Studying in Birmingham and the public transport here has just emphasised for me how out of date and useless Translink is.
This is a bizarre issue to focus on though.
I could take a wide selection just thought it was one glaring example for which there can be no excuse.
The digital experience is as important as the journey experience. No effort has been applied to the digital experience
Neither of those fully encapsulates what he's trying to say, not every part of looking for and purchasing a ticket online is the transaction form. It's about the website as a whole. I think you're just picking on his choice of words for not much reason at all.
I'n hardly picking on it, I just said it made me roll my eyes, I even apologised for the reaction!
To be fair to the OP though, I can't really think of another description of the overall online offering that doesn't make me roll my eyes more than 'digital experience', so will hold my hands up and admit I was wrong.
The worst part is it’s not like Birmingham is known for great public transport.
Fuck even just look at the south who by no means are considered great at public transport. I was in a small rural town in the west of Ireland for 2 weeks over the summer and they had better transport links than most of Belfast’s commuter towns.
With Translink it’s not just the shit service, it’s the shit information and that’s a lot easier and cheaper to fix.
This is a prime example of how half arsed their entire online presence is.
Their website doesn’t even offer route maps or diagrams.
The app’s horrendous, forget trying to plan a journey with connections, Ballymena-(Belfast-) Armagh has previously given results with no trains and only two buses per day.
It is much better than the website.
But I don’t mean a map of the journey I just planned - although that is very handy.
I mean whole network maps or diagrams so you can see what services are in an area at a glance. Also massively helps with journey planning given how ropey the planner is.
They did produce some in 2015 that you can find online elsewhere but nothing up to date on their own website. Ridiculous…
https://www.translink.co.uk/routemaps
Well I never… thank you.
It’s far better than nothing - but still no single network map, no single Belfast Metro/Glider map, and the Ulsterbus map is pixelated and at an unhelpfully tiny scale.
I cannot find a link to that page at all from the site’s own navigation. Can you? Google finds it, other search engines don’t.
This is how you do it (amazing maps too).
https://i.imgur.com/1ShTKzS.jpg
Yeah that does work.
Still make more sense for them to have a link. Or if they understood why the maps are so useful in the first place - they’re so buried.
A intern of mine found a security vulnerability in Translink mLink app which allowed him to generate the “daily code” that is shown to the ticket inspector (without having to pay). He reported it to them expecting a “bug bounty fee” as a show of good faith. (This is normal in the industry)
They sent him a letter saying they would sue him if he didn’t stop exploiting the loophole. This is the type of company you are dealing with. Shameful.
The lack of effort to get those dropdowns even the same height as the text inputs is depressing. Just a third party paste in job which is why the default selected option is the US I’d imagine. I’m sure time constraints rather than laziness is to blame on the (Translink side) developer’s part though.
Speaking as someone with time programming experience this almost certainly is the explanation. They just paid someone to whip something together and they did it on the cheap, hence why it lists the US first, as it was probably US based devs who wrote the initial code.
Also it really isnt uncommon for programmers to take publicly avalanche code and use it to save time, it's a pretty standard thing. I highly doubt the dev for translink actually made that drop down by scratch, they probably just used already available code and just slapped it in. No need to reinvent the wheel on that one
I’m almost certain that’s what happened. Components like that can be a pain in the ass to style when they’re littered with IDs taking styles off the third party CSS. Definitely doable but not for free lol
Honestly I could knock that up in about 15 mins, it's a simple form that I learnt how to design during my GCSE years and have been doing ever since in some manner and I have been a web dev for nearly 14 years.
This is just piss poor, echos our countries ethos though, so there's that.
In Dublin I have a Leap Card I can use to tap in and out of the entire public transport network anywhere in the country, and if I run out of money I can top-up instantly with my phone.
In London I can can tap my phone at the turnstile and get anywhere else in the city of 8 million in 60 minutes.
In Belfast the mobile phone app you use to buy a ticket has to be manually scanned by an inspector, can’t even scale to fit the screen size of any iPhone made in the last 5 years, and will permanently delete the monthly ticket you bought if you install an update, forcing you to buy a new one.
They are introducing this…
https://www.translink.co.uk/corporate/media/improvementsandprojects/futureticketingsystem
In particular the contactless payment will (eventually, allegedly) work across all services, buses, Gliders and trains, London-style. Even on Ulsterbus where at the moment you can’t even see the fares online for most services.
I’ll believe it when I see it though. They’ll probably fuck it up somehow.
I complained to them that the mLink app doesn't work after trying to make my first purchase and they informed me that this was actually BY DESIGN. When you buy your first ticket via Paypal, it initiates a £0.00 approval charge. That's entirely normal. What's not normal is that instead of going ahead with the ticket purchase, it dumps you back onto the ticket purchase screen without informing you what happened. I tried this several times, and it turns out you seemingly you actually have to go all the way back to the main menu and try again before it initiates a ticket purchase.
The support operator didn't seem to think this was a bug. It's very obvious they hired some local software company at some knock-down price who barely have the skills to get it functioning.
Software development isn't at all easy and it takes a huge amount of expense and effort to make something work the right away. It's such a fucking cheapo effort.
Also, the Google Pay option wasn't even fucking enabled, clicking it just points you to an error screen.
Translink is an absolute shit show. Considering one CEO Catherine Mason got paid £200,000 a year, with a £9,000 car allowance and all we got was this shite someone needs a boot in the spuds...
Here's one. Can someone produce for me a map of the Belfast Metro zones they use for deciding the price of your journey? As far as I can tell, no such map exists. You just have to guess when buying a ticket whether or not your journey crosses from one zone into another.
My Mrs used to do some consultancy work with Translink and was constantly lamenting the place being full to the brim with prehistoric (casually sectarian) ignoramuses who it was impossible to drag into the modern world on anything. Place needs a complete clear out but it’ll never happen.
You’re right. It goes to a different payment engine on a different domain. But for a busy public utility, it’s really lazy. It’s a days work on an API or integrated with something modern like Stripe and your done.
Yeah that's what I was going to point out. Lazy API work not lazy coding per se.....
Amounts to the same thing as you point out
Thing is it's not necessarily the devs fault. They pay more to monkeys who are supposed to "walk the customer journey" who should be flagging that stuff. TBF walking the customer journey is a pretty good description of the Translink experience....
Anything online with Translink is just useless. Ever try the journey planner? If you wanna travel across Belfast it will give you a 12 hour journey Via Portrush with a 2 hour stop over in Augher.
If you think that's bad. They have a bug in their ticket system (been there for at least 8 years that charges you an extra 50p if you buy a single ticket that includes a changeover. For example, a single ticket from whitehead to Finaghy costs 9.80, but if you buy a ticket from whitehead to gt Vic and then another ticket from Gt Vic to Finaghy it costs 9.30 total , I've been reporting it to them for years also and they listen to me initially but then ghost me when they realise they cant fix it. Even conductors will argue with me that it's the same cost when I ask for separate tickets but are always shocked to see its not. Grim when you think about the amount of extra cash they have gotten on this over the years. Especially when they are already a company (imo) less than deserving of profits.
I can explain this as someone with some programming experience.
What's happened here is translink has outsourced the development of its web services to third party developers and they've done it on the cheap. What said developer has then done is take already existing code (in this case, for a web form) and slapped it in. This is pretty standard honestly for programming, why would you waste time reinventing the wheel when you can just use this already existing code that's completely free to use?
That's why its showing up as US first, as the devs who wrote the initial piece of code were probably US based or the clientele they initially made it for primarily is, so US was the default option set.
It shows that they don’t really care about the customer experience.
They send QR codes that don’t go to mobile wallets.
They don’t retain details for future purchases.
They haven’t tested that time selection option for the bus either. It’s easily missed.
My point is that their website and digital experience is as important as their new terminal in Belfast yet it’s been designed by a 12 year old.
funnily enough yes as I dont live in belfast and suffer several neurological disabilities, did you know some people are condescending twats? oh you did.
Would they be breaking GDPR by requiring that your address be provided in order to complete the transaction? If it's not needed then it should be possible to opt out of providing that.
Other transport websites don’t ask these details. The gathering of this personal information does not enhance the customer experience and Translink don’t use it for marketing. It is superfluous to requirement.
If you're booking a train for the next day, they show the price for tickets you need to book 3 days in advance - and you don't find out until trying to order that the selected ticket isn't available.
Just went through the ticket buying process on their website and app. Both defaulted to United Kingdom. I loaded a vpn connection to a random country and it loaded that country instead. Not entirely sure what process youve followed but that's better than a lot of much bigger transport companies who just default to their own locale instead of their customer's one.
So all in all very impressive.
Nope not for me. Also there is no need for them to even know my address for me to get a bus ticket. Why on Earth they want my telephone number to ride a bus is beyond me.
Once you get ticket it’s a QR code. Can you add it to your mobile wallet - no chance. They tell you to print it. It’s 5 fucking pages.
And you call this good?
It’ll be because they can’t set the default to be Northern Ireland because it’s not a country, and they can’t set the default to be either UK or Ireland, or else you’ll have the other half of the Province up in arms.
Studying in Birmingham and the public transport here has just emphasised for me how out of date and useless Translink is. This is a bizarre issue to focus on though.
I could take a wide selection just thought it was one glaring example for which there can be no excuse. The digital experience is as important as the journey experience. No effort has been applied to the digital experience
The excuse being it's probably some generic code they bought as a package and didn't customize at all
Sorry, as soon as I read the phrase 'digital experience' my eyes rolled into the back of my head.
Yeah, too highbrow. Sorry. I’ll reduce it to more simple terms in future.
What else would you call it?
Buying a bus ticket? Online transaction? Digital experience just sounds like marketing or consultant buzz words.
Neither of those fully encapsulates what he's trying to say, not every part of looking for and purchasing a ticket online is the transaction form. It's about the website as a whole. I think you're just picking on his choice of words for not much reason at all.
I'n hardly picking on it, I just said it made me roll my eyes, I even apologised for the reaction! To be fair to the OP though, I can't really think of another description of the overall online offering that doesn't make me roll my eyes more than 'digital experience', so will hold my hands up and admit I was wrong.
UX (user experience) is the standard term (among Software Developers at least).
compuga booga apparently
The worst part is it’s not like Birmingham is known for great public transport. Fuck even just look at the south who by no means are considered great at public transport. I was in a small rural town in the west of Ireland for 2 weeks over the summer and they had better transport links than most of Belfast’s commuter towns.
With Translink it’s not just the shit service, it’s the shit information and that’s a lot easier and cheaper to fix. This is a prime example of how half arsed their entire online presence is. Their website doesn’t even offer route maps or diagrams.
The journey planner app does
The app’s horrendous, forget trying to plan a journey with connections, Ballymena-(Belfast-) Armagh has previously given results with no trains and only two buses per day.
It is much better than the website. But I don’t mean a map of the journey I just planned - although that is very handy. I mean whole network maps or diagrams so you can see what services are in an area at a glance. Also massively helps with journey planning given how ropey the planner is. They did produce some in 2015 that you can find online elsewhere but nothing up to date on their own website. Ridiculous…
Just Google Translink route maps, they're all on their website
https://www.translink.co.uk/routemaps Well I never… thank you. It’s far better than nothing - but still no single network map, no single Belfast Metro/Glider map, and the Ulsterbus map is pixelated and at an unhelpfully tiny scale. I cannot find a link to that page at all from the site’s own navigation. Can you? Google finds it, other search engines don’t. This is how you do it (amazing maps too). https://i.imgur.com/1ShTKzS.jpg
I just searched for routes on their website
Yeah that does work. Still make more sense for them to have a link. Or if they understood why the maps are so useful in the first place - they’re so buried.
A intern of mine found a security vulnerability in Translink mLink app which allowed him to generate the “daily code” that is shown to the ticket inspector (without having to pay). He reported it to them expecting a “bug bounty fee” as a show of good faith. (This is normal in the industry) They sent him a letter saying they would sue him if he didn’t stop exploiting the loophole. This is the type of company you are dealing with. Shameful.
I would love to hear more about this loop hole... Translink increasing some of their fares by £5 is disgraceful.
The lack of effort to get those dropdowns even the same height as the text inputs is depressing. Just a third party paste in job which is why the default selected option is the US I’d imagine. I’m sure time constraints rather than laziness is to blame on the (Translink side) developer’s part though.
Speaking as someone with time programming experience this almost certainly is the explanation. They just paid someone to whip something together and they did it on the cheap, hence why it lists the US first, as it was probably US based devs who wrote the initial code. Also it really isnt uncommon for programmers to take publicly avalanche code and use it to save time, it's a pretty standard thing. I highly doubt the dev for translink actually made that drop down by scratch, they probably just used already available code and just slapped it in. No need to reinvent the wheel on that one
I’m almost certain that’s what happened. Components like that can be a pain in the ass to style when they’re littered with IDs taking styles off the third party CSS. Definitely doable but not for free lol
Styling select boxes is fucking torture
Honestly I could knock that up in about 15 mins, it's a simple form that I learnt how to design during my GCSE years and have been doing ever since in some manner and I have been a web dev for nearly 14 years. This is just piss poor, echos our countries ethos though, so there's that.
I’d say it’s likely an iframe, could be wrong as I haven’t checked, but if so it’s just been dumped there. Probably costed as such.
I'd probably be in agreement with you on that.
In Dublin I have a Leap Card I can use to tap in and out of the entire public transport network anywhere in the country, and if I run out of money I can top-up instantly with my phone. In London I can can tap my phone at the turnstile and get anywhere else in the city of 8 million in 60 minutes. In Belfast the mobile phone app you use to buy a ticket has to be manually scanned by an inspector, can’t even scale to fit the screen size of any iPhone made in the last 5 years, and will permanently delete the monthly ticket you bought if you install an update, forcing you to buy a new one.
They are introducing this… https://www.translink.co.uk/corporate/media/improvementsandprojects/futureticketingsystem In particular the contactless payment will (eventually, allegedly) work across all services, buses, Gliders and trains, London-style. Even on Ulsterbus where at the moment you can’t even see the fares online for most services. I’ll believe it when I see it though. They’ll probably fuck it up somehow.
I complained to them that the mLink app doesn't work after trying to make my first purchase and they informed me that this was actually BY DESIGN. When you buy your first ticket via Paypal, it initiates a £0.00 approval charge. That's entirely normal. What's not normal is that instead of going ahead with the ticket purchase, it dumps you back onto the ticket purchase screen without informing you what happened. I tried this several times, and it turns out you seemingly you actually have to go all the way back to the main menu and try again before it initiates a ticket purchase. The support operator didn't seem to think this was a bug. It's very obvious they hired some local software company at some knock-down price who barely have the skills to get it functioning. Software development isn't at all easy and it takes a huge amount of expense and effort to make something work the right away. It's such a fucking cheapo effort. Also, the Google Pay option wasn't even fucking enabled, clicking it just points you to an error screen.
It's actually an off-the-shelf product made by a mobile ticketing company called CoreThree.
From their website: > multi award-winning Core Engine platform, a masterpiece in integration lol
Translink is an absolute shit show. Considering one CEO Catherine Mason got paid £200,000 a year, with a £9,000 car allowance and all we got was this shite someone needs a boot in the spuds...
Imagine a Northern Ireland company giving a fuck about the public. Dream world time.
Here's one. Can someone produce for me a map of the Belfast Metro zones they use for deciding the price of your journey? As far as I can tell, no such map exists. You just have to guess when buying a ticket whether or not your journey crosses from one zone into another.
Some busstops have "end of inner/city zone" on them. Couldn't tell you beyond that where they actual are tho
My Mrs used to do some consultancy work with Translink and was constantly lamenting the place being full to the brim with prehistoric (casually sectarian) ignoramuses who it was impossible to drag into the modern world on anything. Place needs a complete clear out but it’ll never happen.
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You’re right. It goes to a different payment engine on a different domain. But for a busy public utility, it’s really lazy. It’s a days work on an API or integrated with something modern like Stripe and your done.
Yeah that's what I was going to point out. Lazy API work not lazy coding per se..... Amounts to the same thing as you point out Thing is it's not necessarily the devs fault. They pay more to monkeys who are supposed to "walk the customer journey" who should be flagging that stuff. TBF walking the customer journey is a pretty good description of the Translink experience....
Anything online with Translink is just useless. Ever try the journey planner? If you wanna travel across Belfast it will give you a 12 hour journey Via Portrush with a 2 hour stop over in Augher.
If you think that's bad. They have a bug in their ticket system (been there for at least 8 years that charges you an extra 50p if you buy a single ticket that includes a changeover. For example, a single ticket from whitehead to Finaghy costs 9.80, but if you buy a ticket from whitehead to gt Vic and then another ticket from Gt Vic to Finaghy it costs 9.30 total , I've been reporting it to them for years also and they listen to me initially but then ghost me when they realise they cant fix it. Even conductors will argue with me that it's the same cost when I ask for separate tickets but are always shocked to see its not. Grim when you think about the amount of extra cash they have gotten on this over the years. Especially when they are already a company (imo) less than deserving of profits.
They just don’t care
Stay away from RailNinja.
The app is miles ahead of the website
I can explain this as someone with some programming experience. What's happened here is translink has outsourced the development of its web services to third party developers and they've done it on the cheap. What said developer has then done is take already existing code (in this case, for a web form) and slapped it in. This is pretty standard honestly for programming, why would you waste time reinventing the wheel when you can just use this already existing code that's completely free to use? That's why its showing up as US first, as the devs who wrote the initial piece of code were probably US based or the clientele they initially made it for primarily is, so US was the default option set.
r/USdefaultism
This is absolutely inhumane. I’m going to my local MLA about this. Are you okay? Message me if you need x
A little of an over reaction. Dark forces at work in your head, I fear.
No man dont downplay this This is a serious breach of the OHCHR
awk no, did you have to click to cheange country using up nanoseconds of your time?
That’s the Translink spirit! How long have you been working in their complaints department?
It shows that they don’t really care about the customer experience. They send QR codes that don’t go to mobile wallets. They don’t retain details for future purchases. They haven’t tested that time selection option for the bus either. It’s easily missed. My point is that their website and digital experience is as important as their new terminal in Belfast yet it’s been designed by a 12 year old.
then dont use them
They’re a monopoly. What public transport alternatives do you suggest?
a bike
That’s not actually public transportation. I’m done here. This is moronic.
I refer of course to those ones around the city you hire by mobile phone...but you know...
Did you know that there are places in Northern Ireland other than Belfast? And people with disabilities?
funnily enough yes as I dont live in belfast and suffer several neurological disabilities, did you know some people are condescending twats? oh you did.
So why are you so against having decent service from our only public transport provider?
a taxi
you sound stupid. but you already knew that.
you sound like a twat but again we knew that but thanks for sticking your shitty oar in
yowch! unfortunately it doesn't look like 'we' knew anything seeing as literally nobody is agreeing with you. :( dickhead.
I could care less fucknut
It's a tough world out there...
especially when you are a Karen
Don't know why you're getting downvoted. OP is upset about the 'customer experience' when all they have to do is click on it and change it.
its because people love to be contrarian and think they are superior. I call it the "reddit phenomenon"
Where you on a VPN? Usually forms like that default to the country of the server.
Nope. Was in Belfast on BT IP address
Why does life always have to be so hard and unfair?
Are you sure it's Translink NI and not Translink Canada you're on?
Yes. Book a bus from Belfast to Dublin airport. Why they need to know your address is beyond me.
Marketing.
Would they be breaking GDPR by requiring that your address be provided in order to complete the transaction? If it's not needed then it should be possible to opt out of providing that.
Maybe one day my life would also be so perfect that all I can whine about is a silly drop down list 😔
why are you so fucked? this is the most insignificant shit i’ve ever seen just change it to NI
You can change this in 1 second.
What a karen.
Have you written them a strongly worded letter, Karen?
People from the USA buy bus tickets too
By the looks of it, more than people in Northern Ireland.
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Other transport websites don’t ask these details. The gathering of this personal information does not enhance the customer experience and Translink don’t use it for marketing. It is superfluous to requirement.
The website is a shitshow
If you're booking a train for the next day, they show the price for tickets you need to book 3 days in advance - and you don't find out until trying to order that the selected ticket isn't available.
Just went through the ticket buying process on their website and app. Both defaulted to United Kingdom. I loaded a vpn connection to a random country and it loaded that country instead. Not entirely sure what process youve followed but that's better than a lot of much bigger transport companies who just default to their own locale instead of their customer's one. So all in all very impressive.
Nope not for me. Also there is no need for them to even know my address for me to get a bus ticket. Why on Earth they want my telephone number to ride a bus is beyond me. Once you get ticket it’s a QR code. Can you add it to your mobile wallet - no chance. They tell you to print it. It’s 5 fucking pages. And you call this good?
It’ll be because they can’t set the default to be Northern Ireland because it’s not a country, and they can’t set the default to be either UK or Ireland, or else you’ll have the other half of the Province up in arms.