An Update -- Excellent Customer Service

[gnomi]

Well, that's better.

After this morning's debacle, I called the T's customer service line and left voicemail for the office that deals with automatic fare collection (AFC, or, in other words, Charlie Card) issues.

About ten minutes ago, the guy on whose voicemail I'd left the message called me back. Not only did he express sympathy for what had happened this morning, he looked up my card (reporting that it was, in fact, registering as a Link Pass in the system), checked the usage history from this morning (explaining that he had the Rapid Transit info in his system but the bus info had to wait until it was downloaded directly from the fareboxes on the buses -- something that happens once each day), and reported that it must have been gate error, since the system had me going through the gate at Harvard at 7:21 AM this morning.

He then gave me the correct spelling of his last name and his direct office phone number and told me I should call him if I ever had another problem with the AFC system. He was also concerned that I had been unable to reach the T's complaint line and said he was going to look into that once he got off the phone with me (not that I expect any follow up on that, but he sounded very surprised that no one was manning those phones).

Comments

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I'm generally pleased with the changes that the T has made over the last several months. Of course, we all have to complain about it a bit to save face, but I am enjoying not having to fish a card out of my wallet whenever I get on the bus, and I think their new website is spiffy (even if you're not comparing it to the old one, which sucked inordinately).

If I'd thought about it at all, of course I would have known, but doesn't it strike you as rather Big-Brother-like that they can look up exactly when and where you've gotten on the T?

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Very cool! (If a bit scary on the data-analysis side.)