Leap on-line "top-up" still missing

n97 mini

"Topped up" online yesterday at around 4pm.

Picked Luas Red Line as location to collect the top-up as I knew I'd be in the city centre later on.

7pm went to Luas machine, bloody top-up still hadn't made it through the system, so wasn't available for collection.

Just to be sure I hadn't done something wrong I checked the confirmation email again and noticed in the small print:

Please allow up to 48 hours for your Travel Credit Top-Up to be available for collection.

WTF sort of system is this where it can take up to two days for credit to turn up!

el flaco

n97 mini wrote: »

WTF sort of system is this where it can take up to two days for credit to turn up!

That is a bit excessive alright. I think somebody mentioned a while back in the thread that the wait is in reality more of an overnight thing rather than 48 hours.

Victor

n97 mini wrote: »

"Topped up" online yesterday at around 4pm.

...

WTF sort of system is this where it can take up to two days for credit to turn up!

This will move to next day or better, but not immediately. In-shop and Luas ticket machine top-ups are the best for the moment.

n97 mini

"Topped up" online at 4pm or so on Thursday.

Of course you can't actually top-up online with Leap -- you can only deposit the credit and opt to "pick it up" at a Luas machine, a ticket agent, or a train station (but you have to make a journey if collecting at a train station for some bizarre reason).

I had opted to pick it up on the Luas red line, but by 7pm on Thursday it still wasn't available, much to my displeasure.

But as it can take up to 48 hours for a top up appear on the system I decided to be patient.

So this evening as all Maynooth trains were terminating at Connolly due to work at Pearse (why not terminate at Tara??), I decided to "collect" my top up at Connolly. And guess what.... the credit still hasn't made its way through the system.

I worked on a few Public Service IT contracts that were dodgy, but honest to God, whoever is behind this system deserves to be sacked and sued.

Victor

Threads re-arranged.

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n97 mini wrote: »

"Topped up" online at 4pm or so on Thursday.

Of course you can't actually top-up online with Leap -- you can only deposit the credit and opt to "pick it up" at a Luas machine

You can only collect at the validator by tagging-on, not at the ticket vending machine. this is likely to change in the next few months.

a train station (but you have to make a journey if collecting at a train station for some bizarre reason).

No, you can tag-on and almost immediately tag-off again. No need to travel.

So this evening as all Maynooth trains were terminating at Connolly due to work at Pearse (why not terminate at Tara??),

Because there is nowhere to park the reversing trains, which would have time to kill before their next departure.

I worked on a few Public Service IT contracts that were dodgy, but honest to God, whoever is behind this system deserves to be sacked and sued.

Leap isn't "dodgy", it is less than mature.

n97 mini

Victor wrote: »

You can only collect at the validator by tagging-on, not at the ticket vending machine. this is likely to change in the next few months.

Do I have to travel on the Luas to do this? The documentation was clear that it was only necessary to travel by train if I had opted to collect it at a train station.

Victor wrote: »

No, you can tag-on and almost immediately tag-off again. No need to travel.

See above.

Victor wrote: »

Leap isn't "dodgy", it is less than mature.

Dodgy is wrong term. Premature or pre alpha. Not fit for release.

thebman

Victor wrote: »

Leap isn't "dodgy", it is less than mature.

The problem is at the rate it is maturing, it is more likely the public will have tried it and given up on it before it has matured to the level they expect the service to be at when it launched.

Rushing it out the door to claim it is done while really they appear to have just started working on the technical side of the solution recently after getting the politics of working with the different public transport bodies that don't seem to want to change is likely to make the public lose all faith in the solution.

A bit like Windows Vista, they are probably going to end up fixing the issues and rebranding it to something that people might trust in by the time they are done.

goingnowhere

Leap is performing exactly as per specification, nothing dodgy about it.

Website says 48 hours to top up, but if you top up the evening before it will be there when you travel the next day. OP never made a journey so the top up was not applied on the card, no evidence the system has failed in any way.

The biggest problem is the Irish obsession with not reading the small print and giving out when it is clearly stated that such and such doesn't work. The fact online top up doesn't work on buses in London either is ignored. So Leap is in no way less functional.

Curiously with smartcard systems many passengers get caught out because the system ensures 100% consistency. When Oyster launched pay as you go a lot of monthly ticket holders where found to be making illegal journeys by crossing zone boundaries they hadn't tickets for. The system spotted this and charged them accordingly. Passengers blamed the system, but the system was 100% correct.

n97 mini

goingnowhere wrote: »

Leap is performing exactly as per specification, nothing dodgy about it.

Unless you've seen the spec you can't say that.

If it is performing to spec, the spec is idiotic.

The best bit of small print about the top-ups is uncollected top-ups will be returned within 7 days.

p

goingnowhere wrote: »

Leap is performing exactly as per specification, nothing dodgy about it.

The dodgy thing is that it was specified poorly. It's a bit of a joke of a system really. It's just a bad hack around the fact that transport companies can't take Credit or Debit Cards.

bk

p wrote: »

The dodgy thing is that it was specified poorly. It's a bit of a joke of a system really. It's just a bad hack around the fact that transport companies can't take Credit or Debit Cards.

Interesting point, London Bus is going to start accepting contactless debit and credit cards this year, with the plan to phase out Oyster and all cash handling eventually.

I wonder have they prepared for this future with LEAP. All the Irish banks are rolling out contactless debit cards as their ATM cards this year. Should by the end of 2012, most Irish People will have contactless debit cards. Probably far more then will have LEAP cards!!

markpb

bk wrote: »

Interesting point, London Bus is going to start accepting contactless debit and credit cards this year, with the plan to phase out Oyster and all cash handling eventually.

Have you got a link for that? (curious )

I can understand how they'd load the Oyster app onto the Paywave/Paypass cards (as a multi-app card) but I can't see how they'd go any further than that. I presume that's what they mean?

LXFlyer

I certainly don't know of any plans to abandon Oyster cards - the range of cards carrying the pay-as-you-go functionality will be widened to include debit/credit cards.

bk

markpb wrote: »

Have you got a link for that? (curious )

I can understand how they'd load the Oyster app onto the Paywave/Paypass cards (as a multi-app card) but I can't see how they'd go any further than that. I presume that's what they mean?

lxflyer wrote: »

I certainly don't know of any plans to abandon Oyster cards - the range of cards carrying the pay-as-you-go functionality will be widened to include debit/credit cards.

http://www.nfctimes.com/news/transport-london-accept-bank-cards-throughout-network-2012

It is a long term plan over many years. The idea being to get rid of the Oyster e-purse. Officially Oyster will remain for pre-paid tickets, but they will likely want to move even those over to the debit/credit cards and smartphones.

steve-o

n97 mini wrote: »

"Topped up" online yesterday at around 4pm.

Picked Luas Red Line as location to collect the top-up as I knew I'd be in the city centre later on.

I can't think of any good reason why this option even exists when a person can just go to any Luas machine and top up there anyway.

markpb

steve-o wrote: »

I can't think of any good reason why this option even exists when a person can just go to any Luas machine and top up there anyway.

To avoid queuing at the ticket machines at peak times
To avoid the situation where the TVM cannot process credit card transactions
To buy topup for someone else (wife, children, etc)

markpb

I wonder how that could work. Standard tag on, tag off stuff is fine but I'm not sure how you start to do things like daily capping when there is no support on the (paywave/paypass) card for this.

It also poses problems if the person has exceeded their pin-less transaction rolling count when they try to tag on.

AlekSmart

bk wrote: »

http://www.nfctimes.com/news/transport-london-accept-bank-cards-throughout-network-2012

It is a long term plan over many years. The idea being to get rid of the Oyster e-purse. Officially Oyster will remain for pre-paid tickets, but they will likely want to move even those over to the debit/credit cards and smartphones.

There is more than a little dollop of Politics at play here also.

TfL's Oyster is incompatible with the ITSO standard used outside of London which renders it unable to handle or record Journeys made by National Concession scheme holders living outside London itself.

It's interersting also to note that Oyster's stand-alone running costs account for c.14.2% of revenue collected to which can be added the c.7% commission paid to retailers participating in the Ticket Stop network.

Essentially TfL want to exit the money-changing end of the business and instead leave that all up to the Banking sector.

However,the politics of this may not be quite so easily overcome as independent consumer bodies have been lobbying hard for the retention of Oyster due to concerns regarding the extent of access a body such as TfL would have to individual bank accounts and information.

Perhaps the only real relevance to our good selves is how it reminds us of just how much catching-up we have to do in terms of attitudes,long before we start worrying about hardware !