Bengaluru metro riders complain about recharge not reflecting in smart cards

The Bangalore metro commuters are annoyed by the stringent regulations of Namma Metro’s online transactions, which has led to inordinate delays with the cashless transactions.

Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) have given the Standard Operating Procedure which permits the recharge of the smart card by the Namma Metro application or the website. The officials have clearly stated that the recharged amount takes an hour to reflect in the card balance.

The commuters have been complaining that the new balance does not reflect even after a period of a couple of hours.

Akshay Deshpande, a regular commuter has posted on Twitter, “There are many who are not able to travel by metro, can’t recharge the card by cash, debitcards Recharged by App will take hours to work, so I believe ur new plan is to start a dormetory, u can make lot of money there like ur making by issuing new cards.”

Incompetent helplines with just voice commands

A lot of passengers are trying to connect to the BMRCL helplines, but the helpline has not appeared to be “of any help” and are not user-friendly at all.

A passenger, whose card was inactive for several hours states, “The helpline is nothing but just voice commands.”

Delay due to bank servers

With reference to late reflection in balance, a BMRCL official has indicated the inconvenience due to lacking communication from the bank servers. He said, “A passenger who is recharging may get a message from the bank, but there may be delays in communication from the bank server to the BMRCL server.”

“Passengers who show more than an hour of delay in crediting the payment are taken to the helpdesk where they pay the additional amount using cash or debit card to recharge. Since such transactions increase the risk of the Covid-19 infection, we are making efforts to solve the issues.”