The great thing about Myki is that you learn something new about it most days. The sad part is that each new learning is most rarely either pleasant or winsome. Here’s my Myki-No-Lyki lesson for today … 

I'm just off the phone to Myki HQ. Getting through was a small challenge. Having been recently secreted in the bowels [end Presumably some leaky badly-wired basement where the vigilantes would never dare tread] of the new super entity Public Transport Victoria, resulting in a change to the phone number, Myki’s website still displays the old number. But not to worry. It’s early days by Myki standards, and the call is at least redirected. At someone’s cost – I wonder whose … ? But I digress. That was last month’s Myki-No-Lyki lesson. Or was it the month before? I'm never sure these days. [digression ended – promise!] Now where was I? Oh yes, the phone call. The chap who dealt with me was ever so polite, which I'm guessing is part of the training. If you must routinely present facts which by the normal standards of rationality would be judged at best nonsensical, then you'd require the kind of bedside manner that would reduce news of a suicide car bomb in your street to the level of a chipped two dollar teacup. Working in the Myki call centre would make anyone a past master at such spin in no time at all. The chap was so cool, I wondered whether he had a pulse. 

Allow me to set the scene … My question was with regard to my wife’s Myki card, which has blessed her with rich opportunities for personal character development. There seems to have been an ongoing difficulty getting the cash from the account to the card. Rather tragic, considering how much of our heard-earned is now in that account, thanks to sundry attempts to jump start the card’s heartbeat (which curiously always requires cash extraction and insertion). It has to do with the auto top-up facility which I set in place a very long time ago. Some months ago I was informed that the problem was due to the auto top-up not getting into the system correctly to begin with. I was assured then that this would be rectified at the server end, and we'd be good to go. “Too easy”, thought I. Well I was wrong. Seems rather it was too hard. And still no money on the card when needed. Not to be outdone I purposed to cancel the auto top-up myself, with a view to reseting it later. Apart from a system message telling me I'd need to wait 48 hours to reset it, I felt quite in control. No sir! A 2-day wait was not going to defeat me. I've handled worse than that before. I have a bank account. But behold even there Myki got the better of me. After a wait of .. well a bit more than 48 hours, let’s just say, I phoned up. And it was then that the most pleasant chap inducted me into a further Myki mystery. Most of Melbourne now knows (as distinct from ‘understands’) that funds added to one’s account electronically are “archived” (= unavailable to the card at touch-on) if not used within 90 days. That by now is the stuff of Myki 101. I have now acquired advanced gnosis. The same system that so kindly “archives” your money, awaiting your next visit to a Myki machine for further cash release, will render the very same service for the cancellation of the auto top-up. There are, it seems, two steps required to attain the loftiness of auto top-up cancellation. Step #1 is clicking ‘cancel’ online. Step #2 is … yes, you guessed it … another visit to the Myki machine, to touch the magic pad. Thereupon, so my placid guru assured me, the cancellation will be completed. He didn’t mention an incantation, but maybe that will be the next Myki-No-Lyki lesson. Stay tuned, friends. More gnostic revelations are undoubtedly just down the track.