Monday, January 10, 2011

Clipper response on Facebook Re: Millbrae

I made a comment on Clipper's facebook page about the poor placement and insufficent number of Clipper readers at Millbrae Station and how they really make the transfer difficult.

After a month, they responded.

Hi John,

Bay Area Clipper commented on their wall post.

Bay Area Clipper wrote:
"John and Jonathan,

Thanks for reaching out to us. We've heard from a few customers about the placement of the Clipper readers at Millbrae and have provided the feedback to the appropriate teams at Clipper and Caltrain. We'll look into a solution to make that transfer easier.

- Lisa"


I for one was telling everyone I saw go through this hassle to "Email Caltrain, Email BART, Email Clipper, please". Thanks for getting the numbers up.

For reference, I emailed Caltrain Customer Service about this, this was their response.


Dear Mr. Murphy,

Thank you for your comments concerning the placement of the Clipper Card readers on the northbound platform at the Millbrae station. As you may already know, this station is a BART facility and due to wiring issues, etc. Clipper was not able to put a reader closer to the entrance to the BART platform.

We regret the inconvenience this causes. Caltrain patrons may want to board a Caltrain car that will stop in front of the card readers, which will eliminate the need to walk back an forth to tag off.

Sincerely,

Astrid Lindell
Customer Service Representative 2


My dad wanted a TV in his bathroom, my Mother said she didn't want to see any Coax running around the house. That is a "Wiring issue". My dad punched a hole along the drywall, ran the coax, patched the drywall, repainted, voila! Brent Musberger in the loo.

Asking me to ride another car is amusing, given that I have a bike and cannot. Caltrain has a specific luggage car which is primarily used by people transfering at Millbrae to get to SFO. Wheelchairs are also in specific cars.

The inconvenience is 100's of Clipper users who will end up missing a BART train at Millbrae, per day, at 15-20 minutes per. The burdened labor rate of those patrons would more than pay for multiple new readers in a month or two. Brutal.

Well, cross your fingers. I suspect this nefarious wiring issue will be resolved. But what do I know, I'm not a train guy. I'm an electrical engineer.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

"As you may already know, this station is a BART facility [...]
who also participates in the Clipper program.

Sigh.

Nick said...

As you noted in the original post, the real solution would be to make tagging onto BART automatically tag you off from CalTrain.

But that would be a software problem, and thus inherently unsolveable!

Sonia said...

Problems like these may really seem unresolvable and sadly, we really could not do something about it because we're not the one in-charge of fixing them. All we could do now is just to update them and address our concerns. After all, a lot of companies are doing their best in order to provide us great customer service like the ones working in a call center. They are hired and trained for us to have the kind of service that we deserve.

Saurabh said...

Hi, "Me too" :(. Sadly I had assumed tagging on to BART would tag me off Caltrain but I looked at my Clipper history today and found that I am being charged the full rate. If you can - can you tell me where these Caltrain readers are in Millbrae - I didn't even see any... Thanks for the help.