My Troubles with the Personalised e-Ticket

Like a proper person, I signed up for the personalised e-ticket at the end of last year, because, given my obsession with living online, I was delighted that I would finally be able to purchase a travel card that I could top up online from my bank account. In other words, we'd finally be like Europe. Duly, I receive my personalised plastic card in March of this year, with my name, photo and customer number. Although on the Rīgas Satiksme website the personalised e-ticket is specified as having a 5-year validity, on the back of the plastic card it reads: valid until 01.06.2021. Then comes an announcement that the e-ticket activation has been delayed. I smirk at our local operators and wait, in the meantime on working days purchasing single-journey tickets at Ls 0.50, the size of a decent notepad sheet.

I bookmark the e-ticket online shop page and wait, because from 1 May it absolutely has to be ready, if Rīgas Satiksme itself promises it. There is a promising notice: "Online shop - currently in test mode", dated 15 April of this year. I wait one month, two, three, now the fourth is coming - they're still testing. Well, never mind - this evening I get behind the wheel and go looking for the much-talked-about e-ticket top-up machine. On Sarkandaugavas Street near IKI there is one. Having looked up prices and number of trips online, watched a video of how to insert a five-lat note into the machine, I go to the cash machine to withdraw the necessary banknotes (I am one of those people who dislikes carrying cash). Then with confident steps I go to top up my e-ticket, but there...

Unfortunately, I also cannot get through on the information phone to report the broken machine and find out about the nearest one, because after 21:00 the automatic answering service switches on. Well, tomorrow I shall head to work the old-fashioned way, paying extra to Rīgas Satiksme for the "convenience" it has provided.