REVscene Automotive Forum - Translink at it again..

Not my problem anymore but I figure Translink has nothing to complain about. It's their own fault they used a business model that only works when people pay for something and then not use it.

Seriously...U-Pass is mandatory so you have no choice but to pay for it even if you drive to school every day. Now smart people have said fuck you to Translink and sold their unused U-Pass. I see this as justified. You purchased a service so it should be your own choice what to do with it.

Also...

Quote:

Forgive my doubting nature, but I'm not ready to buy the claim that students reselling transit passes forced upon them as a condition of enrolling at many universities and colleges is really costing TransLink $15 million a year.

To begin with, by my arithmetic -admittedly imprecise, but then so is the evidence supporting claims of significant student transit fraud -one in six students would have to resell his or her non-transferable U-Pass each academic year for TransLink to lose that much.

Secondly, extrapolating lost revenue on the basis of passes that have simply disappeared -lost in the mail, left in a jeans pocket at the laundry, buried at the bottom of a handbag, used as a bookmark and forgotten, mishandled by institutions -is really an imaginary cost that may not even be occurring.

TransLink says investigators found 29 U-Passes either listed for sale or sought by prospective buyers on Craigslist, up from two postings on the website several weeks earlier. This may represent a trend -or it may not. Whatever it is, it's a tiny sample.

While even a small black market in discounted transit passes certainly deserves concern, 29 U-Passes amounts to about two per cent of the more than 1,500 a month that would have to be sold during the academic year for TransLink to lose what it claims.

One of TransLink's complaints is students who "receive" a U-Pass "provided" by their college or university but then use it after they've dropped studies. But students must pay up to $200 per term in non-refundable U-Pass fees under levies from which they can't opt out, whether they need the pass or not.

Forcing students to pay for the pass, refusing a refund when their enrolment status changes and complaining that they use what they've paid for while it's still valid seems more than a tad unjust.

TransLink was quoted Thursday as saying it might have to cancel the student pass program if the problem persists but was soon distancing itself from what seems to be an overthe-top response. A spokesman later said that "in the fullness of time," TransLink might have to reconsider should the U-Pass program prove unsustainable due to student fraud.

Talk about getting out the elephant gun to hunt fleas.

TransLink itself says there are solutions to this. Meetings are already scheduled to discuss a universal electronic fare card that could replace transit passes and permit TransLink to cancel any U-Pass it believes misused. And how about a lowtech solution like asking students to present their college ID along with the U-Pass?

Some anti-fraud organizations estimate that up to 15 per cent of insurance claims are either exaggerated or fraudulent.

So, anybody in favour of ending auto insurance and shutting down ICBC because clients are seven times more likely to precipitate a fraudulent act than the evidence indicates is the incidence of buying or selling non-refundable student transit passes on Craigslist?

shume@islandnet.com

http://www.vancouversun.com/story_pr...47913&sponsor=