Leap Card issues

Username taken

Hi,

Probably been raised before but has anyone come across an issue where your Leap card suddenly stops working? Happened on Thursday evening for no reason.

This is the 2nd time in less than 12 months that a card has failed on me. Leap Card have advised it will take 10 days to organize a refund as they won't transfer the balance between cards.

devnull

Is the card registered?

Username taken

Yes.. the card is registered... Leap Card didn't even check to see if it was registered, just copied and pasted a standard response email...

devnull

They can send you a replacement with the balance on, but they can't transfer it to a new card you get yourself.

Username taken

And in the meantime, I have no access to the funds i used to top up....So when they do send a replacement, i'll have 2 cards....makes perfect sense.....

cython

Username taken wrote: »

And in the meantime, I have no access to the funds i used to top up....So when they do send a replacement, i'll have 2 cards....makes perfect sense.....

You should be able to return the second card and get a refund of the €5 deposit, less any negative balance that you may have on it.

Username taken

But if both cards are registered in my name, why can't they transfer funds instead of waiting approx 10 days, purchasing a new card etc...? To me, its not very customer orientated....

coylemj

Username taken wrote: »

But if both cards are registered in my name, why can't they transfer funds instead of waiting approx 10 days, purchasing a new card etc...? To me, its not very customer orientated....

+1 Oyster in London can do this, I see no reason why Leap can't.

I lost my Oyster card one night in the west end, purchased a new card from a machine in the tube station on the way back to the hotel. Rang TfL (Transport for London) when I got back to the hotel, they asked me for the number of the new card and I had to nominate the next tube station I'd be in which I did. They said that beginning 8 a.m. the next day, I could validate my new card at any turnstile or ticket machine in that station and I'd pick up the balance from the old card which is precisely what happened.

Obviously the old card was registered and BTW, you cannot register a 'visitor card' so if you intend getting an Oyster card, wait until you get to a station in London as the ones you get posted to you cannot be registered.

GM228

Username taken wrote: »

This is the 2nd time in less than 12 months that a card has failed on me. Leap Card have advised it will take 10 days to organize a refund as they won't transfer the balance between cards.

They will transfer the balance onto the replacement card they send you.

ED E

Username taken wrote: »

But if both cards are registered in my name, why can't they transfer funds instead of waiting approx 10 days, purchasing a new card etc...? To me, its not very customer orientated....

coylemj wrote: »

+1 Oyster in London can do this, I see no reason why Leap can't.

I lost my Oyster card one night in the west end, purchased a new card from a machine in the tube station on the way back to the hotel. Rang TfL (Transport for London) when I got back to the hotel, they asked me for the number of the new card and I had to nominate the next tube station I'd be in which I did. They said that beginning 8 a.m. the next day, I could validate my new card at any turnstile or ticket machine in that station and I'd pick up the balance from the old card which is precisely what happened.

Obviously the old card was registered and BTW, you cannot register a 'visitor card' so if you intend getting an Oyster card, wait until you get to a station in London as the ones you get posted to you cannot be registered.

Because we have offline readers in DBs.


You could:
Have €20 on Card1
Report Card1 missing, get balance switched to Card2
Continue using Card1 on buses until €20 is expended
Spend same balance again on Card2

And it could be done with any balance, not just €20. See the problem?

coylemj

ED E wrote: »

Because we have offline readers in DBs.


You could:
Have €20 on Card1
Report Card1 missing, get balance switched to Card2
Continue using Card1 on buses until €20 is expended
Spend same balance again on Card2

And it could be done with any balance, not just €20. See the problem?

I'm not sure how that is a valid explanation for why it takes them 10 days to get you a new card with the old balance on it. Couldn't you pull off that scam whether it takes one or thirty days to move the balance onto a new card?

Or are you saying that it takes 10 days to update the bus machines with a list of blocked cards?

Dravokivich

ED E wrote: »

Because we have offline readers in DBs.

I don't know why people keep saying this. Offline readers on Dublin Bus is not why you can't get online top-up through Dublin Bus. It's purely because their machines don't have enough memory to store the transactions.

thomasj

Sorry for going off point , but on a full 39a (at 8.30pm last night might I add) i had to stand at the ticket reader, and using my phone while texting kept on setting the ticket reader off.

After messing around with my phone settings, i realised it was the NFC turned on triggering the actions. After turning it off it stopped.

So was going to ask is that any chance of us being able to validate our leap card using our nfc phones in the future , (London has it don't they) using NFC?

Victor

thomasj wrote: »

So was going to ask is that any chance of us being able to validate our leap card using our nfc phones in the future , (London has it don't they) using NFC?

You can top-up your Leap Card using an Android phone (Apple can't do it yet - Apple issue).

Direct from phone to validator may be possible in the future, but you need to make sure your phone has battery. Again, for Apple, it will depend if Apple sort things out.

coylemj

thomasj wrote: »

So was going to ask is that any chance of us being able to validate our leap card using our nfc phones in the future , (London has it don't they) using NFC?

Yes, London supports payment by via contactless debit/credit card plus Apple Pay and Android Pay.....

https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/contactless/other-methods-of-contactless-payment

punisher5112

That will all come in time.

They really should have adopted tfl system though as issues would have been very few as they have it running quite well.

Leap should have had all these systems in place from the start.

ED E

Dravokivich wrote: »

I don't know why people keep saying this. Offline readers on Dublin Bus is not why you can't get online top-up through Dublin Bus. It's purely because their machines don't have enough memory to store the transactions.

Well, it would in that case be both. If it was reliably online the terminal could query the leap database within 300ms to update the balance. But fleetconnect cant be relied on.

I have to assume they dont bother caching all system transactions on the Luas/IR terminals? That'd be horrendously redundant.

In any case even if DB readers arent offline, Luas RPU readers are. So the point stands. I've never seen a DB RPU (probably as they basically didnt exist until recently) but probably safe to assume they're similar.

coylemj wrote: »

I'm not sure how that is a valid explanation for why it takes them 10 days to get you a new card with the old balance on it. Couldn't you pull off that scam whether it takes one or thirty days to move the balance onto a new card?

Or are you saying that it takes 10 days to update the bus machines with a list of blocked cards?

You got me there, dunno what I was thinking.


As a whole storing transactions on the card is a nuts business. Proper connectivity and refer everything to a central authority.

devnull

ED E wrote: »

As a whole storing transactions on the card is a nuts business. Proper connectivity and refer everything to a central authority.

That is what smartcard technology is, balance stored on card.

Your solution is far far more unreliable and depends on data connections being live, equipment always being connected, servers never going down, or the whole system collapses.

ED E

devnull wrote: »

That is what smartcard technology is, balance stored on card.

Your solution is far far more unreliable and depends on data connections being live, equipment always being connected, servers never going down, or the whole system collapses.

Really its just a reliable connection required for the mobile terminals. Server uptime isnt an issue, see your credit card or Gmail for your answer there.

MFC was broken open before, all you have to do is find a similar attack vector on Desfire now and you can write your own ticket with your phone. Theres a reason why your debit card doesnt store your balance.

For BE reliable connectivity is impractical, totally plausible for DB. When TFL make that improvement in the next couple years (would be my guess) we'll see the NTA follow suit with a bit of a delay.

Victor

ED E wrote: »

MFC was broken open before, all you have to do is find a similar attack vector on Desfire now and you can write your own ticket with your phone.

There are defences.

However, as attacks develop, they will move to a new standard of card.

Dravokivich

ED E wrote: »

Well, it would in that case be both. If it was reliably online the terminal could query the leap database within 300ms to update the balance. But fleetconnect cant be relied on.

I have to assume they dont bother caching all system transactions on the Luas/IR terminals? That'd be horrendously redundant.

In any case even if DB readers arent offline, Luas RPU readers are. So the point stands. I've never seen a DB RPU (probably as they basically didnt exist until recently) but probably safe to assume they're similar.

A whole lot of Ifs there ED E.

Luas and Irish Rail validators along with other operators would only cache transactions relevant to them. None of them are live. It all gets reconciled periodically. No different to finance really.

Luas RPU readers are the same used by Dublin Bus and Irish Rail. They are just reading the active information on the card itself. They don't give anything to the card or take anything from it. So I'm not sure why you are bringing that up.