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Yesterday’s coverage of the latest results from MykiLeaks caused another media stir, but little else. It seems TTA chief Bernie Carolan is reluctant to do much more than encourage users to check their statements, and to re-assure Melbourne’s PT users that the TTA ‘believes’ the error rate to be below 1%.

In April, when the first major coverage of MykiLeaks hit the papers, there were 200 odd statements, with one third reporting overcharges. A small sample size, combined with the argument that someone is more likely to submit their statement to MykiLeaks for analysis if they already suspect overcharging, meant that the TTA were able to dodge the issue with relative ease.

The latest figures – 15% in error from 2000 statements – in my opinion are far less easy to write off as a statistical error. Unlike the first media release, this time I’ve referenced specific examples of overcharging, including an incident where a user was charged $18 for a days tram travel. That’s about 3 times the correct fare.

So what now? Well, I don’t want to have to maintain MykiLeaks site forever, and more to the point, Melbourne’s PT users shouldn’t have to submit their personal data to some guy on the Internets that they don’t know. Here are some reasonable demands that I intend on (somehow) getting fulfilled:

  • Every myki card on the system needs to be audited BY KAMCO for overcharging, right back to the day it was issued.
  • Any overcharges found should be credited back to the accounts without request from the user.
  • Until there is sufficient evidence that the overcharging problem has been rectified, regular (weekly / monthly) audits of all accounts should occur, with overcharges credited back to the account.

I also take issue with the fact that myki statements do not show the user what actual fare [edit – i.e. 2hr / daily / zones] they have paid on a given day, but I’ll leave that fight for another day.

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4 Comments

  1. I submitted my Myki transaction summary to your website twice, neither time was weekend overcharges picked up. On two occasions I was charged over the $3 cap price. I was hoping Mykileaks would pick up anything else but instead it came back saying it was correct, unfortunately it wasnt.

    • Hi Julia, I haven’t heard of this happening before, particularly as the $3 cap is one of the more simple overcharges to detect. If you don’t mind forwarding me your original statement to support@mykileaks.org I can look into this for you. Cheers for letting me know.

  2. Great idea & well executed. I uploaded my statement and found out there were no errors (yes, I am a little disappointed).

  3. How computationally expensive are your check algorithms (excluding PDF processing)? If, as you refer to yourself, ‘some guy on the internets’ can do this auditing, then surely with direct backend access, KAMCO could too.

    Store the audit result in their database, flagging accounts which are detected as having suspect results for more manual review. If they recorded up till when the last audit had parsed an account, they wouldn’t have to rescan an entire account on subsequent checks of new data.

    I wonder if their unwillingness to do unprompted scans themselves highlights a fear internally that they will find a lot of errors? … or perhaps they have and they’re quietly fixing the bugs without telling anyone or correcting the accounts until they’re called on it? (This is purely me wondering what goes on and shouldn’t be considered me saying this is what’s happening)


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