Leap Card Auto-topup Pain

bk

So I thought it worth mentioning that the Leap Card Auto-TopUp functionality is a complete pain to set up and extremely buggy.

When you set up auto-topup, they send a code to your bank account that takes a few days and then when it finally arrives you have to add to the details on the Leap website. A bit of pain, takes too long and I don't know why they can't just do a shadow payment that gets reversed like every other website does (amazon, etc.).

But then if you later decide to change your direct debit details (because you changed bank account, etc.), oh my god the pain!!!

Can you just log onto the leapcard site and just change the bank details, nope, that would be too easy, here is what you have to do:

- Ask them to cancel the toptup on your leap card and wait a few days until your card is updated and autotopup disabled.
- Sign up for auto-topup again, entering all your bank details.
- Wait a few days again for the whole rigmarole with the number being sent to your bank account.
- Finally a few days later, it is again enabled on the card!

And if you have more then one card on your account and auto-topup enabled on them, then you have to do all the above on each individual card!!!

The whole process is like pulling your nails out.

Oh and it seems to be broken. The Verification link seems to be greyed out, even after I've gotten the verification code. But weirdly clicking on the "set up bank details" link weirdly sometimes brings you to the verification page. But then when you enter the verification code it seems to redirect back to the set up page with no confirmation or error message, so I've no idea if it worked or not.

All horribly buggy and broken!

cjlawlor

Totally agree. Also, the minimum topup of €30 is way too much for most people. €10 would be a much more sensible amount.

devnull

bk wrote: »

When you set up auto-topup, they send a code to your bank account that takes a few days and then when it finally arrives you have to add to the details on the Leap website. A bit of pain, takes too long and I don't know why they can't just do a shadow payment that gets reversed like every other website does (amazon, etc.).

Apples and Oranges you are comparing there, the way a Direct Debit works and is processes is vastly different from how a payment from a credit or debit card takes place and unlike a payment from a card there is a lot more that needs to happen between both ends which unfortunately is not instant.

Can you just log onto the leapcard site and just change the bank details, nope, that would be too easy, here is what you have to do:

- Ask them to cancel the toptup on your leap card and wait a few days until your card is updated and autotopup disabled.
- Sign up for auto-topup again, entering all your bank details.
- Wait a few days again for the whole rigmarole with the number being sent to your bank account.
- Finally a few days later, it is again enabled on the card!

Because the old DD needs to be cancelled and the new one needs to be set-up which takes a few days for everything to be in place, this is not the fault of LEAP but it is the way the direct debit system works and will be the same whatever bank that you use because they all use the same Direct Debit System.

Also the idea of having the security code is because of the fact that people using other peoples bank details to pay for their stuff is unforunately more common than you may think and this without a doubt will be some secuirty against this and I fully support the NTA having this facility to reduce bank account fraud as I've seen too much of this in my time.

bk

devnull wrote: »

Apples and Oranges you are comparing there, the way a Direct Debit works and is processes is vastly different from how a payment from a credit or debit card takes place and unlike a payment from a card there is a lot more that needs to happen between both ends which unfortunately is not instant.

And yet I've direct debits for a lot of other services and non of them require this rigmarole.

Also I've absolutely seen companies like amazon doing a small €1 charge and then reversing it when setting up direct debit for the likes of prime subscriptions, so quiet clearly it can be done.

devnull wrote: »

Because the old DD needs to be cancelled and the new one needs to be set-up which takes a few days for everything to be in place, this is not the fault of LEAP but it is the way the direct debit system works and will be the same whatever bank that you use because they all use the same Direct Debit System.

Sure, but non of that explains why auto-topup has to be first cancelled on the Leap card and re-set up. Your bank details aren't stored on the Leap card (at least I bloody hope not, or it would be a major security violation).

Your direct debit details are stored on their servers and you should be able to update the details on the servers without doing anything on the leap card. The two aren't directly linked and the process they currently have in place is simply lazy programming and process IMO.

Also no reason why you should have to do all this multiple times if you have multiple cards linked to the same bank account details.

I changed the direct debit details in half a dozen services this month. With the exception of Leap, changing them was trivial. It was as simple as logging into their website and change the direct debit details and a few days later you get a letter confirming the new details.

Virgin Media, electric, gas, etc. all trivial to change. Took 5 minutes. And non of them needed to disable your meter or router to do it!

devnull wrote: »

Also the idea of having the security code is because of the fact that people using other peoples bank details to pay for their stuff is unforunately more common than you may think and this without a doubt will be some secuirty against this and I fully support the NTA having this facility to reduce bank account fraud as I've seen too much of this in my time.

Which seems to be no issue for Virgin, electric company, gas company, etc. Non of these required this terrible rigmarole.

Also it doesn't explain the extreme bugginess of thw whole site.

No I'm sorry devnull, as a software engineer myself, what I saw here is a badly thought out, designed and implemented process. There really is no excusing it.

I hope the NTA sort it out, as it isn't fit for purpose at the moment, IMO.

devnull

bk wrote: »

Also I've absolutely seen companies like amazon doing a small €1 charge and then reversing it when setting up direct debit for the likes of prime subscriptions, so quiet clearly it can be done.

Amazon do not take direct debits, they only take card payments:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201895610

Sure, but non of that explains why auto-topup has to be first cancelled on the Leap card and re-set up. Your bank details aren't stored on the Leap card (at least I bloody hope not, or it would be a major security violation).

Direct Debits take days to set up and need a lot of things to happen in the background before they are set-up and there often is a lag before this happens because of the way the Direct Debit Scheme works, it's not simple like using card details and processing a payment like it is with card payments, the process takes days to set-up and the hoops to be jumped through.

Also no reason why you should have to do all this multiple times if you have multiple cards linked to the same bank account details.

What they are doing is best practice since it makes it more obvious to see what charges in your account belong to which card which prevents far less people calling in not understanding why x charge was taken when they only had y on their card.

I changed the direct debit details in half a dozen services this month. With the exception of Leap, changing them was trivial. It was as simple as logging into their website and change the direct debit details and a few days later you get a letter confirming the new details. Virgin Media, electric, gas, etc. all trivial to change. Took 5 minutes. And non of them needed to disable your meter or router to do it!

But there's a big difference between these and leap. Namely that all of the parties that you name either carry out a credit check before you avail of their services (including verifying your address) or there would be no benefit of someone giving someone fraudulent bank details for Electric and Gas because you're going to use it to pay for supply in your residential address which makes it easy for them to find you when they find you are committing fraud.

With LEAP they don't have that benefit since LEAP is not a service that is provided at a fixed residential address. Since you already have the card which if you bought from a shop, there will be no address linked to and the fact you could have given incorrect details online, that leaves auto top-up wide open to possible fraudulent use of bank details.

Note that when a direct debit is set-up in something like Realex Console it simply verifies the Sort Code and the Account number is correct, it isn't able to check the address supplied by the retailer matches that on the bank account so most fraudsters will give a fake address for that as well .

So what you essentially have is someone using an unpersonalised LEAP Card with someone elses bank details, with a fake address on their LEAP account and fake contact details happily funding them to travel around and around and around with no way to easily trace where they are since the moment the card gets blocked they'll dump the card and start afresh.

The alternative of having bank account verification the way they do it is submitting proof of address or subjecting someone to a credit check before they use auto top-up which is less than desirable, or simply making everything work off a credit/debit card (which involves fees).

No I'm sorry devnull, as a software engineer myself, what I saw here is a badly thought out, designed and implemented process. There really is no excusing it.

Some of the stuff could be improved but essentially some of the hoops that need to be jumped through are about eliminating revenue risk and possible fraudulent use of accounts which unfortunately is more and more common and by using the verficiation, it also can't be argued later on that someone had no knowledge of signing up for such direct debit which is a tactic often used when someone wants to get out of paying money they owe, whilst also eliminating fraud.

I've worked in companies where up to 7% of direct debits could be people using others bank details and since we brought in verficiation of direct debits in secure ways the level of fraud was reduced to less than 2%. I know of one company that actively moved people off direct debits in 2008 because fraud was so widespread that it cost them more than the charges to take everything by card.

bk

devnull, thanks for the explanations above, however it still doesn't explain the following:

- Why you would need to disable the leap cards and need to set them up again, rather then just allowing you to edit the direct debit details online (and yes processing the verification code from your bank account again if needed)?

- Why you have to do it multiple times for multiple cards linked to the same leap account and leap card?

- Why the site is so buggy and won't accept the verification code? And links, javascript and redirects are broken?

No devnull, I'm sorry, it is just a really badly designed system. It is clear that they just put little or no thought into what would happen when people need to change their direct debit details and just went with the laziest option.

I'd also have to say to say that the verification process is just too troublesome and has far too much friction. I suspect many people give up on trying to set it up.

devnull

bk wrote: »

Why you would need to disable the leap cards and need to set them up again, rather then just allowing you to edit the direct debit details online (and yes processing the verification code from your bank account again if needed)?

Because there is a lag between you making the actions and those actions going through to all of the relevant banking systems for your changes to fully take effect and it is considered best practice to let one set of actions finish before another one is started to prevent any problems cropping up.

This is the same reason why you can cancel direct debits a day or two before they are due to go out and the payments will still go out anyway because there is not enough time for the procedures to complete to stop the payment.

Another example: My AIB Credit Card takes a set % of the balance every month from my Bank Account via DD. If I make a one off payment 4 days before the DD is due to go out it deducts this from the money to be taken by DD. However if I make a one off payment 1-2 days before it isn't deducted because it takes a few days to amend the DD.

Why you have to do it multiple times for multiple cards linked to the same leap account and leap card?

Best practice is to keep different accounts for different direct debits to prevent confusion later on to prevent confusion when someone gets topped up €30 and sees €60 on their bank statements and wonders where the other €30 came from.

The DD Reference is probably linked to the LEAP card number and honestly many people prefer it that way because if there are a few adult leap cards on an account, it's not unreasonable to suggest that each of them would have their own bank account rather than someone paying for everyone.

No devnull, I'm sorry, it is just a really badly designed system. It is clear that they just put little or no thought into what would happen when people need to change their direct debit details and just went with the laziest option.

I'd also have to say to say that the verification process is just too troublesome and has far too much friction. I suspect many people give up on trying to set it up.

The verification system is needed to stop fraud.

Effectively the NTA have the following options
- Enforce verification of bank details for use of Auto Top-up (may reduce fraud a little)
- Require a Credit Check for use of Auto Top-up (may reduce fraud a little)
- Introduce some kind of address verification for use of Auto Top-up (will reduce fraud a lot)
- Increase fares and move to a Continuous payment authority based system. (will reduce fraud a lot)

I agree none of those options are ideal, but removing any kind of verification will simply play into the fraudsters hands since the fraudsters would travel for free, the genuine account holders will get their money back by disputing the DD and the NTA and operators will be out of pocket.

I see why you feel it's a badly designed system but you're only looking at it from one side, the safeguards have almost certainly been put in place to ensure the protection and also retention of revenue and to prevent fraud and chargebacks and you need to look at it from the financial side as well as that of the users.

bk

devnull the truth is only one side of this matters. The costumer side. With a process and system that is so terribly costumer unfriendly and frankly broken, all other concerns go out the window.

If a process and system is so broken that it makes it incredibly hard for ordinary people to use, then all the backend issues are largely irrelevant as very few customers will use the product.

Perhaps Leap and the NTA don't care if people use it or not, sure they are a government agency, they will get paid either way! You are basically using the same terrible argument that bus drivers etc. use. Sure why change anything, I get paid the same either way.

In the private sector, non of what you describe would in anyway be acceptable. It was long ago learned that you have to reduce the friction of your costumer using your service or you lose them. That is why companies like Amazon put so much effort into making their service easy to use. Leap are failing miserably at that and for a customer facing organisation that is simply not good enough.

Also I honestly can't see why you need to disable the leap cards when changing direct debit details, it simply makes no sense at all. Non. It has nothing to do with the direct debits.

Finally the system is literally broken. I haven't been able to enter the verification code on the second card. The links to do so are literally broken!

bk

I'll say this. I really really want to see Leap work. I want to support it.

But my experience the past few weeks with it has been horrendous.

I changed bank accounts and it literally took me less then 30 minutes to log into my various utility accounts (Virgin, Eelctric Ireland, etc.) and change my direct debit details. They were very easy to change.

But I've been now battling with Leap for weeks now to change just two cards. I'm sorry but that simply is in no way good enough. I can only imagine that less interested people would have just given up weeks ago and that makes me genuinely sad. This really isn't rocket science.

devnull

bk wrote: »

devnull the truth is only one side of this matters. The costumer side. With a process and system that is so terribly costumer unfriendly and frankly broken, all other concerns go out the window.

It's not acceptable to basically turn around and supply a service to just under 10% of your 'customers' for free, which is basically what would happen if there was not some kind of verification in place if the figures in relation to direct debit fraud were those which I reguarly used to hear in the past.

I can tell you now that most companies hate the Direct Debit system, it's slow, it's prone to high levels of fraud, impossible to verify who an account belongs to, people cancel direct debits to avoid seeing out their contract just to name a few major drawbacks that it has, it's basically an old system brought kicking and screaming into now and only still exists because it's cheap.

Companies would be quite happily to see the system die a very quick death and everything takes place by other platforms that are far more secure, easy to trace and verify like Credit and Debit Cards and process instantly, but unfortunately that requires the banks, third party processors and card terminal providers to stop using card payments as a massive cash cow.

If a process and system is so broken that it makes it incredibly hard for ordinary people to use, then all the backend issues are largely irrelevant as very few customers will use the product. Perhaps Leap and the NTA don't care if people use it or not, sure they are a government agency, they will get paid either way!

At the end of the day I don't think many people are going to stop using LEAP because of the fact they have to enter a few digit codes into a website, they'll just go and use other way to top-up and the NTA will not be down on any revenue.

If they remove the verification they are going to see up to 10% of their customers and probably even more than 10% of the revenue instantly wiped out because whilst they'll get it at first, the genuine account holder will make a fraud claim, the NTA will have to refund them and the fraudsters will have traveled for free.

That's before you even take into account the adminstrative costs of all these fraud claims, possible legal action, all of the time wasted by your staff in investigating them when they could and should be doing other things, which can be a real timesink that quite frankly any orgnisation can do without and despite all thise there is never the slightest hope of recovering any of this revenue.

If they remove the current restrictions it encourages fraud and provides criminals with a ready made, easy to carry out method of evading fares and stealing money from innocent people with no real way of identifying them who effectively travel as much as they want for free over and over again.

I'm not sure that the NTA would agree that promoting fraud and losing revenue whilst carrying passengers for free and having their staff spending half the time investigating fraud cases and paying lawyers to respond to legal threats from the bank account holder asking why they are taking payments from their account without their permission would be a good use of their money.

You are basically using the same terrible argument that bus drivers etc. use. Sure why change anything, I get paid the same either way.

Because at the end of the day there has to be a cost to benefit analysis and the simple fact is what you want would bring in miniscule additional revenue but a massive increase in fraud and in turn that will be passed onto the passengers in terms of higher fares since you will have a percentage oe people who are no longer paying their fare since they are able to ride fraudently.

In the private sector, non of what you describe would in anyway be acceptable.

I'm not quite sure what private companies you have worked in, but in every single company I have worked in we would not supply services or products to customers who we could not verify the idenitity, address or payment details of because of the high risk of fraud and money laundering regulations.

That is why companies like Amazon put so much effort into making their service easy to use. Leap are failing miserably at that and for a customer facing organisation that is simply not good enough.!

Amazon don't even take direct debit so not really a valid comparison.

They take continuous payment authority debits from a Credit Card no more often than every month and taking payment every month by card is far more expensive for the retailer which is one of the factors why they give you a discount for paying it all in one go since they no longer have to pay 12x fees to whoever processes their payments and their bank.

devnull

bk wrote: »

I changed bank accounts and it literally took me less then 30 minutes to log into my various utility accounts (Virgin, Eelctric Ireland, etc.) and change my direct debit details. They were very easy to change.

But I've been now battling with Leap for weeks now to change just two cards. I'm sorry but that simply is in no way good enough. I can only imagine that less interested people would have just given up weeks ago and that makes me genuinely sad. This really isn't rocket science.

As stated, comparing LEAP and utitlities is like apples and oranges.

All of the parties that you name would have some way of verifying your details and would be no benefit of someone giving someone fraudulent bank details for Electric, TV, Water and Gas because straight away they know exactly where to find you to charge you with fraud since you have to give them a service address.

LEAP is not a fixed address service, you can buy the card annoymously and enter any address on leapcard.ie and put anyones bank details in and there is no way for LEAP to verify them, you would then happily use the card for a few weeks till someone notices the strange direct debits, throw away the card and repeat and there's not a hope in hell that anyone would catch you.

The end result is you may well have worked up €100 of fares by the time you are caught, the NTA will have to spend time and money when the bank account holder threatens them with legal action, they then need to refund the bank account holder for the fraud, the fraudster travels for free, they're €100 of revenue down + the legal and admin costs.

bk

All I'm hearing are excuses for a very broken and buggy website and process. I'm sorry devnull, just not good enough. The current process and website is simply not fit for purpose. It really is as simply as that.

If they can't fix it, then they might as well shut down this feature of Leap as it is simply unusable.

LXFlyer

bk wrote: »

All I'm hearing are excuses for a very broken and buggy website and process. I'm sorry devnull, just not good enough. The current process and website is simply not fit for purpose. It really is as simply as that.

If they can't fix it, then they might as well shut down this feature of Leap as it is simply unusable.

I suspect most people don't switch banks very often, so this isn't an issue for the vast majority of people.

Hence I'd suggest there might be a slight exaggeration in your final comment?

Perhaps a little less hyperbole about this?

devnull

bk wrote: »

All I'm hearing are excuses for a very broken and buggy website and process. I'm sorry devnull, just not good enough. The current process and website is simply not fit for purpose. It really is as simply as that.

Unfortunately the perfect world that a lot of people seem to aim for does not exist in all cases and this is one of those, but I give my experiences for someone who has been heavily involved with the revenue management of customers as well as the operational side and what you are asking for would leave any kind of company open to unacceptable levels of fraud.

The unfortunate thing is that the Direct Debit scheme simply isn't fit for purpose itself because there is no way of verifying who any details belong to and as such companies have to take safeguards and additional measures to prevent fraud and to ensure that the bank account belongs to the person who is using it for payment.

The alternative as I said before would be to go to a full card based system and remove the direct debit functionality completely which would result in a vastly better system. However the problem with this is that it would certainly require an increase of LEAP epurse fares in order to account for the fact that a percentage of the transaction would now have to be paid to the bank or payment processor.

I'm not convinced the public would be willing to pay higher fares on their day to day transport to eradicate the issues you brought up, which quite frankly would only effect a very small number of customers as people tend not to switch banks very often at all.

howiya

devnull wrote: »

Unfortunately the perfect world that a lot of people seem to aim for does not exist in all cases and this is one of those, but I give my experiences for someone who has been heavily involved with the revenue management of customers as well as the operational side and what you are asking for would leave any kind of company open to unacceptable levels of fraud.

The unfortunate thing is that the Direct Debit scheme simply isn't fit for purpose itself because there is no way of verifying who any details belong to and as such companies have to take safeguards and additional measures to prevent fraud and to ensure that the bank account belongs to the person who is using it for payment.

The alternative as I said before would be to go to a full card based system and remove the direct debit functionality completely which would result in a vastly better system. However the problem with this is that it would certainly require an increase of LEAP epurse fares in order to account for the fact that a percentage of the transaction would now have to be paid to the bank or payment processor.

I'm not convinced the public would be willing to pay higher fares on their day to day transport to eradicate the issues you brought up, which quite frankly would only effect a very small number of customers as people tend not to switch banks very often at all.

While the cost of switching to an open payment system rather than a closed epurse system like Leap would be significant initially, it is actually shown to reduce running costs for transport authorities. Fares don't necessarily need to rise

devnull

howiya wrote: »

While the cost of switching to an open payment system rather than a closed epurse system like Leap would be significant initially, it is actually shown to reduce running costs for transport authorities. Fares don't necessarily need to rise

If you are going to have a LEAP style system the major issue is that auto top-up via Credit Card is going to lead to revenue loss because of the fees that are charged by the payment processors and by the banks to take payment via card who are going to want their own slice of that revenue.

For example taking €30 three times a month via direct debit would result in pretty much the NTA getting that in revenue to bank, if they took the payment via credit card or debit card, they'd lose a quid or two to fees.

If you multiply that over the course of a year of every customer who uses auto-top up then you're going to have a significent shortfall over the revenue that you will get via DD which costs you very little to process in comparison.

However if you're going to dispense with the leap card completely for e-purse fares and just use contactless debit cards then there will be savings there that might balance out the cost of the card payment fees.

bk

devnull wrote: »

If you are going to have a LEAP style system the major issue is that auto top-up via Credit Card is going to lead to revenue loss because of the fees that are charged by the payment processors and by the banks to take payment via card who are going to want their own slice of that revenue.

For example taking €30 three times a month via direct debit would result in pretty much the NTA getting that in revenue to bank, if they took the payment via credit card or debit card, they'd lose a quid or two to fees.

But if you think about it, the VAST majority of Leap cards are topped up by credit/debit cards and thus incur these higher charges. Top-up in a payzone shop, IR ticket machine, Luas ticket machine or the Android app and you will most likely using credit/debit cards.

So I don't see why auto-topup should be any different then these. It doesn't make any logical sense. If credit/debit cards are good enough for the majority of Leap card topups, then their is no reason not to also use them for auto-topup.

devnull wrote: »

However if you're going to dispense with the leap card completely for e-purse fares and just use contactless debit cards then there will be savings there that might balance out the cost of the card payment fees.

Once contactless payments are introduced, I'll be dropping my leap card and all this pain in a heartbeat for contactless.

LXFlyer

bk wrote: »

Once contactless payments are introduced, I'll be dropping my leap card and all this pain in a heartbeat for contactless.

Talk about first world problems - again maybe some perspective???

It's a once off issue that most people won't go through - hardly the end of the world as we know it, as your posts are suggesting it is.

bk

LXFlyer wrote: »

Talk about first world problems - again maybe some perspective???

It's a once off issue that most people won't go through - hardly the end of the world as we know it, as your posts are suggesting it is.

Sure pretty much everything we discuss on this forum are first world problems!

That doesn't make them any less valid. If you do something, then you should do it right, otherwise no point wasting money developing this feature in the first place at all.

devnull

bk wrote: »

But if you think about it, the VAST majority of Leap cards are topped up by credit/debit cards and thus incur these higher charges. Top-up in a payzone shop, IR ticket machine, Luas ticket machine or the Android app and you will most likely using credit/debit cards.

So I don't see why auto-topup should be any different then these. It doesn't make any logical sense. If credit/debit cards are good enough for the majority of Leap card topups, then their is no reason not to also use them for auto-topup.

The difference is the people who are topping up only via a debit or credit card wouldn't be doing anywhere near the volume of yearly revenue versus somebody who was using auto top-up

If what you say was true then not a single company in Ireland would use Direct Debit becasue it's slow and cumbersome it's prone to very high levels of fraud, impossible to verify who an account belongs to and I don't think companies are sticking with DD over continuous payment authority just for the sake of it.

The simple fact is Direct Debit is still alive in Ireland in 2017 because despite the many drawbacks it has as a system it is cheap and taking card payments on a regular basis is not which is why companies prefer direct debit to CPA and even in some cases charge people to pay via other methods.

At the end of the day for every €1 spent via a credit or debit card at least 2.5% (could be as high as 4%) of that generally goes on fees and that is revenue that has been lost forever, whilst that may not sound much over the course of a year, it will easily add up to at least a six figure sum that has got to be found somewhere else.

bk

devnull wrote: »

The difference is the people who are topping up only via a debit or credit card wouldn't be doing anywhere near the volume of yearly revenue versus somebody who was using auto top-up

I'm sorry but that is bull!

I don't have any numbers and I assume you don't either, only the NTA would. But I honestly don't believe for a moment that auto-topup makes for even a fraction of Leapcard topups!

€30 a shot is too expensive for most people and the setup process sucks.

I'm certain that BY FAR the VAST majority of topups are by all the other methods including credit/debit cards and frankly that invalidates your whole argument.

If credit/debit card are good enough for payzone, ticket machine and android top-ups, then it should be for auto-topup too.

LXFlyer

bk wrote: »

Sure pretty much everything we discuss on this forum are first world problems!

That doesn't make them any less valid. If you do something, then you should do it right, otherwise no point wasting money developing this feature in the first place at all.

Perhaps a little less hyperbole though - your posts are going way over the top about this, which is again something that will only affect a small minority of auto top-up users, and even then only for a short period.

You're making it sound like a fundamental flaw that's affecting everyone, which it isn't.

bk

LXFlyer wrote: »

Perhaps a little less hyperbole though - your posts are going way over the top about this.

Not hyperbole, I just genuinely like to see a good experience for the commuters of Ireland!

This should be easy to fix, it really isn't rocket science.

BTW you are drifting close to back seat modding above.

LXFlyer

bk wrote: »

Not hyperbole, I just genuinely like to see a good experience for the commuters of Ireland!

This should be easy to fix, it really isn't rocket science.

BTW you are drifting close to back seat modding above.

Woah there - I'm focussing on your posts about LEAP auto top-up.

You're the one who claimed it was "virtually unusable" and going on about "all this pain".

Clearly most people don't find it "virtually unusable".

I think that I'm perfectly entitled to suggest that is hyperbole without you suggesting that I'm back seat modding.

Dial Hard

bk wrote: »

BTW you are drifting close to back seat modding above.

He's right, though, you seem to be taking a relatively minor inconvenience extremely personally. Yes, the initial set up is a bit convoluted, but it was well worth it to be able to forget about ever having to worry about topping up my Leap card again, tbh. I also disagree that €30 is an onerous amount to be topped up by. It's the price of a few pints. And I say that as someone who has been out of work since March and is watching every penny.


If they're going to fix anything about Leap I'd much rather they focussed on enabling tag-on,tag-off on buses, tbh.

bk

LXFlyer The key rule of boards is attack the post, not the poster. By accusing me of hyperbole and saying my posts are going over the top then you are attacking a poster and really not adding anything to the conversation. If you aren't interested in the thread, then don't read it, but there really isn't any need for a post like that.

MOD: So please back on topic and no more of the above, thanks LXFlyer

bk

Dial Hard wrote: »

He's right, though, you seem to be taking a relatively minor inconvenience extremely personally. Yes, the initial set up is a bit convoluted, but it was well worth it to be able to forget about ever having to worry about topping up my Leap card again, tbh. I also disagree that €30 is an onerous amount to be topped up by. It's the price of a few pints. And I say that as someone who has been out of work since March and is watching every penny.

I agree that setting up auto-topup initially is a minor pain, but worth it for the convenience.

But what you then discover later, if you need to change your details, it suddenly becomes a major pain and almost not worth the initial convenience.

I'm not necessarily saying that they need to change the initial setup (though streamlining it would be worth it IMO) but they definitely need to fix the process if you need to make later changes.

Also the setup is actually broken and buggy, the verification links are not actually working correctly for it.

Dial Hard wrote: »

If they're going to fix anything about Leap I'd much rather they focussed on enabling tag-on,tag-off on buses, tbh.

I agree 100%

devnull

bk wrote: »

I'm sorry but that is bull!

I don't have any numbers and I assume you don't either, only the NTA would. But I honestly don't believe for a moment that auto-topup makes for even a fraction of Leapcard topups!

€30 a shot is too expensive for most people and the setup process sucks.

I'm certain that BY FAR the VAST majority of topups are by all the other methods including credit/debit cards and frankly that invalidates your whole argument.

If credit/debit card are good enough for payzone, ticket machine and android top-ups, then it should be for auto-topup too.

I've already stated previously, if there is no cost benefit to Direct Debit which you seem to think there isn't, why do so many companies use direct debit and prefer it to card payments for regular outgoing payments.

If there was no cost element DD would have died out long ago, but the simple fact is that companies still accept and in many cases incentivise it for regular scheduled payments because they don't have to give a cut of the payment to someone else.

I would like to see DD dead and card payment fees abolished as much as the next man but the simple fact is right now it's more expensive for a company to take a regular scheduled payment by card than it is by direct debit.

markpb

devnull wrote: »

I've already stated previously, if there is no cost benefit to Direct Debit which you seem to think there isn't, why do so many companies use direct debit and prefer it to card payments for regular outgoing payments.

If there was no cost element DD would have died out long ago, but the simple fact is that companies still accept and in many cases incentivise it for regular scheduled payments because they don't have to give a cut of the payment to someone else.

DD is definitely cheaper than using the Visa/Mastercard platform but, for debit cards at least, the difference isn't huge. DDs are very cheap, I think about 4c each for high volume originators but they pay a massive penalty if the DDs are rejected (about €12-15 I think). Debit cards aren't significantly more - a high volume merchant will pay about 10c per transaction. Credit cards are obviously a different story, merchants can get badly stung on high value transactions.

DDs haven'd died out because they're cheap and simple for utilities to operate. Customers don't like them which is why most utilities have to incentivise you to sign up for them. Most electricity companies will offer 2.5% annual discount to pay that way.

Anyway this is all likely to change when PSD2 comes along.

bk

devnull wrote: »

I've already stated previously, if there is no cost benefit to Direct Debit which you seem to think there isn't, why do so many companies use direct debit and prefer it to card payments for regular outgoing payments.

Oh, I completely agree with you that their is an increased cost in using card payments versus direct debit payments. No argument there.

However my argument is that they accept card payments for payzone top-ups, irish rail ticket machine top-ups, Luas ticket machine top-ups and Android top-ups and I'm 100% certain that they are far more topups via these methods then auto-topup. So if card payments are good enough for these, then they should be for auto-topup too.

Yes, that may mean an increase cost for doing that, so be it. Sometimes that is just the reality of making processes simpler for your customer. Clearly they have already built the cost of card payments for all the other ways of topping up into the ticket price, so no reason to do the same for auto-topup too, if it makes life easier for their customers.

As an aside, when I switched my current account over, I actually found that over half my subscriptions are actually card based. All of the following are card based, so it isn't true that everyone is using direct debit:

- Local Property Tax - Revenue
- Tesco (supersaver subscription)
- Lycamobile
- Spotify
- Netflix

BTW again non of this answers the questions about why the website is broken and the verification link isn't working properly. Nor why you have to disable your card when you change over. These have nothing to do with cost.

devnull

markpb wrote: »

DD is definitely cheaper than using the Visa/Mastercard platform but, for debit cards at least, the difference isn't huge. DDs are very cheap, I think about 4c each for high volume originators but they pay a massive penalty if the DDs are rejected (about €12-15 I think). Debit cards aren't significantly more - a high volume merchant will pay about 10c per transaction. Credit cards are obviously a different story, merchants can get badly stung on high value transactions.

DDs haven'd died out because they're cheap and simple for utilities to operate. Customers don't like them which is why most utilities have to incentivise you to sign up for them. Most electricity companies will offer 2.5% annual discount to pay that way.

That was pretty much my point in earlier post, I was more illustrating the fact that if what BK said was right and there was nothing to lose then companies wouldn't incentivise DDs but they continue to do so because of the fact they are vastly cheaper to process.

However the downsides are the inability to verify who the DD details belong to since all someone needs is two details from the other account and they can set up a DD on sometone elses account to pay for their services is the major one, but the other one is customers cancelling them online to get out of making payments for a contract which they are not eligiable to get out of.

What the NTA are doing with their verification is simply a fraud prevention technique.

bk

But again devnull, it is clear that the vast majority of leap topups are card based (payzone, ticket machines, Andoird topups), so clearly they have already factored in the increased cost of card payments, so no reason to do the same too for auto-topups if it makes life easier for their customers.

devnull

bk wrote: »

But again devnull, it is clear that the vast majority of leap topups are card based (payzone, ticket machines, Andoird topups), so clearly they have already factored in the increased cost of card payments, so no reason to do the same too for auto-topups if it makes life easier for their customers.

My point is if there was no reason to do it and paying via card had no downsides, why did they set up a direct debit system in the first place? It makes no sense to set up a system that has no benefit for anyone.

Which comes back to my point. The cost benefits of a DD system were seen as a big enough benefit revenue retention wise over simply paying for everything by card.

bk

devnull wrote: »

My point is if there was no reason to do it and paying via card had no downsides, why did they set up a direct debit system in the first place? It makes no sense to set up a system that has no benefit for anyone.

Which comes back to my point. The cost benefits of a DD system were seen as a big enough benefit revenue retention wise over simply paying for everything by card.

Oh, I've no doubt it is cheaper to do DD, but at the cost of convenience and ease of use for their customers.

Designing IT systems and processes always have trade off's like these.

I agree they are likely retaining more revenue per user, then if they went with card payments, but that doesn't necessary mean they are making more revenue overall.

With the relative difficulty for the customer to use this feature, and the relative high cost of the €30 topup, it is quiet possible that lots of potential customers have not signed up for it due to the difficulties and costs and thus lost revenue.

I've been involved in IT projects before, that were highly locked down and secure and initially management were slapping themselves on the back for making such a secure system. Yet 6 months later it had to be scrapped, because the system was so difficult for users to use and no one ended up using it! They had chosen the wrong balance between security and user convenience.

The folks at Leap card have chosen an anti-consumer system here IMO. Maybe that was the right choice or maybe it hasn't been, only the folks at the NTA can tell that.

At least I've highlighted the issues, it is up to them if they want to do something about them or not now (at least they need to fix the verification links, those pages definitely need better QA).

Dravokivich

If it's not letting you put in the verification code, the request has been reset for that card and you'll need to start over again.

bk

Dravokivich wrote: »

If it's not letting you put in the verification code, the request has been reset for that card and you'll need to start over again.

Uh, FFS, what a crappy system!

Thanks for your help Dravokivich

plodder

FWIW, when I started using Leap the auto top amount of €30 was an immediate deal breaker. Self topup using the app by credit card is so much easier, and they have made it easier again by storing credit card numbers on their system. It is so easy, that if I were an iphone user, I would buy a cheap Android device with no Sim just to do it.

bk

plodder wrote: »

FWIW, when I started using Leap the auto top amount of €30 was an immediate deal breaker. Self topup using the app by credit card is so much easier, and they have made it easier again by storing credit card numbers on their system. It is so easy, that if I were an iphone user, I would buy a cheap Android device with no Sim just to do it.

Yep, my other half use to have an Android Phone with NFC support and we used to use that with no problems. But her new phone doesn't have it and I'm on iPhone.

Rumour has it Apple are going to open up support for NFC that is already present in their phones (Apple Pay uses it) in the next iOS release, so fingers crossed.

Of course the best thing will be when Leap finally supports contactless card payments and mobile payments, can do away with the Leap card completely then.

blackwhite

devnull wrote: »

Direct Debits take days to set up and need a lot of things to happen in the background before they are set-up and there often is a lag before this happens because of the way the Direct Debit Scheme works, it's not simple like using card details and processing a payment like it is with card payments, the process takes days to set-up and the hoops to be jumped through.

What they are doing is best practice since it makes it more obvious to see what charges in your account belong to which card which prevents far less people calling in not understanding why x charge was taken when they only had y on their card.

It's not "best practice" - it's additional procedures that Leap have in place to protect their own revenues - nothing to protect the consumer.

Under the SEPA direct debit scheme - which has been in place for a few years now - the customer has an 8-week "no questions asked" refund right (as well as a 13-month right to dispute charges), so anyone whose bank details are hypothetically abused has plenty of protection.


Under SEPA, the lead time for a new B2C customer is 5 banking days (in practice can be 6 days if cut-off times are missed) - that's always going to be the PITA element for new customers, but can't be helped due to the scheme. The rest of Leap's requirements are not anything to due with the scheme rules.

For a B2C customer there are really no "hoops to be jumped through" though. You assign a mandate ID, you submit the "first-time-recurring" DD request to the bank, you wait 5 days and the DD is processed. You don't even have to produce evidence of a mandate for the bank unless the customer requests it.