Millions of dollars are sitting on go cards that have expired after years of inactivity, with Translink urging commuters to get a refund as the network transitions to smart ticketing.
  • Zagorath
    6·
    9 months ago

    I’ve got half a dozen cards with amounts that I don’t know on them from various times family have come to town.

    What’s frustrating is that they can say we’re “urged to reclaim funds” but they make it so damn hard to do. I tried 3 different train stations one day and none of them had anybody in the ticketing office to help with this. I’ve tried the online transfer took and had it not work for me, so between the online thing not working and the ticket offices being unstaffed, how are we supposed to reclaim the funds‽

    • BakuOPEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      I’m from melb but I get it. I remembered I had a Myki with 15 or so bucks on it I lost and blocked a couple of years ago which expired earlier this year. They let me spend 15 minutes on the form with a bajillion different errors along the way before I finally got to the end just for it to say I couldn’t refund an expired Myki (which I always thought was basically the whole point of the refund form…)

      Considering public transportation is meant to be a public service, they hold onto the few measly dollars people have on various cards harder than fucking apple

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Queensland public transport users have been urged to get a refund on their old go cards if they are making the switch to smart ticketing, with millions of dollars available to claim.

    The public transport operator has reminded commuters that they can still claim the money back at any time — with the average value of the go cards that expired in 2022-23 coming in at $9.29.

    Speaking on ABC Radio Brisbane, Translink’s smart-ticketing project director Sarah Capstick said the easiest way to reclaim money on an unused go card is to do so before it goes dormant.

    Ms Capstick said Translink was encouraging commuters who were making the move to the smart-ticketing system to get a refund on their go card.

    She said a large number of commuters are still using their go card, but the public transport operator had recorded a 15 per cent uptake of customers on the rail network using smart ticketing.

    “If you think about some of our customers, we have children, we have people who are seniors and may feel more comfortable using a card.”

    The original article contains 416 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 57%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!