Modelon Solutions

Well, 8 month later, I finally got a ticket for boarding a train without having a valid ticket. The problem is I tried to pay…

I was going downtown with my wife after having dropped off the kids at the daycare. It was a Monday morning and this was our first day at this particular daycare – which turned out to be in a different zone than our previous one. After getting at the train station, we tapped our cards at the special machine that take a ticket away and then it buzzed, saying I didn’t have tickets for zone 3. Right enough… we put our cards in the vending machine and tried to buy zone 3 tickets. The machine didn’t allow us because we already had zone 2 tickets (our previous zone).

The train was coming, so we ran through the train station to board, thinking we would have a full day to resolve the problem. Sure enough, two stations later, an agent boarded the train and inspected all of our tickets. Of course, I didn’t have one and so got a ticket. I tried explaining the problem to the agent, but he didn’t care.

At the arriving train station, I asked how to exchange my zone 2 tickets for zone 3 tickets. They didn’t know how and referred me customer service. But since I had to go on the train, I ended up buying single serve tickets. The customer service said it was a special request and gave me an appointment at a train station with someone who would of had received an email with special instructions; it all finished fine… except for the ticket.

My point here is this is something that should of never happened. I recognise the technical limitation of the system and having two kinds of tickets on the same card, but I believe that the handling of the case should of been better. This incident should of been brought back to the team who designed the system, which should of had put an exception in the system saying to call customer service. Had I done that before boarding the train, maybe the agent could of recognised the situation for what it was, and give me a warning.

Use this example to think of how people use your system… it’s more than a screen… it’s an experience. And my experience was awefull.

This said, I’ll pay the ticket, for it is much cheaper than contesting it and losing precious time – but the AMT loss a customer today.