The truth about Sanral and government's e-tag sales figures

Wow, myBB made an article out of articles and is trying really hard. Too hard.

Firstly there is the glaring problem of the e-tag number dropping from 500,000 on 19 April 2012 to 250,000 the next day, and back up to 500,000 three days later.
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Well, lets get things right first - quoting the NEW AGE is not the smartest move.

More importantly, NEW AGE is saying 250 000 was sold that week. Ie, total = total + 250 000 in the week. NEW AGE is not saying the total sales are 250 000.

Taking the previous total was 320,000 + 250 000 = 570 000. And rounding down for a press statement isn't the worst idea out there.

Then there is the problem with words like "estimated, about, approximately" used everywhere. The news articles are not quoting their sources on where they get these numbers.

This is piss poor journalism on myBB side. I'd suggest taking the article down and getting your article quality up to scratch.
 
How does SCAMRAL expect to manage this if they don't have (close to) the exact number of e-tags sold? I bet you DSTV has a much better idea of the number of decoders sold, Vodacom of the number of contract subscribers, etc. Love them or hate them, they are commercial success stories.

Whatever the real number is, I am not going to change it by buying one.
 
Allin said:
How does SCAMRAL expect to manage this if they don't have (close to) the exact number of e-tags sold? I bet you DSTV has a much better idea of the number of decoders sold, Vodacom of the number of contract subscribers, etc. Love them or hate them, they are commercial success stories.

Whatever the real number is, I am not going to change it by buying one.
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Of course they have the exact numbers. They just don't want to give them out because it would expose their massive lie about the public supporting e-trolls.
 
Darn, with such low numbers DJ's game is going to be quite difficult actually.

100 points for finding an e-tag...
 
Crowley said:
Now show me any reputable news article that gives the hard facts about the amount of e-tags that were sold.
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You're just supporting my case how myBB skewed up by taking these other non-reliable articles by highlighting how non-reputable all of myBB sources are.
 
2012 said:
Wow, myBB made an article out of articles and is trying really hard. Too hard.



Well, lets get things right first - quoting the NEW AGE is not the smartest move.

More importantly, NEW AGE is saying 250 000 was sold that week. Ie, total = total + 250 000 in the week. NEW AGE is not saying the total sales are 250 000.

Taking the previous total was 320,000 + 250 000 = 570 000. And rounding down for a press statement isn't the worst idea out there.

Then there is the problem with words like "estimated, about, approximately" used everywhere. The news articles are not quoting their sources on where they get these numbers.

This is piss poor journalism on myBB side. I'd suggest taking the article down and getting your article quality up to scratch.
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Did you miss this part?

If one assumes that the 250,000 figure was somehow misunderstood or misquoted, the extremely erratic growth in the claimed e-tag sales figures just do not make sense.
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Although I agree that SANRAL is talking BS on the number of eTags sold, I know that in the business sector alone, already more than 50,000 eTags were bought by companies for their vehicles.
 
I dunno, as much as i hate Etolls/Sanral, this is grasping at straws here.

There's alot of good reasons for erratic growth, one of which is the numerous times Sanral said "Etolls will roll out in the next 2 months" only for everything to be put on hold again by a court case. I'm sure a few businesses/people must've caved at some of these points when it seemed etolls were "imminent", resulting in this erratic increase of users.

Also, the most likely buyers of etags are RENTAL agencies, surely there's alot of these cars on the road? I was in a rental recently and it went beep at every gantry because it had an etag. There's no reason for the rental agencies to fight this as they won't be paying the etolls, the consumer will.

Anyhow, this article is really pushing things as OUTA is trying to say the figures are incorrect by using other incorrect figures! You know like proving a figure is incorrect by using the same dataset?
 
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2012 said:
You're just supporting my case how myBB skewed up by taking these other non-reliable articles by highlighting how non-reputable all of myBB sources are.
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The point. You are missing it.
 
2012 said:
More importantly, NEW AGE is saying 250 000 was sold that week. Ie, total = total + 250 000 in the week. NEW AGE is not saying the total sales are 250 000.
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Goodness. While you are wrong on that, it would be even more ridiculous to claim that 250,000 was sold in one week.

What you are saying is that it makes perfect sense that 250,000 e-tags are sold in one week, and then 0 in the next six months? Care to explain?

Also: Why does Sanral not just explain these figures? It must surely be all documented and sales stats should be easy to pull?
 
2012 said:
You're just supporting my case how myBB skewed up by taking these other non-reliable articles by highlighting how non-reputable all of myBB sources are.
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Most of the articles and stats we used come from Government's own news service - quoting Sanral. Would you therefore call government and Sanral unreliable?
 
diabolus said:
There's no reason for the rental agencies to fight this as they won't be paying the etolls, the consumer will.
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Brings an interesting point up, ie is the driver responsible for the toll, or the vehicle owner ?

If I lend my car to someone, and they go on the toll roads without my knowledge, how does that work ?
 
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