Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Unfair Train Penalty

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Unfair Train Penalty

I wrote this letter which was published in the Straits Times Forum page today.
My aim is to tell the commercial enterprises that they should balance corporate profits with fair treatment of their customers.
I also intend the same message to go to our government leaders and remind them about their responsibility to the citizens. They should not allow the citizens to bear the burden of higher cost as commercial enterprises seek to increase their profits.
http://www.straitstimes.com/STForum/Story/STIStory_620600.html

Tan Kin Lian

7 comments:

Unknown said...: Mr. Tan,

I had similar experience in exiting MRT for a short while because my young son needs to go toilet to pee urgently.

I was penalised for a new fare to re-enter the train station within 2mins!; January 05, 2011 8:45 AM
C H Yak said...: Just because Singaporeans are quite affluent and apathetic, they tend to give way to the "Leviathan" mindset.

As such both Authorities and big corporations are capitalising on this mentality which is bad. It becomes a way to cover issues and mistakes too, push away responsibilities, but worst to make more profits or just to cut costs. This is bad.

It is not about "making life difficult for Authorities and big corporations" but "life could be make simpler and more graceful" for the ordinary people.

Those who travel often overseas may appreciate my point. Sometime, I say I find China more democratic than Singapore. LOL.; January 05, 2011 10:06 AM
Vincent Sear said...: The old insert card and pay fare system seems to be much better. There was no problem of overcharging but true, there's a problem of underpaying at buses, but not at MRTs. The underpaying cheats risk getting caught by ticket inspectors and humiliated. However, does the new tap card system do away with inspectors, so as to lower labour costs and ultimately lower fares? No. Inspectors are still necessary. Instead of cheating at exit, cheats cheat at entry point. In fact, there're more inspecting costs as inspectors need to be armed with a card reader.; January 05, 2011 4:59 PM
Lye Khuen Way said...: Beside the point that SMRT etc could be more "forgiving/less profit-minded", I bet Mr Tan among many others would have found the sign posting in our underground stations not up to mark !; January 05, 2011 8:42 PM
AB said...: If we want to talk about fair treatment of customers, then I would not bother this case of mistake exit and re-enter within few minutes.

In my opinion a more meaningful cause to talk about is the minimum entry fare, especially now that we are charged distance based fare.

Why should one or two stations trip cost us one dollar or more for a new trip? When the same distance would cost few cents only for a longer distance trip? The disparity is far too large. The minimum fare upon entry is too high.; January 05, 2011 9:21 PM
captaincaveman said...: If we were to strictly adhere to the meaning of distance base charging then shouldn't there be $0.0 charging for commuters who enter and exit the same station say within 5 minutes? The reason being that the distance travelled is 0.0Km and there is no way that one could have travel to other station and return within 5 minutes.; January 06, 2011 1:44 PM
AB said...: $0 charging for enter/exit same station? That would be ideal and drastic.

I would be very happy already if it comes down to 20c for zero station, 25c for 1 station and progressing slowly upwards.; January 06, 2011 10:34 PM