ERP woes: CashCard or car's IU at fault?
Diana Othman & Lim Wei Chean
Thu, May 08, 2008
The Straits Times
MR DANIEL Wong, 45, braces himself for trouble every time he drives past an Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) gantry.
He has had to cough up administrative charges twice already because his CashCard was not detected at the gantry, despite the fact that it was valid and had sufficient value.
Mr Wong has paid $20 in charges so far, and worries about how much more he will rack up before his problem is solved.
He is among about 300 motorists who have trouble every time they pass an ERP gantry.
What is worse is that they do not know what causes the problem.
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) says the fault lies with a particular batch of CashCards bought by these motorists.
But the Network for Electronic Transfers Singapore (Nets), which owns the CashCards, says they are working fine.
Motorists like Mr Wong are none the wiser.
He changed his CashCard a few times when problems started cropping up, but when he was unable to enter a multi-storey carpark on his way to lunch recently, he decided to do something more.
'The ERP-like system was not reacting to my CashCard and my in-vehicle unit (IU) at all! I wasted 10 minutes getting it sorted out and talking to the carpark operator,' he lamented.
So, during the lunch hour yesterday, he drove from his workplace in Jurong to Ang Mo Kio to have his IU inspected.
The verdict: a faulty CashCard.
Businessman Seah Boon Tee, 46, was also told that his CashCard was the cause of the problem after he did a similar check.
Mr Seah has had to pay the $10 administrative charge several times after his CashCard was not detected at an ERP gantry.
'Many other people I know have also complained. Sometimes, even the IU can't read the card,' he said.
Nets, however, says the problems with the CashCard appear isolated to ERP payments. It says it has no problems with other CashCard transactions.
ERP deductions, it said, form just 40 per cent of the total number of CashCard transactions each month, which include carpark payments and other sales.
The company's assistant chief executive, Ms Suman Balani, noted that the number of complaints about CashCards has 'risen in tandem with the growth in the ERP gantries and extended hours of ERP operations'.
She said the cards are tested on IUs to ensure they work, and added that Nets' investigations suggest there may be a compatibility issue with some IUs.
It is working with the LTA on this.
But the LTA says the trouble lies with a particular batch of CashCards, which do not have the word 'Gemplus' - the name of the chip supplier - on their microchips.
It said the IUs are not at fault since only five of the devices are found to be faulty at official inspection centres every month, a figure that has remained constant.
Meanwhile, Nets has offered to replace faulty cards for free.
Mr Ong Kian Min, deputy chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Transport, said: 'LTA and Nets should sort this out.'
The problem, he said, seemed like a 'technical flaw'. Still, he said, the 'tolerance for errors must be very small'.