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On March 25, this blog turned two. In the next few days or weeks, I'll re-examine a few of the perennial issues I've been dealing with in this space.
First of all, my Presto-card woes. Soon after writing my last entry about the subject, having just returned to Ottawa from Toronto, I wrote that the two cities' systems did not seem to be compatible after all. That may not have been true, because soon after that, I realized that my card wasn't working in OTTAWA, either!
Now, you might think that I'd be able to simply take my defective card to an OC Transpo kiosk and exchange it for a good one. Nope. First of all, I had to pay $6 just for the card itself, then the nice young man loaded a few trips on to it (which I also had to pay for) and I was further instructed to wait 24 hours (not 23 or 23.5 hours, mind you - I found that out the hard way) and phone up Presto to get the balance transferred from my old to my new card number. That involved lots of time caught up in endless telephone trees and on-hold periods, though to be fair, the call-centre people were unfailingly polite.
And by the time I had to take the bus again (probably by the end of the next day), it was once again working as it should.
Still. What if I WEREN'T retired, had to take several bus trips a day, and simply didn't have the TIME to do all that? And it's not as if it were really my fault - I'd had the old card safely in my purse all along and hadn't done anything terrible to it like step on it, put it through the washing machine or dryer, or toss it over the Hog's Back Falls, sans barrel (though I was certainly tempted!)
Why can't they make these things easier?
First of all, my Presto-card woes. Soon after writing my last entry about the subject, having just returned to Ottawa from Toronto, I wrote that the two cities' systems did not seem to be compatible after all. That may not have been true, because soon after that, I realized that my card wasn't working in OTTAWA, either!
Now, you might think that I'd be able to simply take my defective card to an OC Transpo kiosk and exchange it for a good one. Nope. First of all, I had to pay $6 just for the card itself, then the nice young man loaded a few trips on to it (which I also had to pay for) and I was further instructed to wait 24 hours (not 23 or 23.5 hours, mind you - I found that out the hard way) and phone up Presto to get the balance transferred from my old to my new card number. That involved lots of time caught up in endless telephone trees and on-hold periods, though to be fair, the call-centre people were unfailingly polite.
And by the time I had to take the bus again (probably by the end of the next day), it was once again working as it should.
Still. What if I WEREN'T retired, had to take several bus trips a day, and simply didn't have the TIME to do all that? And it's not as if it were really my fault - I'd had the old card safely in my purse all along and hadn't done anything terrible to it like step on it, put it through the washing machine or dryer, or toss it over the Hog's Back Falls, sans barrel (though I was certainly tempted!)
Why can't they make these things easier?
