Students say AT's new tertiary concession is harder than ever to get

March 20, 2019

Students say AT's new tertiary concession is harder than ever to get

AUT students walk past posters advertising the new tertiary application process. Photo: Hannah Kronast

Problems with Auckland Transport’s new process for obtaining travel discounts has left many of the city’s students frustrated.

University students are having issues with the AT Mobile app after AT altered its process for loading tertiary discounts onto Hop cards.

Many students were unaware of the changes.

AT changed the application process for students who attend the University of Auckland, AUT University and Massey University.

Instead of queueing for stickers to append to their student photo-ID cards, these students now download the AT Mobile app to take their photo identification.

Students have been asking for the process to be simplified for years, but now that it has been changed they say it has only created more problems.

Olivia Atha, a second-year AUT University student, said trying to help people obtain their discounts was very hard in her role as a student ambassador.

“A lot of people didn’t actually know about the new process, so a lot of them didn’t come to us about the AT Hop [card] because they didn’t have any clue.

“The small portion that we did have basically had to go up to student hub but then they would get bounced and have to go back to AT. There was a lot of going back and forth.”

She said she and other ambassadors had not been aware of the changes until the first day they came into effect.

She said there were other issues because some versions of iPhones weren’t compatible with the app, meaning some students couldn’t complete the photo-ID part of the process.

Catherine Ross, AUT University’s student hub manager, who is working in collaboration with AT, said while some phones had issues, it was a small minority.

Ms Ross said the new process was implemented to reduce lines at the kiosks around campus, however, Ms Atha says the confusion with the new process meant it had the opposite effect.

“I feel like [the new process] wasn’t pushed out enough to the public so when it came to orientation students didn’t know, and obviously because of that they came to the student hub like the normal process and that didn’t decrease lines,” said Ms Artha.

She said the process had potential but thought it was rushed to fit in with the start of the university term.

Auckland Transport spokesman Mark Hannan said he had received no feedback regarding issues with the photo process, and all reports have indicated it was a success.

He urged anyone having problems to get in touch.

As of March 5, 10,353 tertiary customers had used the new process.

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