Jul 1, 2009 6:13 pm US/Central
Snags Continue In City Sticker Purchases
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Computer problems continued to plague currency exchanges where Chicago city stickers are on sale.
CBS
First, it was the new Chicago parking pay boxes going on the fritz, frustrating people trying to park on city streets. Now, it's the new computers used to print city stickers that have Chicagoans tearing their hair out.
People waited in long lines to get stickers Tuesday and eventually many just threw up their arms and gave up.
CBS 2's Dorothy Tucker found shorter lines Wednesday, but more problems.
The computer that spits out the stickers at the currency exchange on Wacker Drive near Madison Avenue was hit-or-miss Wednesday, but Tuesday was even worse. The currency exchange and more than 300 others that operate on the same computer system stopped working for nearly four hours.
"One of our contractors had a server go down," said City Clerk spokeswoman Kristine Williams. "They're working hard to get the problem fixed."
Tat contractor is a company called Electronic License Service. They may be working on fixing the problem, but they're still having problems.
Clerks at a currency exchange on the West Side also complained about intermittent service this morning.
"We're trying to work with them to make sure it doesn't happen again," Williams said.
And the process to get a city sticker online hasn't been much more successful for some.
"It's been a real joke," said Martha Thompson.
She's the poster child for the problems the city is having filling online sticker orders.
"I went online May 27. I've just been waiting and waiting," Thompson said.
In fact, just last week Thompson got an e-mail from the city admitting it was experiencing "an unusually high volume" of online sticker sales. Some 235,000 city residents ordered stickers online. That's a 60 percent increase from last year.
And guess how many people were initially processing all those orders.
"We had a couple of people to process the online orders like we did last year," Williams said.
That's right – only two people to process hundreds of thousands of orders.
"We didn't anticipate, we weren't able to anticipate, the number of stickers that were going to be sold online this year," Williams said.
To keep up with the orders the city had to hire an outside vendor for a few days to help the two city workers. City officials insist it now has the orders under control.
Thompson, however, is still waiting for her sticker. If you're still waiting for your sticker and you don't get it soon, the city suggests you keep calling, send an e-mail or visit the city offices to pick up a temporary sticker.
CBS 2 made numerous calls to the vendor with the contract to service the currency exchanges, but we could not get through the automated system.
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