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Old August 12th 10, 03:37 PM posted to uk.rec.cycling,uk.transport.london
Mizter T Mizter T is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: May 2005
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Default Ghost trips appearing on the London Cycle Hire scheme


On Aug 12, 2:02*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

Afternoon all,

Elsewhere, my spies report:

Do check your keys for use as I head that there are ghost riding the
bicycles when you are not.


Thanks for the tip off. *I appear to have cycled from Eccleston Place to
Belgrave Square on 10 Aug, before my key was even activated, whilst
being asleep in bed at home. *Hmm.


Anyone heard any more about this?


Yes, wel I've experienced it - a couple of 'ghost trips' appeared last
week when I logged in to the web account - this was particularly
interesting as my membership key *still* hasn't been delivered.

I was a bit worried that someone else might be using my key (e.g. if
it had been lost in the post, or sent to the wrong person) - however I
know one has to activate one's key online or by phone before it will
work, and furthermore in my account status summary it said the account
was still "awaiting activation", so I thought there being some sort of
glitch at their end was the most likely explanation (I did note that
the web account still showed my correct name and address in the
personal info section, rather than someone else's). I'm pretty sure I
logged out and then logged in a little bit later and found the the
'ghost trips' were still there.

I did then call up the Cycle Hire helpline to (a) ask where my key was
and (b) query these 'ghost trips' - the person I spoke to didn't
appear to have access to any account information, instead they tapped
out a summary of my problems, took my details (name, address, email
address) and said they'd send it over to customer services - and I
haven't heard anything since. One thing that may have messed things up
is that I gave them a different email address - the email address I
used when signing up was specific to the cycle hire account, but it's
a bit of a mouthful to say down the phone (and the CS person said they
had a very bad line, lots of crackle etc despite it being fine at my
end, so I didn't want to make a difficult call even worse).

I think I logged in either much later on that day or else on the next
day and found that the 'ghost trips' had vanished.

I've just tried to log in and found that it won't let me in (and I'm
sure I'm using the correct password). I'll leave it for a bit before
trying again. And of course I need to chase them up about my missing
key (again). As I said in another post, this might not be their fault
- our new postman seems to be a little undiscriminating about which
letterbox on his round he posts his letters in...