By the end of this weekend we will finally be clear of one of the biggest frustrations – two different hop cards. On Saturday the Go West buses will be converted to AT HOP followed by Waka Pacific on Sunday.
Can I continue to use my purple HOP card on Go West buses?
Your purple HOP card will be replaced by the AT HOP card on 7 December 2013. You will not be able to use your purple HOP card on Go West buses from that date.
Hold onto your purple HOP Card.
As AT HOP is being progressively rolled out, some buses on your route may only accept the purple HOP card and some buses may only accept the AT HOP card for travel. For this reason, we recommend that you maintain a balance on both your purple HOP and AT HOP cards, and continue to carry them with you until Waka Pacific launches AT HOP on 8 December 2013.
The change-over of the NZ Bus buses to AT HOP was always going to be difficult but I think it was made even more so due the poor communications from Auckland Transport. With the Snapper Hop out of the picture and people no longer needing to carry two cards I think much of the confusion and frustration will be resolved.
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Nice early Christmas present for many West/South PT users!
Yes, good that there will only be one type of Hop card soon. But Ritchies has been pushed back to next year for some unexplained reason, even though they were all kitted out and ready to go for early September. So for me its still two cards for a few more months.
Indeed. It certainly isn’t the case that “people no longer needing to carry two cards” for a big chunk of users.
Annoyingly the Riches and the blue HOP card interfere with each other meaning i can’t just tap on and off but have to stop, open my wallet, pull out the correct card, tap it, then pass through the turnstile. This makes entry/exit much slower than it will be once they finally roll out the HOP card to all operators.
Woohoo, time to go to FIX and spend the balance on my Snapper card
Can you still uses snapper hop cards in Wellington?
Yes as such
Transferred the balance of the old card onto my AT Hop card this afternoon. Was done at Newmarket with a smile in less than a minute.
Are they supposed to charge us 25c for such a transfer? My guy checked my balance, took 25c off with calculator, then topped up AT card with calculated balance. Then asked someone next to him whether they should charge 25c for transferring credit. Other person shook his head. My guy turns to me and says, “have a nice day”
Transferred two cards’ worth at Newmarket station last weekend. After all the doom and gloom about the HOP mess I thought it was going to be a total hassle, especially after I’d lost one of the purple cards 🙁
Had to pay for one blue HOP card, but the balance of the lost card was salvaged, and all sorted in a couple of minutes. Satisfied customer here.
You’re supposed to get a free HOP to replace your purple Hop. Did they not let you have two free ones?
Hi Steve, thanks for the pointer. I know you’re entitled to a free ATHOP card – I got one for one of our purple cards but the online registration didn’t work for the other one so I just wrote the $5 ATHOP card cost off.
I could have pushed the issue (it is a bit unfair on reflection…) but I was with the better half and the little one and in a hurry, so I was happy just to have recovered the balance of the lost purple HOP card etc. without much hassle.
My wife and I approached a ticketing guy at Britomart with our Snappers 2 weeks ago. He knew exactly what we wanted and transferred our balance to ATHOP no questions asked or any hassles. All that minimum $10 balance stuff was nonsense in my experience.
I hope I go into a negative balance on my last trip 😀
The orange snapper kit was gone from the Go West buses today so they weren’t charging fares all day. Nice way to end the week and goes some way to recoup all those evil 25 cent charges.
Are there any more southern retailers?
If there are still only the two, this will be yet another minor disaster.
Looks like there’s a reasonable number north of about Papatoetoe and nothing much south of that: http://www.athop.co.nz/get-a-card/Pages/Find-a-retailer.aspx
Although if you already have a purple Hop you can get a free replacement card online.
Only one card, but take some cash because it will probably let you down or at least overcharge you.
Got a bus home from Auckland City last night and the ticket machines were not working so we all got a free ride. Lots of smiles on this bus!
Do they let you keep your Snop card after you’ve transferred the balance to AT Hop? Just thinking it would be useful for occasional visits to Wellington, I can top it up with a small amount at the airport there.
Is it just me or is the AT Hop card site amateurville? I have given up trying to check my transactions to see if I got charged too much on the Link services. It is so un-intuitive and unfriendly to use.
As with the other AT IT services – eg the bus stop time boards and the AT app, the HOP site shows AT is inept at this IT game which is no surprise as the Hop rollout has been such a disaster.
It should be dead easy – what exactly is the problem you are having? Don’t forget your transactions will take a day or so to show up.
I haven’t had any trouble with the “view transactions” section of the AT Hop website. Log in, click on the right tab, and there they are. Is it not loading for you? If not, is there some kind of error message displayed?
I did run into a problem with the “apply for a refund” page on that website; after an incorrect charge, I tried to use it multiple times and every time it returned an error. Got my $1.62 back by filling in the “contact us” form, but that’s apparently something they need to fix.
I think this is why they changed the roll out schedule…When they realized the delay they had to make it less confusing by making all the NZ Bus change…sort of like a compensation for the delay…now there is only one card called Hop and we should begin looking at the new network along with the new fare zone system
Are SNOP cards used on any buses now?