Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Bus-fare refunds go unclaimed

Hi Mr Tan,
I refer to Asiaone headline today.

After reading the report in Shin Ming Daily news dated 19th Dec, a retiree claimed that he got back only 1 cent refund, though he and his wife take buses almost everyday. LTA reportedly insisted that their computation cannot goes wrong on the same day report.


My personal experience proof that this is not very true. I went to the AVM machine to try the refund on 21st Dec. I was shocked to see a quick flash, indicating that the refund I was entitled was only 10 cents (no details of how the amount was being derived). As I seldom take bus to work, for the 3 days in Nov, I took down the amount that was deducted wrongly from my card. After reading the report that LTA claimed the refund cannot go wrong, I made a manual claim from transitlink website, and got back another 60 cents that were being deducted for the 2 days (3rd day was correct).


My question is, how accurate the refund system is then ? Do they expect all the commuters to take note the amount that was deducted everyday and do a manual claim themselves? The problem is not only the few cents, but the faulty system. Having to even refund wrongly to the customers, then why spent so much money to set up rather then donate this amount of money to the charity ? 


Till date, I still encounter overcharging of few cents, but do not bother to claim anymore. Just wish to share with everyone else who read your blog frequently.



JL

5 comments:

yujuan said...

All that hassle just to get back
70 cents. We never win with our pro-business Govt., siding big businesses at the expense of ordinary citizens.
Give unclaimed fares to charity?
More to keep as reserve to fatten bonuses of the CEOs.

Lye Khuen Way said...

Shy, man ! Will LTA care to verify ? That maybe akin to asking for the moon.

heng@pudding said...

Before the exercise started, I posed this question to them, "May I enquire how refunds are going be paid to me if I have previously surrended a CEPAS card to the Ticket Office?"

Guess what? It was the usual passing the buck from LTA to TransitLink then to EZLink. They still need my card no. despite everything. Not many will keep card records of the so-called "cannot go wrong" system.

I just couldn't understand if payment info can flow between them, how come card info cannot flow if I can provide my NRIC no.?

Now wondering if my paltry refund is in fact a few dollars, and they only gonna donate a few cents to the charity (amt based on the publictransport.sg card checker tool).

silverybay said...

This is no different from taking 1 cent by "rounding down" from every account in the bank. Nobody would notice and even if they do, they couldn't be bothered to try to get it back. However, every cent adds up and the amount will grow to becomes thousands, hundreds of thousands and eventually millions.

Spur said...

What to do when Temasek Holdings is among the largest shareholders of SMRT, Comfort Delgro, SBS Transit? Maybe TH should distribute pain-suffering dividends to citizens who take public transport.

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