Luas Smartcard & customer support problems

I've experienced two problems with the Luas Smartcard system recently:

1. The card scanner furthest from the corner entrance to the Jervis Centre on the inbound platform is always out of order and never tags cards on or off.
2. The other evening none of the scanners on either side of the Museum (Benburb Street) stop would not tag me off no matter how many times I tried but kept reporting that I was already tagged on which meant that I was, by default, charged €1.90 for a €1.25 journey (you get charged the highest fare for the line if you don't tag off within a certain period of time).

I have emailed them to draw their attention to these problems and on the basis that a reasonable quid pro quo for the prominent fare dodging warning posters/stickers that have recently appeared at stops and on carriages is that they keep their systems in proper working order so that honest passengers can pay their fares easily. The seemed to ignore my initial emailed complaint and eventually acknowledged my second email saying that it had been passed on to the relevant department for attention.

Has anybody else had similar problems with the Luas system or their customer support contacts?

Their customer service leaves a lot to be desired.

I have a yearly card myself but bought Smart card for son and if I had my way over I would not bother with one. They are more trouble than anything else. I lost a fiver on the machine one morning because I thought I had completed the transaction and we went ahead and got on the tram. When tagging off noticed that the credit had not been added. Their answer to this was more or less hard luck! Whoever came along behind me at the machine got the money. Oddly enough I found a fiver one morning a few weeks later which was jammed in the machine but used it to reimburse others who lost their money on another machine.

I have regularly phoned to complain about the screen being out of action at ingoing boarding point and they always use the same story "that they don't look after the screens but they will pass on the message".

Thanks for the feedback suellen. The Smartcard thing is a bit of a joke at the moment since, in my expernience, the few ticket checkers who patrol the Luas system have no way of scanning them to check that the passenger has tagged on correctly. As such it looks like anybody with a Smartcard can just wave it at the ticket checker and get a free ride.

ClubMan said:

the few ticket checkers who patrol the Luas system have no way of scanning them to check that the passenger has tagged on correctly. As such it looks like anybody with a Smartcard can just wave it at the ticket checker and get a free ride.

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That's my experience too, though I recall some of the initial blurb stating that the ticket checkers would have card readers.

Yeah - but it's so far. Or at least the few ticket inspectors that I've seen on the Luas have never had these card readers.

The broken scanner at the Jervis Centre is causing me a lot of pain. I work about 50 meters away from that stop, and a northern line commuter. When I am running late for the train, and the Luas already there or due, I just don’t have the time to run up to the next scanner to get it tagged – half the time I carry on and board the Luas, fully aware that I am breaking the law, feeling guilty etc.

Meanwhile, some ticket checkers actually do have the scanner device to verify the smart card tagging, they checked mine one morning, takes them two seconds to verify if its tagged or not.

So what happens when somebody tells them that they couldn't tag on because their tagging scanners were broken I wonder?

Maybe a coincidence but the scanner in question at the Jervis stop was working this morning for the first time in ages. Still haven't received any satisfactory answers (just an acknowledgement second time aroun) to my emailed queries to Luas customer support in spite of their customer charter stating that customer queries will be dealt with within one week (it's a week today since I contacted them).