Touch & Go. Helping us or ...???

Now we have the Touch & Go (“T&G”) system in place. From paying the toll rates to paying the parking at my office, the T&G card looks very convenient to us. Pay Rangkaian Segar Sdn Bhd (“Company”) and we have access to all toll and almost all parking bays in Kuala Lumpur. In addition, we have busses operators and other public transport operators linking their service to the T&G system as well.

Remember the time when one minister is angry because the highway concessionaires are delaying in installing their T&G system? Then, couple of months after that, all tolls in Malaysia has the system installed in the place to replace the autopay system.

But, whether we realize it or not, the T&G system is like blood sucking ticks. The company only take money from you and live with it. There is no convenience built in the T&G system. That’s one of the reasons why I stopped paying this Company.

Let me lay the facts one by one. First of all, to get the card, you have to pay a deposit of Ringgit Malaysia 30 (RM30/-) (if I am not mistaken). But have we ever thought what the heck is the deposit for? If the are talking about the cost of making the card, why we the consumer should bear all the cost of installing the system and producing the cards. We are the consumer for goodness sake. The Company should be the party who should bear the costs.

Imagine, RM30 deposit for each card; multiply with say about 10 million users of the T&G cards. The amount of money generated from the deposit alone is RM300,000,000.00. That’s three hundred million free money. Of course it can only be captured as deposit in the Company’s account but imagine how much money it can generate through fixed deposit arrangements with the banks. Say the rate now is 3.2% pr annum for a month. The income generated from the FD only is at least RM800,000.00 per month. And how many of us go to the Company and claim the RM30/- after we finish using the card anyway?

Well, for me, the RM30 imposed is nothing more than transferring the cost of making the card to the users. Am I right or I am right? So, what cost does the company incur? None I supposed. Then the next scenario. Let say each of the 10 million users top up RM50 value to their cards. That’s RM500,000,000.00 another free money. The money will only go to the highway concessionaires after they send monthly invoice to the Company and the Company has a period of 30 days to make the payment. That’s two months. So, FD again and that’s RM1.3 million a month. What do we get? Nothing, no discount or anything given to us the users or consumers. The Company can at least give us 10% discount because we pay them in advance and by giving 10% the Company actually encourage us to use it.

Furthermore, like the parking operators here at my office, they will enter into an arrangement with the Company so that they can charge an additional 10% on top of the price paid. So, the parking operators will get the 10% surcharge on top of the price and the total amount will go directly to the Company. Pay a little commission to the parking operator, and well, we malay says, “duit atas angin tu”.

I am not stopping here. For our “convenience", the Company linked up with the banks for us to reload the value and the bank will of course charge us another RM0.50 for the service. So, the costs still go to us when the Company should be the one who bear the costs. Right? Is this the real “capitalisation” economy system or this is just plain “cekik darah”? And to add to the above, when we drive through a tollbooth, sometimes we have to endure the incident where our T&G card didn’t work. Touch it once, the sign card error will show. So, you have to reverse your car and the cars behind you (being the typical Malaysian) can’t just stop honking. Is that what we expect when we are the users of the so-called “technology”?

And if you loose your card and say you have balance of RM150.00 value in your card, can you get the balance transferred to a new card? or the money just go into the thin air? Can you stop the card from being used? Well, ladies and gentlemens, we can't do the things herein mentioned. What you can do is buy a new card, pay another RM30 to the Company and add another RM150.00 for the value you loose. Can we smile after that?

The conditions on the card states if you loose the card, you should report it to the Company but for what purpose? If you are not able to block the usage of the card and to transfer the balance value in the card that we loss, regardless whether we report loss or not we are not going to get the card or the value in it back.

My friend had an incident where he actually went to make the report. So, the person at the office of the Company gave him a form to fill, and when he asked the questions above, she can't answer all the question. So, for what purpose we fill in the forms?

I think the Company should change their principal business from providing a card based payment system to toll, public transport and other payment based premises to collecting money from the Malaysian citizen and drawing money from Fixed Deposits.