A Child Doesn't Travel Free on Weekends, AT Bureaucracy Gone Mad

Tee from Point Chevalier

In late November, I made a mistake of registering the AT Hop Card for my 5 year old grandson to a later year of birth making his age as 2+. When the online registration was completed his status is shown as “child” as shown on the screenshot at the top of the attachment.

There's no alert on his account to say that he'll be charged an adult fare.

The mistake was discovered not long after registration and duly updated in his account with the correct year. By that time four trips on weekends have been made and he was charged adult fares for for all of them.

I contacted AT pointing out the mistakes: the later birth year but still registered as a child; and he's been charged adult fares, and asked for an explanation and a refund. It took 5 or 6 phone calls and several emails to AT, which have taken much of AT and my time, costing a few hundred dollars of ratepayers' money to get a reply from AT today.

The reply is an oxymoron, self contradictory in the underlined sentence in the second screenshot of AT's email in the attachment: “the child is under 3 years of age (2017-07-07 ) you were charged the default adult fare as children under 5 travel for free”.

I subsequently called AT to point out the contradictory statement and asked for clarification, and was given the same repeated mantra as above. I was last told by a manager that AT is not budging in their position of not refunding repeating the same mantra. But not answering why they charged him adult fares despite registering him as a child and why no alert in his online account of going to charge default adult fares.

AT Bureaucracy Gone Mad.pdf Download View