Cycle hire gremlins uncovered

I've again been given some interesting documents by the BBC's Freedom of Information researcher Julia Ross on the Cycle Hire scheme. They date from 27th August 2010, so the scheme had then been operational for a month.

They give you a glimpse of the gremlins that hit the system and the way the operator Serco dealt with them.

One e-mail breaks down the number of customers who had been overcharged. This works out as:

£300 - 9 customers

£450 - 1 customer

£600 - 1 customer

£750 - 3 customers

£1050 - 1 customer

The e-mail goes on to highlight the gremlins causing the problems:

"At this time we cannot see a pattern that links these customers together and which could prove a clue to the root cause of this defect. We have raised a Severity 1 incident with Logica, and this will be worked on over the weekend as a matter of absolute priority. In addition, a Service Management Incident is being raised. As a precaution, we have changed the Late Return Charge to £0 in the Tariff Table to prevent future issues of this kind. This means we will have to monitor late return activity on an individual basis, and manually apply charges as they arise."

What they also show is Serco went to extreme lengths to try and refund mistakes. In the case of the customer who was wrongly overcharged £1,050, a manager refunded the customer himself, writing: "I will transfer funds into his account from my personal account."

The e-mails also show these glitches caused the operator Serco to drop the automatic late return charge of £150 and look at them on a case by case basis.

One says:

"The £0 late return charge remains in place, and Logica have advised 'turning-off' the Late Return billing process in the interim. Thus the risk of any further issues of this particular kind are mitigated."

I assume the automatic late return charge is now in place... let me know though...

Twitter: @tomsedwards

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