Grand River Transit

[danbrotherston]

So, while I understand your frustration, this has been explained many times by GRT and by people on many social media platforms, including WRC.

The buses do not have internet connections. How do you expect the loading to go from you using the website and end up at the bus?

When a  bus gets back to the barn at the end of the day, the mechanic giving it the once over sets the farebox to a WiFi AP at the barn. At that point in time it uploads a record of all transactions it did, and downloads a bundle of updates, such as you adding funds to your daughter's card.

The next day when the bus is out on the road and your daughter taps on, the farebox will apply the update to her card and set a flag. The flag is for if your daughter tapos on a second bus so that farebox can see the updated has already been apply and doesn't erroneously add the stored value a second time.

From then on, your daughter can tap her card and have deductions made like normal.

Of course, this obviously only works if you go to the website and add the funds before the bus gets back to the barn.

If you added the funds in the afternoon, but the bus she tries to tap on the next day had been returned to the barn at noon, then it will not have the update for her card. It would need to go back to the barn on more time to get the updates.

That's why GRT says 24 to 48 hours.

It is a technical limitation you cannot solve without having internet connections on the buses and the fareboxes updating constantly. Plus, because of the batch nature of financial processes, even with an internet connection out on the road, the update needsto be formatted and bunded into an update and sent to the farebox. So even then it wouldn't be available right away.

Customer Service can't do bugger all about this, and it is unfair of you to be angry at them for it. YTA, full stop, for that behaviour.

They were exactly right to tell you only "that's how it works" and no manager or supervisor would have been able to do a damn thing about it for you. Did you expect them to reach out with a magic wand and enchant either your daughter's card with the stored value, or the farebox of the next bus with the update for it?

I'm going to hazard a guess that you work in some sort of engineering related profession, and not anything product or customer related, because this post sounds like how the majority of my coworkers think. Yes, we understand how it works and why it works that way (but the general public at larger never will). Yes, once you understand there is a potential 48 hour delay it's not terribly stifling and can be worked around.

But for at least the last decade people think of a "payment cards" of any kind as an instantaneous and usable anywhere. I'd wager over 80% of the population doesn't know and doesn't care to know that payment terminals in shops are internet connected, and so the thought that payment terminals on busses aren't connected but would need to be isn't a logical train of thought for them. Today it's even expected for mobile/popup shops, food trucks, etc. to accept credit and debit payments backed by mobile connections, and most cash only places obviously take a hit.

If you build a product that goes against consumer expectations for technical reasons, that's fine, but you need to be sympathetic to the position you've put your customer in. Have some humility and shame, not anger towards the confused customer (and customer service should reflect that, short of accepting abuse whether verbal or of the system).

You're right but you're wrong. Yes, there are certain expectations, but bravado is right the limitations of our payment card here is EXTREMELY well advertised especially in this forum. It's totally possible to forget it (especially because it is inconsistent--going to a machine is instantaneous). And being angry at customer service is entirely unwarranted.

And yet it works today for millions of people and the status quo here doesn’t…

Well, we don't have millions of people here so you aren't wrong.

But I don't agree that the status quo here (EasyGO) isn't working. It would be nice to have the up to 48 hour delay go away and gain credit card payments, but does that really mean the system isn't working? The only major problem I've experienced was the absolute garbage state that the ION fare machines launched in, but I've been using them lately and they actually seem to work quite well now.

The only complaints are ever see are on this forums, specifically about the delay. Am I missing some major problem everyone is dealing with?

Edit: I should clarify, I replied to to dtkvictim because I wanted to include the earlier comment, but this following is a broad reply generally and not directed at any one specific person.

This part I do not get. There are MANY problems with EasyGO--even if we leave aside the IMMENSE teething problems it had (remember when they wiped their entire database and started again? FFS!), and leave aside that it was late to deploy, and even after they were deployed the equipment broke constantly.

They DO NOT work well now. The 24-48 hour delay is ONE problem. I also was unable to pay for the train, because for some reason the fare machine will not accept my TD debit card, nor my TD Visa, nor my Wise Visa, nor my ING (Dutch) Visa. I have FOUR payment cards and not one would work...what kind of bullshit is that. I was able to use three of the cards in every previous part of my trip including boarding multiple transit systems in the GTA.

And of course, Presto has already moved onto supporting visa and debit cards directly for boarding, something that is, if not world leading, is at least a stand out feature...and something that EasyGO doesn't even have on the radar (I'd be shocked if council even knows it's a thing...since I doubt any of them are remotely interested in transit), and who the fuck knows how much it will cost us to pay our incredibly incompetent contractor to build.

Honestly, I don't understand the hatred of presto. Yes, they didn't bid, because that's not what they do. If we were going to choose presto it wouldn't have been through the bidding process. I don't know why people here find that so inconceivable. A dozen other transit agencies have done so, why the fuck are we so special?! This is nothing more than a shitty excuse for not choosing presto.

By the way, accepting cash fares and transit passes isn't hard. London (who also chose to implement their own stupidly incompatible, but yet exactly the same transit fare card) accepts both cards and cash (and tickets too for that matter). They do it by having two boxes on the bus...it isn't complicated.

And of course, now if you travel to Toronto, you need two separate transit cards with two separate stored dollar value accounts...how much bullshit is that.

I know presto had issues before...SO DID EASYGO!...in both cases those issues are largely solved, but while presto now works mostly smoothly, supports some advanced features, and is a path forward towards greater integration and modernization of fare payment in Ontario, but we're stuck with our shitty and expensive custom solution, that isolates us from Toronto, and will cost us a fortune to custom implement anything that presto already has.

All because presto wouldn't play by our special rules and bid in the process that we (and we alone) decided was the ONLY way to select a fare payment processor. Why anyone here (hell anyone outside the region's bureaucracy) uses this bullshit justification...I will never know.

It boggles my mind that there are still people who think Presto would be a bad thing. For god sakes, I cannot believe you are making me agree with ac3r. I certainly don't think we're ever going to switch...GRT is probably the reason I am going to have to keep carrying cash when I travel...