Auckland Transport (AT) is warning residents of the southern and eastern suburbs about a possible scam involving its new transport card.
AT has been made aware of a couple in Papatoetoe who were approached by a group of three people going door to door claiming to be representatives of the organisation. They offered AT HOP cards for $20 (cash), were asked to fill in a fake application form and told the cards would be posted in due course. The couple paid the money and heard no more.
AT advises that it does not have representatives selling cards door to door and suggests anyone approached should contact it immediately (phone 355 3553). The Police have been advised.
AT HOP is a reusable smart card which can be used for travel on trains, buses and ferries. Cards can be purchased online or from ticket offices at some train stations, including the Papakura ticket office; AT customer service centres; or at authorised retailers : http://at.govt.nz/bus-train-ferry/at-hop/get-a-card/find-a-retailer-or-buy-a-card-online/
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Of course this is fake. If it was really AT they would have charge the unreasonable, ridiculous 25 cent “top up” fee!
25c for a manual or machine transaction is perfectly reasonable, after all they do give you a 10% discount with hop. You save 28c on the basic fare any time you use it, and up to 98c.
I save $4.50 on each weekly top up, well only $4.25 I suppose.
If you really don’t like the fee they could reduce the discount a few cents on each fare instead.
Do all your top-ups online and you pay no fee, that’s what I’ve always done since the AT-HOP became available. See it as a way to encourage people to do the top-ups at home rather than coming into a service centre. Like wise I’d like to see the price differential between cash and HOP increase to a lot more than 10%.
Actually, one-off online top-ups still attract the transaction fee. The auto-top up function doesn’t but it’s hideously unreliable (which is why I refuse to use it). Also one to beware of is that once there’s a credit card or account attached to you HOP account for online transactions, there is no functionality to remove your details (which considering most sites that let you purchase on line have a standard policy on deleting customer financial data on request by said customer).
Works perfectly for me, whenever my balance drops below $10 it adds $20 to the account. I set it up and forget about it, and that’s what a smart card for PT should be.
I don’t understand what you mean by unreliable. To me, one-off online top-up is unreliable because I still need to wait for 24 hours for the top up instruction to be loaded onto the bus devices to transfer to my card when I next use it. Whereas the auto-top up instructions are pre-loaded on my card and when I fall below the threshold balance my card give an instruction to the bus device to charge my credit card. I started using the card this month and I’ve already had five auto-top ups happened without any problem.
Perhaps if people *actually had places to buy* HOP cards in their neighbourhoods and communities, they wouldn’t fall for such a scam.
After all these months, there are still pitifully few retailers.
Thats the irony about this scam. Scammer doing marketing that AT really should be doing! Shows there is latent demad for AT HOP cards but hard to get old of them unless go to Britomart. Same with friend in Ellerslie, much easier for her to get one at Britomart than anywhere near home!
Nick R – say 25 cents FEE (rip off) and wait 72 long hours for the credit to come on your card. Yeah right.
What about those people without easy access to computers? Yes, there are families in South Auckland with that issue.
What about people on low fixed incomes who cannot afford auto top ups? Yes, lower income people do use PT as well you know.
What about people without credit cards? Yes, they exist too – I even know some.
What about people on low incomes with large families with multiple HOP cards and unable to have auto top ups?
Why does AT get to use all stored value credit, but for users to give them that money most have to pay a rip off fee?
I see some very patriotic people here. Patriotic to AT, not to public transport users.
Why except status quo when it sucks?
I never said anything about credit cards or auto top ups Jon, I specifically said manual and machine transactions. Personally I put cash into a ticket machine at the bus station.
Those on low incomes, or without credit cards, or whatever, they can top up at a machine, a retailer, a station or a service desk, pay the 25c and enjoy a discount of 25c for every $2.50 they top up, more or less.
Look if it upsets you that much then simply campaign to reduce the hop discount slightly to remove the top up fee. It’s all the same in the end.
No Nick, it’s not. With the old system we PAID NO EXTRA to receive a discount on 10 trips, monthlies etc… this is what a lot of people used to buy. Now you cannot buy 10 trips, so you receive a discount (compared to cash) but still get stung with a top up fee which is currently set at 25 cents, but surely will rise if not nibbed in the bud now.
Still Nick, defending dodgy AT practises at the expense of the public. Why?
No need to shout Jon. It’s not a dodgy practice, it’s a 25c transaction fee on transactions that cost more to deliver. Make a single connection and you’ll get rebated twice that each time. If you really want to then they could put fares up to cover it instead. But who really cares, it’s 25c per transaction. Top up more each time, use the auto facility or if you really insist on making lots of little top ups then suck it up and pay the 25c while you occupy the ticket machine or the staff at the window.
Don’t you have anything better to get indignant about that a tiny top up processing fee on discounted hop travel that gives you extra discounts on transfer and can be used on all services in Auckland? Surely you can find something better to campaign against?
My God, this is starting to get like Penny Bright and her “getting rid of all the consultants” that she went on about in any/every sentence she spoke during the last mayoral campaign.
I simply cannot fathom a couple of you being so pro fees which simply do not need to be there. The pro AT fees gang are happy to defend dodgy fees and refuse to ask AT how much money it is making from use of the millions of dollars in stored value it has received. One eyed? Totally!
I almost start to think if you have worked in some way for AT in the past you become less impartial.
Pro AT fees gang? Please. I’m agnostic on it Jon. The 25c fee is so small it is almost irrelevant. But like I’ve said a few times now, they could simply reduce the discount by a few cents on each trip to eliminate it if you are really concerned. I don’t think anyone cares either way though? Anyone but Jon here concerned?
“refuse to ask AT how much money it is making from use of the millions of dollars in stored value it has received.”
I have asked that question in the past. The answer I got was that they have designed it to make enough money off the float to operate the HOP system without ongoing subsidy. Presumably that is once they achieve their usage targets, it’s probably too early in the piece to be self sufficient yet.
Nick R “The answer I got was that they have designed it to make enough money off the float to operate the HOP system without ongoing subsidy. Presumably that is once they achieve their usage targets, it’s probably too early in the piece to be self sufficient yet.”
Great, so no need for that fee. And to get usage targets, make AT HOP really attractive… so again, remove the transaction fee. Every little barrier makes PT that much more sexy than private motor vehicle use. Coming from a marketing background, I know that small things annoy people and can be a barrier to consumption. I understand if you do not get that.
The fee is part of the calculation of break-even, so you can remove it if you want to put the fares up accordingly to stay at break even.
I completely understand the barrier of the small fee, and I believe it is intentional. It’s designed to reduce the amount of people making frequent small top ups at ticket machines or service desks, and instead encourage them to make larger top ups less frequently, or shift to automatic top up. The point being to reduce the level of transactions happening at ticket machines and desks, i.e. so they don’t need to install banks and banks of expensive to buy and service machines, nor employ lots of people just to load credit.
25c is a token fee, just big enough to be annoying. Being from marketing I’m sure you understand behaviour around consumption of zero priced services.
Myself having lived in cities where there is no advantage of topping up more than the bare minimum I’m glad they are taking that approach. Always used to piss me off in Melbourne when I wanted to load my weekly pass and had to wait in a huge queue of people only putting in enough money for one trip.