Needless inefficiencies and a sense of powerlessness

A week or two ago, my EZLink card (which is your ticket to public transportation in Singapore) stopped working, for no rhyme or reason.  Thankfully, I had another one that was given to me in my welcome package from the Work Holiday Programme pass I’m here on.  I’ve been using that ever since and a few days ago I decided it was time to take care of the malfunctioning one.  First I went to the service booth, telling the guy that my card wasn’t scanning.  He scanned it, looked at it curiously, scanned his own card, and handed it back to me telling me he couldn’t read it.  I should have known that this was going to set the tone for a frustrating experience.  Obviously he was not paying attention to me, far too used to working like a zombie, just topping cards up for people.

Well, now that I had finally caught his attention, he informed me that only the ticketing office took care of the cards themselves.  Ok, fine.  I headed over to that line and told the lady in the window the same thing.  Apparently this happens rather frequently, judging by the stack of cards they had accumulated already.  I was handed a form and told that I would have to wait three weeks to get a check in the mail.  Wait, what?!  I expected a quick and easy transfer to a new card (or the one that I am using now).  Why waste the time and effort of mailing a check to me?  I don’t even have a bank account to deposit it in!  When I complained of the inefficiencies of it, they just gave me a number to call.  Great.

Well, now I’m at this point where it’s not even worth the money to call them up to wait around to talk to someone who can’t even do anything.  This is my major problem with all organizations that have problems like this.  You can never reach someone who can actually do something about it!  I’ve tried this before and just got led on a wild goosechase of transfers that never actually brought me to anyone in charge enough to be able to set the gears in motion.  Meanwhile, I was difficult to these poor people who have to answer customer service calls, wasting my time and their time while probably putting them in a bad mood.  Part of my desire to be someone with power and influence is really just to be able to actually contact the right person in this scenario, because upsetting me would be very bad for business, so they’d take care of it.  I’d just like to be successful and respected enough to make a difference in these situations.

Apparently this new card (they’re switching systems or something) is too new and they don’t have a way to transfer the existing balance.  I find it irresponsible for them to change if they’re not ready to do such a basic service.  Either you do enough beta testing to be able to make transfers or ensure the cards won’t malfunction!  I did absolutely nothing to tamper with the card, yet I get punished with having to spend my time trying to get a new one (that they were going to make me pay for!) AND waiting for nearly a month before getting my money back.  If time is money, what kind of compensation am I getting for this inconvenience of waiting so long?  They should at least give me a new card with a fresh balance of say, $5 or something simple like that.  Now that would be great customer service.

Instead, I’m left here fuming at them, yet helpless to do anything.  I can’t exactly stop taking public transport around the city and I’m certainly not about to pay the higher fees for individual fares rather than use an EZLink card.  However, I’m not at all pleased with this level of service and I really wish I could call them up and actually have them listen to me.  But more than likely, I will just listen to elevator music for half an hour, get transferred around a few times, and then ultimately end up getting a voicemail from someone who won’t bother to reply.  A lot of our security in life is feeling like we have a certain level of control.  First over ourselves and our lives, but next over the things that happen to us.  In this case, there was absolutely nothing I could have done and nothing I can do to prevent this.  So why do I get the short end of the stick?

I’m sure that soon enough I’ll have forgotten all about this particular situation, but I will be left with a sense of a loss of power from large organizations.  I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I never dreamed of growing my business into a huge corporation.  Perhaps that is because I dislike what large conglomerates are like.  I promise myself I will never let something in my hands get to that point.  I’ll find a way to fix all the problems and make the small voices heard.