From 14 to 18 August, the RMV mobility centre in the SWG customer centre will have shorter opening hours from 1 to 6 pm.
Giessen. In the coming week, the RMV mobility centre in the SWG customer centre on Marktplatz will be open from Monday to Friday from 1 pm to 6 pm. The background to this measure: Stadtwerke Gießen (SWG) is doing everything in its power to activate the annual season tickets requested by its customers by 1 September. "The number of applications is currently so high that we need the mornings of the coming week to process them in time," explains Anne Müller-Kreutz, Head of Local Transport Services at SWG. It goes without saying that SWG has fully utilised its personnel capacities. Important to know: The temporarily shortened opening hours only apply to the RMV mobility centre. The SWG customer advice centre and the energy advice service are available as usual.
Crowd with advance notice
The current bottleneck was announced. In addition to the naturally high demand for the Hesse schoolchildren's ticket at this time of year, there is currently an even more popular offer: applications for the discounted Deutschland-Ticket actually make up the lion's share of the orders currently being processed by SWG. There is also a reason for this: the state of Hesse grants a discount on the Deutschland-Ticket to people who receive citizens' allowance, housing benefit or benefits under the Social Assistance Act or the Asylum Seekers' Benefits Act. The Hessenpass Mobil serves as proof of entitlement to purchase such a subsidised ticket. This document is automatically sent to authorised persons by the responsible social authorities.
Unfortunately, around 95 per cent of those affected experienced a massive delay for technical reasons. The passports were not available at the beginning of June as planned, but only in the second half of July. "It was precisely this delay that meant that the applications could not be processed successively as usual after they arrived, but instead accumulated more and more due to the short notice," explains Anne Müller-Kreutz. In addition, the discounted Deutschland-Ticket is not available online like the normal version. "People have to come to us and apply for the ticket," summarises Anne Müller-Kreutz.
Solving the problem
Closing the RMV mobility centre in the mornings and entrusting the employees who are usually on duty during this time with processing the applications quickly emerged as the most sensible solution. "We didn't take the decision lightly and weighed it up very carefully. Of course, it is difficult for us to reduce a familiar service in order to offer a different one," explains Anne Müller-Kreutz, adding: "We ask our customers to understand our decision and any inconvenience it may cause. But we are convinced that we have acted in the interests of the vast majority."