There has to be a better way

Like most people, I have bills that are regularly automatically charged to my credit card, so when Westpac chose to send me a new Platinum Card recently when I still had 2 years remaining on my expiry, I had no choice but to accept it and deal with the fallout. Westpac extended the expiry date by exactly 1 year, and changed the security code on the back.

 

Updating Paypal and a couple of other billing services was a breeze. My Blizzard account which stopped working, was updated online within 3 minutes. Today I came across what has surely got to be the worst administered system in the world and it’s called Myki.

 

Overnight I got this email:

 “Your myki money balance has reached the minimum threshold you set previously. However, auto top up was unable to be processed due to your bank account or credit card details not being verified by your bank. As a result, your myki has been temporarily suspended and is not valid for travel.

 Please call us on call 13 6954 (13 myki) between 6am and 12 midnight, 7 days a week, to confirm your bank account or credit card details and complete the transaction.

 Regards

 The myki Customer Care Team”

 

 

So, I use my wife’s Myki to get to work today. I call the number in the email. It says this number no longer exists, and has been moved to a 1-800 number, which thankfully it transfers me to.

 

I speak to a nice guy who explains that my card hasn’t actually failed yet, and that he’s unable to update my account details until it does. I need to:

 

  1. Wait 24 hours till it fails, and call back.
  2. They will update my credit card details.
  3. After this, I need to mail my Myki card to a P/O box in the city to have the card physically un-suspended. There is a 2 day turnaround for this.
  4. When I get my Myki Card back, I need to call them back again to manually top up the card / activate it (unsure exactly).

 

I am a patient person generally, and a long term Myki advocate. It is beyond belief that everyone needing to change over a credit card number associated with a Myki card will have to go through this process – being without a card for a minimum of 3 days. I am lucky I can use another card, and am still able to use some old Metcards I have lying around.

3 thoughts to “There has to be a better way”

  1. I thought the reason @mjd had to wait so long for a replacement was because he’d actually let it fail (accidentally). this is standard procedure? That’s … pretty crap.

  2. The trick is to update your new card details on their website *before* the next auto-topup fails. Kim did that yesterday and it seemed to work.

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