MTA rider finds card defective, service more so
When MTA customers Bernard and Maria Smith found that their new CharmCard wasn't working, they reported the problem to MTA customer service. That's when they really encountered a defective system.
Bernard Smiith gave this account:
On Thursday evening, he and his wife were going to their church, where she was to sing with the choir. But when the got to the Charles Street Metro station, they found that her Charm Card would not work to open any oof the gates. Bernard Smith then went to the ticket machine and tapped the card, which showed there was a monthly pass on it with almost a month of value.
They sought help from the attendant, who was apparently no help. Mr. Smith described her as "clueless." A supervisor was summoned, but by the time he got there Mrs. Smith had missed her choir time.
That night, the Smiths called the 800 number on the card and reported the problem. Mr. Smith said he was told that the would have to go downtown to the MTA Store to resolve the problem
So on Friday, Smith heads downtown to 6 St. Paul Street from his Southwest Baltimore home. When he gets there, an MTA manager tells him that the report on the defective card had yet to come in and that he would have to come back.
So today, Smith returns to the MTA Store and is told the report still isn't in and that he should come back later in the week. So this afternoon, Mrs. Smith calls the 800 number again and finds that the person who took the original report got the facts wrong. Mrs. Smith was told she would have to file a new report.
That's when Mr. Smith called The Sun.
Now I find it interesting that there could be some CharmCards on the street with defective chips. That would certainly be a problem, and a bit of a black eye for the MTA, which took years getting the system up and running.
But it is an even greater concern that the MTA would require a rider to come all the way downtown to get a problem resolved and then fail to resolve it. A trip downtown takes a considerable bite out of a customer's time, and the rider who makes that trip ought to be treated with appropriate concern. To send a customer home again and again because some paper work hasn't come through strikes me as Soviet-era service.
So here's the question for MTA Administrator Ralign T. Wells: Is this official policy? Are managers at the MTA Store permitted to tell people to go home and come back later? Is there any limit on the number of trips the MTA will require its riders to take to solve a simple problem? Does the MTA presume its riders are liars until they prove otherwise?
This question has been posed to the MTA. We'll let you know what the response is. And if you know of other instances of defective CharmCards, drop an email to michael.dresser@baltsun.com.
Comments
As a manager of a large customer service organization, keep in mind that there's two sides to every story. I'm in no way defending the MTA, as I'm sure they are more then capable of providing the horrendous service described by Mr. Smith. But wouldn't it be fair to wait until they have responded to your inquiry before the public airing of his concern? Or perhaps that time has already passed...but that wasn't obvious from the article.
Posted by: traveler | November 8, 2010 5:18 PM
Although I am not a fan of the MTA and will definitely speak on how poor the customer service is, I will have to admit I am disappointed in this blog/article. I really expected the writer to speak the the broard range of issues with the MTA service. Instead, the writer wasted their time (and the time of those that read this article) with this lack-luster work. There are too few details about the issue and it is too one-sided. The writer did not bother to call the MTA and get information on the process. I was really expecting this piece to uncover the poor customer service I have been experiencing from the MTA for as long as I could remember. Instead, the article uncovered yet again another poorly written and poorly informed article by the BaltimoreSun.
Posted by: Kay | November 8, 2010 5:30 PM
I imagine the author tried to get a response, but he was instructed to head on over to the MTA Store.
Posted by: Anonymous | November 9, 2010 10:54 AM
Meh, you know as a SmarTrip card user... it's not completely out of the ordinary to have a perfectly good card and improperly programmed or malfunctioning gates down the road in DC. Folks down that way had some serious bugs to work out wityh regard to the programming etc. after raising fares 3 times in the course of a year. For the deployment of this technology to a system, I'd not be surpised to learn that the card is fine and the gates are the problem.
So you noted that the customers verified that the pass was in fact loaded on the card and that it was stil valid. I have to wonder if the card would have been accepted on a bus, or on light rail (not that the customers should have been forced to find out). Given the issues you've already noted with light rail deployment, well, one just has to wonder how buggy the system still is.
As far as customer service, I think it's inexcusable to make NO attempt to fix the situation. Not even the offer to swap out the card and reload the pass and any other amount of money loaded on the old card to a new card?? That might have helped MTA deduce whether the problem was at the gates or with the card. And what, the station manager wouldn't wave them through after confirming that a valid pass was loaded on the card????? Give me a break!
Posted by: Pete | November 9, 2010 11:07 AM