Today I tried to use my myki card for the first time and I was less that thrilled with the experience. Myki, for non Victorians, is an ill conceived, incompetently designed and built, ticketing system that Victoria is trying to roll out that is currently several year overdue, hundred of millions of dollars over budget, and just doesn’t work.
Today I go to “touch on” at Melbourne Central, first machine I touched my card to did absolutely nothing, after 3 or 4 attempts I gave up on that machine and tried the one next to it. Touch, touch, touch and I was just about to give up when the barrier magically opened. Time wasted about a minute or so. The existing Metcard ticketing system takes a max of 5 seconds to validate.
I get to my destination station and try to “touch off” on the first machine, nothing at all, no errors, no acknowledgment, nothing. Try the second machine, same, so I give up.
I call Myki and tell them my issue and ask for it to be fixed. “No can do” is the answer. If you can’t touch off the system then the “help” desk apparently doesn’t see the transaction in your account until after the next time you touch on! So, since I only use public transport once a week on a Sunday, nothing can be done until then. Would I like to call back then was their answer, NO was mine. I did what I had to, and the myki system is broken, so I said to the operator that he needed to put a support ticket in for someone at Myki to call me when they can refund me my money. I bet that this complaint gets closed unresolved!
Last Sunday the same machines were causing problems as well. I watched an elderly gent fail to touch off just as I did today.
Myki is screwed and will be charging people default fares and they purposely make it hard to get them reversed, hoping people forget or can’t be bothered to follow up, so they can grab more of our money… I guess they need to pay off that $1.5bln some how!
I think I’ll stick to Metcard for a little while longer.