my card still has a balance of $0.00. My VISA statement is not even showing the transaction as processing, its already cleared and shows the date of the 5th.
How utterly USELESS is an electronic transport card that takes this long to even top up!!
Hi Sam – you’re money will be on the account, however for the balance to show up you need to tag your card at one of the posts. You can tag on and immediately off if you don’t want to travel anywhere, the balance will then show up online too when you next check. The information can’t be transferred to the card unless it is updated by a tag post.
*your money
Thanks bbc, you’d think they would put that information up on the website somewhere given its not exactly obvious.
agreed – it’s not immediately obvious until you’ve experienced it once yourself
So I have an auto topup setup on 15 Nov 2013, again on 12 Feb 2014 and again on 5 Mar 2014. I also have a manual topup on the 5th of Mar 2014. This morning I phoned for the 4th time, and I also got the story “just tag and everything will show up”.
Travelled to work (on the bus, tagging on and tagging off – same as I did last week and the week before that), and guess what?
I don’t have words anymore….
Here we go again – no trains over Xmas and the rail buses for the next two weeks of January Surely the powers that be must understand that people are returning to work on Jan 7 and rely on the trains to get too and from work – I must be stupid though to believe that the powers that be actually care about their long suffering customers
Been over 3 weeks and my card still hasn’t been topped up $10 (using website)