HSL indirectly increases ticket prices

By jeltsch on Thu, 01/16/2020 - 21:06
Helsinki Public Transport

According to the news, the most popular point of sale for HSL tickets (the R-kioski chain) will start to take a commission for loading travel cards. Travel cards are the RFID cards that you need to use Helsinki public transport.
However, in reality, this is a hidden price increase, because HSL decided in 2019 that they will stop paying their distribution partners a fee for their service of loading the travel card. No commercial enterprise can offer services for free, hence this is an indirect price jump initiated by HSL.
According to changes mandated by the law, HSL had to start competing the sales of their tickets. However, in their call for tender, HSL announced from now on not to pay any commission to any of their distribution partners. This was entirely their own decision, and hence, it is justified to regard it as a covert but deliberate price increase.

Besides, there is not much information about these service fees. I could neither find any specific service fee lists from the S-group nor from the K-group. Only R-kioski's information was easy to find and concise: R-kioski: kausi: 3.5% of ticket price, max. 5 €; arvolippu: 1€/kpl, kertalippu/vuorokuasilippu <3€ 20 cents, >3€ 40 cents.

The K-group (K-citymarket, K-market) had announced that the fees would range between 0.5-2€, but still, as of today, I could not find more specific information. I even contacted the S-group, but - typically for such companies - they take their time. I would be surprised to get a reply within a week.

Considering the big picture, the negative aspect of making environmentally-friendly transport more expensive is dominating the small improvement of increasing the amount of POS for HSL tickets.

Read about it in Finnish in Helsingin Sanomat: https://www.hs.fi/kaupunki/art-2000006355404.html
Read about it in English on the HSL pages; https://www.hsl.fi/en/news/2019/hsls-ticket-sales-network-set-expand-beg...

UPDATE (01.07.2020): Meanwhile the number of HSL-operated ticket vending machines has increased. These machines support topping off the balance of your travel card WITHOUT taking a commission. Additionally, you can also now (something that had been promised for years) top off your balance online. The system has still lots of bugs (according to HSL still about 1% of transactions fail), but hopefully HSL will work out these kinks over the next few decades.