Last weekend I had a bit of a moan about the services that get put on for events. This weekend there is expected to be another large event in the form of the NRL match with the Warriors playing the Sydney Roosters at Eden Park. As I’m a season ticket holder so will going along and the good news is that Auckland Transport have put on extra trains on to help deal with the extra crowds. Where I think AT are letting themselves down is with the ticketing.
First I think it is worth pointing out that it is up to the event provider as to whether they decide to pay for free PT travel or not. Some sports, like rugby, do this and it allows AT to offer free PT with a match ticket. I think this is the perfect solution however the Warriors management have decided not to do this. I actually think AT should make this requirement for any event over a certain size i.e. anything that will draw more than 15,000 people, in the same way they require organisers to provide traffic management plans.
Despite the stupid position of the Warriors management, to ATs credit, they then decided to offer a special train fare of $5 return. That means that for anyone travelling further than one stage, it is a good deal. The only problem is this little statement.
Pre-purchase your event ticket from Thursday 28 February from ticket offices located at:
- Britomart
- Newmarket
- New Lynn (open Monday to Saturday only)
- Papakura (open Monday to Friday only)
So the only way to get them is to pre purchase them at a station that most of the people going to the event aren’t likely to go to. Even odder is that those with HOP cards need to purchase a paper ticket to get the deal. To me it just seems like AT are making it far more difficult for customers than it needs to be.
While on the subject of HOP. The board were told last month that roughly 60% of trips are made using hop cards but that efforts would be made to increase that level. Likely as part of that, they are now running another campaign to sell the cards to users in a similar way to what they did when the system first launched. They are also once again offering the cards for $5 but for some reason decided to keep things quite, only placing the info online without really pushing it. As such there are only a couple more days
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What they don’t tell you is that they will be selling the $5 tickets on the trains on the day. We went to the T20 cricket a few weeks ago and I spent ten minutes queueing on the Friday to buy our tickets only to discover we needn’t have bothered.
Why can’t you buy tickets and hop cards online? If I can get my passport online, surely I should be able to get a hop card or ticket online.
You should be able to, really. Add on an extra $1 for postage, and have online sales.
What’s more, you can order a HOP card online and have it delivered – if you’re trading in a purple/Snapper HOP card. So why can’t you just buy one?
It took me months and months to get my replacement HOP card. Lots of cock ups and mistakes then after making quite a stink I finally got one sent out to me (this was months ago now). I tried to register that online and that failed. More ringing up AT to try to get that sorted and in the end they had to do something themselves to fix it. I just got a message saying yep, that’s all registered now.
Amusingly I have never used it. In the end I gave up entirely on trains and have started taking buses again, no HOP required (yet).
Then last Sunday I get a confirmation email from them saying my new HOP card had been dispatched. Remember this is months after already getting one after much trouble. Before I even got over my incredulity over receiving that on Wednesday I got the following email from them:
“On Sunday, we sent you an email with the subject line “Your AT HOP card has now been dispatched”. This email was sent to you in error, due to an oversight on the part of a third party company who manages parts of the registration process for the AT HOP card. We have reviewed this matter with this third party and ensured that processes have been put in place to ensure that this does not happen again.
Please accept our apologies for any confusion this email may have caused.”
Is anyone else having flashbacks to the opening credits of Monty Python and the Holy Grail?
For what it’s worth, I got my replacement HOP card in a couple of days, it registered just fine and has worked flawlessly since then.
Unlike the actual, you know, trains.
They did the same with the Helensville santa specials. Told everyone to pre-purchase from the city (who in Helensville is going to drive to Auckland to buy their ticket???), so nobody used the trains, then on the day they had the tickets available onboard anyway. It’s just very poor planning.
Telling everyone to pre-purchase from the city is not new. They do it every day for the day and family passes, and the discovery pass. It’s just bad customer service. All of these regular or special tickets should be available from the machines, or sold onboard.
Where is the online info of which you speak Matt L? Can you please provide a link – I’ve searched all over the myhop site and can’t find the images you’ve posted above, just reference to a $10 fee. BTW the website is pretty but a disaster to navigate!
Google Auckland Hop $5
http://www.maxx.co.nz/info/service-updates/at-hop-card-now-only-$5star.aspx
Thanks Anthony, I didn’t think of looking on the maxx site. Will pop over to Newmarket Station on Monday and get one.