Friday, July 01, 2011

Dutch Ov-Chipcard gets instructions from parliament

This week was the last week of this seasons parliament sessions in the Netherlands. And our parliament has a tendency, of late, to increasingly focus on details and incidents, rather than strategy and policy. Thus, responding to consumer dissatisfaction, the Dutch MPs approved a decree in which TransLinkSystem, the builder of the public transport chipcard, is ordered to simplify the check-in, check-out system.

Upon check-in the system deducts a big amount (sort of bail) from the pre-paid purse and only if check-out functions properly, the system returns the money (and deducts the fare price). This doesn't work properly so if somehow the machines don't work properly you quickly run out of cash and are forced into the hassle of phoning/contacting customer service to get your money back. There is even a separate fund that Translink owns, in which money resides which should have been claimed back due to these operaitonal errors. It's the money of customers who are unaware of the errors (they may have enabled the autoload function that fills up the purse from their bank account and they may not really check their accounts that well).

Additionally, there's going to be a change in governance for the ov-chipkaart. MPs decided to install a governing board that is responsible for design and customer features, reducing Translink to the mere processor of the scheme.

Well, as with most of MP initiated ideas, we'll have to see if this will fly (and how.....).