Super rude SBS driver, damn!

I had the misfortune of running onto a super rude SBS driver just now. He made me so mad. Mad enough to write my complaint to several papers, including SBS feedback form, STOMP, The New Paper and Today.

My complaint is posted below:

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I had a very unpleasant encounter on SBS bus service 228, SBS 3640 J, at 7pm on 11 Aug 08. I thought I had tapped my ez-link card successfully and so I proceeded to the back of the bus to sit down. I was given a rude shock when the bus driver came to me and demanded my ez-link.

The problem is, he chose to confront me when every passenger had boarded the bus. I ended up getting rude stares and comments from all the passengers and furthermore, the driver took my card away and only returned it after he drove the bus on a long journey. I was lucky that my destination was only slightly further than that.

Shouldn't the bus driver be telling the passenger at that moment when the tapping failed, rather than wait for all the other passengers to board and then make a big confrontation show just to prove his point? If a tapping fails, there would be no beep sound and I'm sure the driver would be alert enough to catch that. The driver was simply too tactless and it was clear that he was out to shame people publicly. Is this how SBS drivers should conduct themselves in public?

In addition, when he returned my card, he commented out loud that next time I should tap my card if i want to board a bus. Is he trying to shame me further? Or is this the direction given by SBS on how the drivers behave towards the public? I wasn't given a chance to explain myself.

There are times when ez-link cards failed on you and that is an honest mistake. Not tapping the card at the front doesn't automatically means that you are trying to evade paying the bus fare. Unless SBS can guarantee that every single ez-link card in Singapore is working perfectly and shouldn't be encountering any tapping problems, otherwise they should discipline their bus drivers more strictly. We are not paying bus fares to get a lousy ride.

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I don't know whether my letter will get published as it seems to be a mere petty case. But I will strive to post my complaints all over the Internet until I get a favourable response from SBS Transit.

Knowing SBS's past experience, they usually just sweep aside the case with a simple reply saying that they will send the driver for counseling. This shows how inefficient the company is when dealing with recalcitrant drivers. This is not the first time I wrote in to complain about their bus services.

In the end, the service never improves and with SBS being the monopoly in the transportation industry, there will be more woes for commuters.

=(