Valenzuela City Mayor Rex Gatchalian has asked NLEX Corporation to address concerns raised by several motorists on its load crediting system and gave the company three days to comply.
Gatchalian on Tuesday called for a meeting with NLEX officials “to raise the RFID (radio frequency identification) complaints the city mayor has received the past week,” the local government in a Twitter post said.
This came after Gatchalian on Saturday (Feb. 20) called the attention of the company as he “thinks” that “somebody” might be “violating the terms of the conditional lifting of suspension's business permit.”
He made the remark after a Twitter user lodged concern before him that her EasyTrip account's load credit did not appear or update in real-time, which violated NLEX agreement with Gatchalian when he conditionally lifted the company’s business permit suspension.
“Good afternoon po mayor. Till now wala pa din po pumapasok 500 load sa EasyTrip account ko po. I will send the proof po,” the Twitter user said. Gatchalian responded by saying he would relay the concern to the company.
During their Tuesday’s meeting, the local government said, Gatchalian “warned NLEX that if there will be complaints after February 26, their business permit might be suspended again.”
Reversed payment
In a statement, NLEX clarified that the concern raised by the motorist “is a reversed payment from Paymaya"
“The load did not reach Easytrip/NLEX system,” it said. “We have talked to the customer to know her account details and Paymaya was able to refund the said amount.”
“Apparently, the said account is under her aunt,” the company added. “The customer said that she would ask her aunt if the P500 load was credited back to the account.”
NLEX also said that “system upgrades are ongoing to improve service and further provide convenience to the public.” It also gave assurance that they “are open and willing to resolve the issues being raised by our customers."
Other issues
Gatchalian in a Viber message said “there is another client that had similar issue,” in which she still had no credits after “three weeks” of reloading.
“We agreed to give them till Feb. 26 to clear all these bugs,” Gatchalian said. “After the 26th we agreed no more of such complaints.”
The mayor said their meetings were yielding good results as “admittedly, the number of complaints went down significantly.”
“But we want zero,” he added.
On December 7, Gatchalian first suspended NLEX business permit in the city due to "atrocious traffic situation" on the expressway, which was supposedly caused by the glitches of its RFID system.
But, more than a week after, he lifted the suspension on condition that the company should ensure its compliance with its undertaking, including addressing the “inefficient reloading” system and implementing barriers-up policy.
The city government then warned the company that it would fail to comply with one of its stipulations stated on their undertaking or violates any local and national laws, rules and regulations, the local government will issue again its suspension order "without any further notice or issuance."