snapped? (wha)

It’s been a cou­ple weeks since we last checked in on Snap­per.

The Snap­per roll­out has con­tin­ued apace, and some of us haven’t used our old ten-trips for two whole weeks! (Well, we were excit­ed about this, any­way.)

More and more peo­ple are board­ing bus­es armed with the cards; and more and more bus­es (and their dri­vers) are ready to take them.

And in the mean­time we’ve learnt many things. (Read on for more.)

• From the Cap­i­tal Times, we have con­fir­ma­tion from Charles Mon­heim (the “depart­ing Gen­er­al Man­ag­er” of Snap­per) that the chip used in Snap­per is unequiv­o­cal­ly NOT the same as the com­pro­mised MiFare. Good news, but you did­n’t see it on the Snap­per web­site.
• From the Go Welling­ton Bus web­site, we found a video of the cor­rect way (con­firmed by our ear­li­er expe­ri­ence) to tag on and tag off (hint: hold the card steady, don’t wave it). We have to won­der why this video also isn’t on the Snap­per site.
• From a Snap­pette on yes­ter­day’s bus com­mute we find that dri­vers are now instruct­ed to let Snap­per-pre­sent­ing com­muters ride for free on non-Snap­per enabled bus­es — wel­come news for the many peo­ple who have been caught out by this. Again, why isn’t this news on the Snap­per web­site?
• From Zoomin, a use­ful map of where to go to buy your Snap­per card. Dare we say this should be on the Snap­per web­site?
• From Poneke’s web­site, an email from the head of Go Welling­ton Bus explain­ing some of the pecu­liar com­muter user expe­ri­ences report­ed by var­i­ous peo­ple. It real­ly does sound like the GPS and tag­ging on prob­lems report­ed on var­i­ous blogs and news sites will be sort­ed out as every­one, dri­vers, com­muters, and retail­ers, get used to the new sys­tem. Plus, as report­ed by some, it is pos­si­ble for two peo­ple to ride on the one Snap­per! (At least this will be on the Snap­per web­site in time; it’s sim­ply not a fea­ture they want to pub­li­cise right now.)

We’ve also been watch­ing what Welling­ton peo­ple have to say about Snap­per. And you’ve been say­ing a lot. For a flavour, here’s a selec­tion:

• ethel_aardvark points out that you may be bet­ter off buy­ing some 10-trip tick­ets now, giv­en the upcom­ing tick­et price rise;
• farah­mexx has some Snap­per relat­ed chuck­les at the expense of her flat­mate, who thought fish was on the menu for din­ner;
• red­shoe­girl wish­es the roll­out could have been smoother;
• Stephen reports that, yes, you can reg­is­ter anony­mous­ly, which should mit­i­gate some of the pri­va­cy con­cerns expressed in many places;
• Queen Bee down at The Hive won­ders why Auck­land has­n’t got Snap­per already; and lat­er she sug­gests that usage has now reached 10%;
• Jonathan has read the Snap­per T&Cs, and does­n’t like what he reads — Snap­per retains retains the own­er­ship of the card, but take no respon­si­bil­i­ty for its fail­ure;
• Maudlin­rose, like many, is wound up by Snap­per’s fees;
• And Poneke remains the best source of news about Snap­per (aside from the Welling­ton­ista, er, right?)

So it may be a lit­tle while before all is sun­shine and kit­tehs in Snap­per land. For exam­ple, we’d like to get res­o­lu­tion on some of the charg­ing issues we’ve seen, such as the strange dis­par­i­ty in charg­ing between inward and out­ward two-zone jour­neys. But we think things seem def­i­nite­ly to be head­ed in the right direc­tion.

What do YOU think?