WMATA and MV have claimed that the data they received from Logisticare was incorrect. They might actually be right, but they were told that there was a risk the data was incomplete or corrupt back in November 2005.
At the start of November, I was due for my recertification for eligibility. MetroAccess sent a normal car, not a van, despite my being in a powered wheelchair. Over the course of the next seven hours, whilst trying to get the ride to actually occur with appropriate transport, Dispatch let it slip that my record in the database said nothing about being a wheelchair user, and that they were having minor difficulties with the information, as they were “using MV’s computer system”.
Since Logisticare obviously had in their database that I was a wheelchair user, not having sent the wrong transport in the past 3 years, and as a computer professional, the obvious answer to my mind was that the data migration was missing data fields. I mentioned this and strongly suggested to both Christian Kent’s assistant, and Metro’s complaints line itself in two separate calls that I felt there was a good chance the data they were migrating was incomplete, and that they should investigate it further before January.
Obviously, as is the usual case with MetroAccess-related issues, those concerns and that recommendation were ignored. We appear to be seeing the end result of that now. Metro cannot say that they were not warned of this being a possible issue, when it was raised so strongly to both Metro’s complaints line and the assistant to the Director of MetroAccess Services himself.
Such casual disregard as this seems to indicate seems becomes more plausible when viewed alongside WMATA CEO Richard White’s recent attempts to blame the problems as being the fault of the riders, the media, and in effect accusing riders of lying about the issues we’re facing.
Fortunately for us (although perhaps unfortunately for Mr White and WMATA), some of us for several years have followed policies that, unless WMATA wants to claim a massive conspiracy is in place, verify and validate complaints. In an upcoming article, we will repost an article written a few years ago on how to gather evidence to support your complaint.
~miika
