[melb] yearly met cards

[Jeremy Lunn <spammers-will-die@austux.net>]

I am just wondering if anyone knows what has happened to using smart 
cards for monthly, half yearly and yearly tickets?

I got a student yearly ticket and it already doesn't work.  I've treated 
it with care and kept it safe in my wallet.  There are no obvious 
creases in it.  But it didn't even last one month.  Even with the thin 
layer of plastic in the middle (so I don't see how normal monthly 
tickets can last a week).

Not even Telecom used paper phone cards.  They always used those plastic 
ones.  Well I don't remember paper ones anyway and I am pretty sure that 
they were newly introduced in the early 90s.

So a plastic card would surely last much longer than a metcard.  But 
it's insane that they are using magnetic strips at all for anything more 
than weekly.

How hard can it be to get smart card readers to work?