Are you guys serious? I was just trying to squash the 'your myki expires if you don't use it for 90 days' myth, and you all carry on about station attendants and short term tickets. No wonder the myth persists.
For a long time we have had one tame Myki apologist who is out of touch with reality; now we have another.
I'm reject that, I'm just pointing out how the system currently functions. You know, offering help to those who don't know.
Listen to yourself - you're blaming the user as is typical with anyone connected to Myki.
"Go to a top-up machine and press zoom" - how the frig would an irregular user know that?
"See a Station Attendant" - that's plainly ridiculous and you should know it. What proportion of stations are staffed? Less than ten percent?
"Register on-line first?" Another hilarious joke. Why would a very occasional user want to go though the rigmarole of registered a public transport ticket on-line, with a set of logins? Why? Another case of the user having to meet the needs of the system instead of the other way round.
So - try and explain to me what happened to my friends from the country when they hadn't used their Myki cards for several months, came to Melbourne and tried to touch on and were 'declined' or whatever (they said it just didn't work) which resulted in them throwing their cards in the bin. I read Daniel Bowen's post and I still don't understand. Perhaps I'm one of those stupid people you were alluding to.
What happened? Plain English please.
Well, I was hoping you'd shed light on that, seeing as it's your story. If you read my own post, you'd realise I only mentioned registering online as a possible explanation as to why the card was declined.
As I said, there's only a few situations where you can't use money on your card:
*It's been more than 90 days since you did an online top up, and you can't collect it. It hasn't gone, you just have to wait a day. You can still use any other money on the card.
*An automatic top-up has been declined by your bank (auto top-up is set up by you online to top up your myki money if it falls below a threshold, or every 28 days if you have a pass)
*You've reported it stolen
You seem fairly certain the cards weren't registered online, so that rules out those possibilities. You're left with:
*The card is 4 years old and has expired
*The card is broken
Or one other possibility: the validator is broken. But I would hope anyone would try another validator before throwing away their card....
Nothing whatever to do with a 90 day expiry for not using your card. My money's on the 4 year expiry, especially if the validator said declined, as opposed to not reacting at all. You can bash myki for this all you want, but all cards expire, and no metcard or paper ticket lasts 4 years. (Ironically, if they had registered the card, they would have been sent a letter advising them it's about to expire).
Station Attendants: Well you don't have to see a station attendant, you can mail it off instead.
As for short term tickets, has VLine actually said paper tickets will be completely abolished, or do they plan to keep them on? If so, conductors could easily be able to sell you a myki as bus drivers can, although you're supposed to buy your ticket before you travel on VLine, even before myki.
And short term tickets on trams? Well I agree completely, of course it's needed.