A master class in customer care from Transport Malta
Published:
June 7, 2014 at 4:08pm
A language-school operator emailed Transport Malta to enquire about the summer schedule for public transport, as foreign students are heavily dependent on public buses.
This is the reply he received. The first week of June is over, and Transport Malta doesn’t have the summer schedule or any idea when it will do so. I would add ‘if’ to that.
Not only that, but the organization’s customer care representative seems to think it is quite acceptable to say this in reply to an enquiry from a customer, presumably because she sees nothing untoward about the fact that it’s June but Transport Malta doesn’t have a summer schedule and doesn’t know when it will have one.
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Imagine if it were Arriva, we’d have Times Talk, (does it still air?) all over the place.
Next poll on Times of Malta to be discussed on the show, do the Maltese prefer their pastizzi filled with peas or ricotta?
I half expect Muscat to break another limb, miskin.
“I hope you find this information useful”
What jnformation is she referring to?
Sheer amateurs.
Useful information indeed.
Do persons who write such nonsense know the meaning of what they write?
Don’t blame the employee. Some customer care departments have a template for their employees to use.
Yes, but that does not mean that they should use such templates – and not their heads plus common courtesy.
About a week ago I emailed a query about transport from my village. To date total silence.
The entire country has been transformed into a circus run by clowns.
How can no information ever be deemed to be useful information, and how can being told that there is no information on the phone be better than being told the same thing by email?
What utter rubbish
Is this Honduras or the best nation in Europe?
The background is that, supposedly, by last April the public bus service should have been back in the hands of a private company. What Minister Joe Mizzi did not factor in when he triumphantly pushed Arriva out of Malta was that no sane private company, having noted the ordeal to which Arriva was subjected, was ever likely to take over the public bus service.
Minister Joe Mizzi never really had a Plan B. Arriva called his bluff and took the opportunity to cut its losses and cop out, leaving Joe Mizzi holding a very costly baby, saddling commuters with an inferior bus service, and the taxpayers footing the bill.
Transport Malta not only does not know whether or when it can come up with a summer schedule, it has absolutely no clue at all where it is going. The sad truth being that the way the public transport service is deteriorating, it has only one logical destination – dritt ghal gol-hajt.
Anzi “gas down ġol-ħajt” u ilna li bdejna imma dawk li għandhom għajnejhom mgħammda u widnejhom magħluqa la jaraw u lanqas jisimgħu. Għalihom kollox fuq ir-rubini.
Imma haga ta’ l-ghageb, Kurt Sansone milli jidher ma jafx xejn dwar dan. Aljenat b’cucati trivjali ohra.
Kemm kien ikun pront fi zmien l-Arriva front page fuq Times of Malta.
Too much to expect from Joe Mizzi to have prepared Plan B, when he knew his boss got away with bluffing about having a roadmap.
And no-one complains. Imagine what would have happened if it was 2 years ago.
Yet the PN does not call for Joe Mizzi’s resignation no matter how symbolic that may be.
God knows what they are waiting for.
If they wait any longer they’re going to risk seeming positive.
I would have replied “I’m afraid customer service has no service for the customers at this moment.Please leave your message after the beep.The future Malta transport operator will answer your query as soon as it gets hold of the IT system!
Never mind whether the schedule will be available in June, July or even August. What we want to know is which year?
2018. We deserve nothing less.
Transport Malta’s incompetence and cluelessness transcends legislatures.
Actually Daphne am surprised that nobody who uses the buses on a regular basis has not brought this up. Anybody that uses the 12/13 route must have noticed that there are so many private buses that dont even ask for tickets are filling in for normal Arriva routes. The actual upside is that there is no standing in the aisles and packing the punters in like sardines and no move back move back ad nauseum. The fact remains: who is paying for this ?
And yet, nobody is complaining. The silence is deafening. In other times, the flagship of Maltese newspapers – ahem – would have had a field day.
“I hope you find this information useful” – you’re damn right it’s useful! Couldn’t have been any better!
I am sure now that this language school (as are all the others) have put their mind at rest that now their students will arrive on time for their lessons, thanks to the immaculate public transport service our government is offering.
This summer I will be teaching with a leading English school in Malta. I will be stationed at a government school in Msida.
The majority of the host families this school works with are located in the Sliema/St. Julians area, so students obviously have to use public transport to travel from their residence to the school.
Interesting news this Sunday morning .
Saviour Balzan gives Muscat a trashing in his editorial and among other things states “Muscat’s behaviour is bordering on extreme arrogance”.
Malta today also locks horns with Transport Malta’s chief, James Piscopo.
The Sunday Times reveals Lou Bondi’s package at €54K plus a further €8,000 for “operational expenditure ” totalling €62K, which prompts me to ask what Franco Debono’s package is as compensation for bringing down the government.
Using Lou Bondi’s package as a benchmark, anything less than €100K would be an insult. Also, is this package greater than Jason Micallef’s at V18?
And The Sunday Times has such a scoop with this story, but it only made it to page 5 – and the newspaper did not bother to do a tabular with some benchmarking with the PM’s salary, the Chief Justice’s salary or the Attorney General’s salary. Does Times of Malta/The Sunday Times have any journalists anymore?
Finally I must not miss out on Magistrate Anthony Vella’s judgement that non-payment of VAT to the VAT Department is not misappropriation. Perhaps Mr Justice Vella is unaware that VAT collection is done by the operator on behalf of the VAT Department – so his analogy in his judgement that the “VAT department did not give the defendant any money, and therefore the defendant is not bound to give it back” is completely flawed. (Malta Today page 42).
V18
Dott Abjad: “Transport Malta’s incompetence and cluelessness transcends legislatures”.
Transport Malta was created as a “super authority” regulating all modes of transport and combining Malta Maritime Authority, Malta Transport Authority and the Civil Aviation Department.
The authority is responsible for maritime registration and ship inspections, which is the largest in the EU, all sea transport, quays and terminals construction including the Gozo ferry terminals and harbour-dredging and breakwater maintenance at the Freeport, regulation of all road transport including liberalisation of the taxi service, vehicle registration, driving tests and of course public transport, as well as all road-building works and resurfacing of roads.
It is responsible for aircraft registration and the fledgling industry of civil aviation which has attracted to Malta significant investment, and which could in future be as important as the maritime industry .
Unfortunately public perception of Transport Malta revolves solely on the difficult situation with Arriva, which truthfully underperformed as a contractor. Of course the negative perception was greatly enhanced by the media.
Dott Abjad does not appear to have full knowledge of the above facts.
The Arriva debacle had two architects, Arriva and Transport Malta.
It was TM which allowed the ‘bendies’ to commute through roads and streets that were unsuitable for their size.
Was it not TM which did not make provisions for existing bus stops to be modified to accommodate larger buses, not only the ‘bendies’, resulting in increased congestion because the new buses do not fit into a large proportion of bus stops?
Was it not TM which did not have the knowledge that Bisazza Street was about to be pedestrianised, while the rest of the country did, resulting in an embarrassing and farcical situation for the government of the day?
Is it not TM which is responsible for roads, management, but can’t seem to get to grips with the growing congestion on our roads?
Is it not TM which is also responsible for vehicle emission reporting but was twice exposed as ignoring the hundreds, if not thousands of sms’s sent in over the years to report excessive vehicle emissions.
The public still feels betrayed by that blatant failure and has lost trust in reporting. And by the way, we still don’t have random spot checks for vehicle emissions. Why not?
Is it not TM which manages and co-ordinates the organised mooring of sea craft in bays? What we have today is a free for all, in all bays in Malta and Gozo.
Up until a year or so ago TM wasn’t even issuing applications for temporary moorings, let alone processing them, as it realised that it had let the situation completely slip out of its control.
These are but a few a few random examples that come to mind. Is this not incompetence, is this not cluelessness? So much for the ‘super authority’ you mention.
‘Write positive stories about agriculture’
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140608/local/-Write-positive-stories-on-agriculture-urges-parliamentary-secretary-Galdes.522372?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook