Unsuck DC Metro: Problems Adding to SmarTrip Online?

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Problems Adding to SmarTrip Online?

Photo: mr_t_in_dc; shop: Andrew

From Barbara:

I'm really frustrated with the SmarTrip adding-funds-online system. I've been having problems with it for the last 6 months and was wondering if this happens regularly to other people as well.

My husband and I are infrequent Metro users. We work in the same building and commute to work in DC from Arlington together by car. But every now and then, my husband has to work longer hours, and I take the Metro home. I use the Metro about 5-6 times a month for commuting--sometimes more, sometimes less. On top of that, we both use Metro about 3 or 4 times a month when we go to the city at night or on the weekends. We both have a SmarTrip card, plus two more cards at home for guests.

I started using the online system for adding funds when WMATA introduced it and never had any difficulties. Now, however, we've had problems loading the online-added funds onto our cards for about half a year.

First, it concerned only my husband's card. I would put the funds on there and, sometimes, the period between me adding them online and him loading them onto the card (at the station) would be a week or even longer.

At first, this wasn't a problem, but after a while it turned out that the amount I added online wouldn't be preloaded at the station (although it was added a few days beforehand), so what he did was adding a bit of cash at the machine, use the card for entry, use it for exit at the destination station and only then, while exiting, would the funds be loaded onto the card.

Now, this week, both our cards had this problem. I had added funds online on March 4. I didn't use my card before March 18, and when I did, I had to realize that there was still only 20 cents on my card, and the $50 I had added at the beginning of the month were nowhere to be seen. Same for my husband's card, which I had taken with me because of said problems - I wanted to see if the problem with his card persisted.

Well, as it turned out, it did and, on top of that, my card had the same problem now as well. Now, I had two SmarTrip cards, one with 20 cents on it and one with $1.10 - both of which had preloaded funds of $50 and $20 respectively, but I couldn't use them for riding because the funds wouldn't load, and I couldn't even go through the turnstile with them.

So, what I did was use my credit card to add $20 to my card (I didn't have any cash on me), entered Foggy Bottom, exited at Ballston and: voilà! there were $68 on my card all of a sudden.

When I checked my husband's card at the vending machine, his $20 were there, too.

How does this happen?

I called SmarTrip, and they didn't have a plausible explanation: All I learned was that this could happen "with infrequent use of the card." What the heck does that mean? It shouldn't matter how frequently I use the card - it's my money on there, it's just not in my bank any longer, it's on their card!

Right now, I have the same problem with our two spare SmarTrip cards - we'll be having visitors for the next two weeks, and I filled our guest cards up for them. The funds are added to the two cards, it says online that they are not loaded yet onto the cards and are "pending" and need to be loaded by Apr 17.

Well, I added them on Monday morning and tried to load them onto the cards on Tuesday night. No such luck - the cards showed up empty. Now I'm trying again tonight (Wednesday), and if it doesn't work I need to call SmaTrip again, wait on hold, explain the situation, only to hear again that the cards haven't been used in a while and it's all my fault.

Well, my lesson learned from this is that I won't use the "add funds online" function any more and will go back to adding money at the vending machine. It's not really progress but I don't want to experience this to and fro between the turnstile and the vending machines and the constant wondering "will the money be there?" any more.

But what I'd really like to know is: Do you hear of this problem from others as well? Is this some kind of bug that is quite common? My coworkers and friends all use their cars for commuting, most of them don't even have a SmartTrip card, so I cannot ask around here.

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Comments (36)

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+2 Vote up Vote down

Hannah · 627 weeks ago

I had a similar problem. I believe that SmarTrip card has to have a minimum balance of $2.00 before it will allow the pre-loaded funds to reach the card. Kind of crazy, I know, but as soon as I added $2 on the machine at the station, the pre-loaded amount was "magically" added to the card. Frustrating!

1 reply · active 626 weeks ago

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Barbara · 626 weeks ago

That would explain why it worked when my husband added the change he carried in this pocket to the card (to get rid of the coins) - it must have pushed the balance to over $2, because afterwards it worked whereas before it hadn't. But it is indeed crazy - I mean, if that's how the system works, they should at least know about it - the lady on the phone didn't have a clue and advised me to "live with it". Cheers, Barbara

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Davin · 627 weeks ago

I think you have to touch the fare gate within 48 to 72 hours for the funds to be added to your card. I remember when I use to add funds online that you need to use your card within a week for the funds to be added.

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@NoPants_McGee · 627 weeks ago

I've had similar online SmarTrip frustrations. I lost the card and went to order a replacement online - apparently the $80 I had in SmartBenefits can't go towards that, only the actual cash I'd put on it... which was less than $5. OK, fine, pull out the credit card, charge another $10, charge goes through, I deactivate the card. I got an email telling me that I didn't have enough balance to order a new one, I should buy a card and email them and they'll load the money over. I send them the card # for the one I bought at CVS and ask about the $10 I just charged and there's no response. Again, no response. The credit card charge has gone through. A third email (over three weeks), no response. I finally call them and wait forever on hold to be told that this was all done, why was I calling? HOW HARD IS IT TO CONFIRM?

2 replies · active 627 weeks ago

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karah 81p · 627 weeks ago

To transfer smartbenefits talk to your HR department to move them as smartrip does not have access to those funds.

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@NoPants_McGee · 627 weeks ago

I did and that was resolved in two days, the problem lay in credit card charges made through the SmarTrip website. That took a month, 3 emails and a phone call for me to get resolution.

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@perkinsms · 627 weeks ago

My guess is that the fare system checks whether you have enough fare to ride, and since you didn't it rejects the card and doesn't even get to the step where it checks whether there's fare value to load on the card.

1 reply · active 626 weeks ago

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Barbara · 626 weeks ago

That's what I think, too. But I also went to the vending machine first - to load the preadded funds to be able to then go through the turnstile because I already knew that my balance was so low. And all the vending machine did was display the low funds. How are you supposed to load the funds then? It's a vicious circle...

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Anon Everly · 627 weeks ago

Personally, I will let Metro have as little knowledge of me the human as is possible. I do not use bank or credit cards in their machines, I do not use their online services (except to laugh at delayed problem postings of course). While it does spook me every time I pull out cash standing at any farecard machine, I do it. It is safer risking being robbed while Metro employees watch than it is to have my electronic (and thereby, identity issue) information in their hands. I just don't trust them to be that secure.

3 replies · active 626 weeks ago

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unsuckdcmetro 92p · 627 weeks ago

The first sentence made me laugh. I am the same regarding trust of Metro with my personal info.

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Anon Everly · 627 weeks ago

Well it ain't hard. They don't see us as humans anyway... :D

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Annie · 626 weeks ago

I do that too - I'm a very small female (4'11...) and very paranoid about pulling my wallet out. So, I tuck a 20 in the front pouch of my bag and just quickly pull it out when absolutely necessary.

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John · 627 weeks ago

Call me a conspiracy theorists, but is it me, or did all these SmarTrip problems start when they started charging $1 for paper cards? It seems all the smartrip machines started "malfunctioning" once the paper card fare went into effect. Sneaky way to make some extra dough, or just Metro incompetence? Or both?

1 reply · active 626 weeks ago

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Barbara · 626 weeks ago

Both!

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Michael · 627 weeks ago

Adding money to Smartrip cards doesn't work like you think it should.
When you process an online or remote value load, what happens is that
the fare system adds your card serial number to a table with the
amount to be loaded, and then that table has to be pushed to all the
faregate and bus farebox computers throughout the system. The money
isn't on your card yet, it's in instructions to load your card the
next time it's seen in the system. I don't know why, but it takes a
few days for this instruction to get loaded on all the faregates.

I'm guessing that since the faregates especially are 1980's
technology, they have limited memory and processing power to store a
large table of remote value loads. Therefore, my guess is that they
make the loading instructions expire after a certain amount of time.
It's possible that the faregate you entered with has a table with your
remote value load expired, and the faregate you left with has a less
up to date table with the remote load on it. Then again, they may
have the programming screwed up so that it only checks for remote
loads on the way out, or maybe the sequence of checks for a card is
that it checks first to see whether you have enough fare to ride, and
then checks to see whether you have a remote load available.

TLDR My guess is that the fare system checks whether you have enough
fare to ride, and since you didn't it rejects the card and doesn't
even get to the step where it checks whether there's fare value to
load on the card.

2 replies · active 626 weeks ago

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guest · 626 weeks ago

If the "value" is actually stored on the card , what's to stop someone from unilaterally adding value directly to a card without actually paying metro?

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@perkinsms · 626 weeks ago

The value is encrypted. Boston had the unfortunate experience of picking an encryption scheme that allowed for only either 64 or 32 possible encryption keys. A white hat attacker from MIT was able to make identical cards encrypted with all the possible keys. He found the right key and was able to write arbitrary values to the amount stored on the cards.

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josey23 · 627 weeks ago

Yep, I have had almost this same situation and experience. The WMATA person told me that the money can't be added to the card until the next transaction with the system. I told her, yes, I have used it three times since I added the money two weeks ago.

She blew me away by saying:
'Well, we really look for a pattern of regular use before we transfer the money. Besides, you weren't down to zero anyway.'
I only add at the farecard machines now.

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Robert Smith · 627 weeks ago

I wish METRO would have been a bit more open about the limitations of their online card loading system. It works great for those who use the system EVERYDAY as a commuter.. I am an occasional Metro user, but often don't follow a pattern of using the same bus/station everyday, so it's often hard for my funds to catch up with me.. Oh yeah, and updating via the bus farebox--up to three business days, on the SAME route you used 3 days earlier. Oye vey.

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Jin · 627 weeks ago

I've had the same issue. I got a ST card for a guest last fall, bought at Shady Grove station, and later put money on it online. Days later (4+), we used it to go from SG to Union. No problem. About a week later, we went from Union Station back to SG, and she was out of money (technically owed money, since $5 isn't enough to go from SG to Union Station, which is the amount on cards when you buy them). She had to add money to exit. I put more money on it when I got home that night (stupid, I know). A few days later, we tried to go to museums (starting again in SG) and again, the money I added wasn't there (the cash she'd added was). I called Metro, and got a wonderful lady (friendly, polite, patient) who said the card was not intended to be used infrequently by guests. She explained the money I put on it, twice, had been pending. She said it would stop pending after the card had been used twice in the station where I bought it. I checked online, with her on the phone, and sure enough, the money had been loaded to the card. Of course, by then my friend had left, so it didn't really do her any good.

What I don't get it, what do they care how often we use it? They get the money anyway, it is just a lose to us if we don't use it. I hadn't been using a ST card long before they started charging $1 on paper cards, so I can't compared, but I wonder if they are making it difficult for guests like this to force them to use the paper cards.

This same thing happened with my $3 rebate (which applied to the card mentioned). It was pending for quite a while before I actually got it.

I'm glad to hear others are facing this, though it aggravates me we have to face it at all. Usually when I tell people (local non-Metro riders), they look at me like I'm crazy, or that I misunderstood something.

1 reply · active 626 weeks ago

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guest · 626 weeks ago

This is actually a very brillant scam on Metro's part..

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AnonAnon · 626 weeks ago

I've never had any issues loading money on my card. Make sure you read the FAQ's VERY carefully though as there are MANY loopholes as to why it will and won't work in every situation. Like waiting 24 hours to touch card at machine or gate, or the funds are only delivered to stations you have used in last 30 days, time frame to do it in, etc. Sometimes it's just easier to add money at the machines.

1 reply · active 619 weeks ago

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Kuba · 619 weeks ago

There are technical reasons for that. The fare gates and other equipment is old and has severe memory limitations that can't be trivially overcome. The card carries the value. The fare gates etc. are the only things that can change the value.

So what they do is they load the list of cards with value to be added to them to the gates. There's probably some serial number on the card as well that's incremented each time you load up the card - that way you won't have the balance increased twice. Since there's so many online fill-ups, they wouldn't fit on a single fare gate.

Thus they only load it into the gates that you use. It's a limitation of an old system, they possibly could relax it a bit if they got ultra-clever with software for those old devices. I have some experience in coding for "obsolete" devices with tiny memory and it requires some skill, some luck, some art, and some hardcore computer science knowledge. It's a very specific skillset.

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Guest · 626 weeks ago

I have mine set to auto-reload and never have any problems with it. It never has less than $20 on it. I did have to call a SmartTrip support person to access my account the first time, that was a one time call, and I was able to access it online and make changes myself.

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@cabaretic · 626 weeks ago

I've been marginally satisfied with the online fare purchase option. I've found that the more times I scan the card in the course of a day, the more likely the fare's value will eventually reflect its current value. Traveling by rail usually adds value more quickly, but that's what Metro advertises. Sometimes if I make multiple bus and/or rail connections the same day, it doesn't take over a day for the increased fare value to show up.

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UnSuck Fan · 626 weeks ago

Ugh, this whole SmarTrip thing drives me nuts & I STILL don't know how it works with those three purses. I hate trying to remember or guess how much money I have for parking & riding; just put it on my card & let me use all my monies for both without breaking it up! I also don't like it because when I do add money, I'm still not sure to which purse it goes.

Anyway, I do, however, wonder if it's the "newer" cards that have all of these screwy problems. I think the card I have is older than dirt & is from when Metro first started the SmarTrip program because I rarely have problems entering/exiting the system when my funds are low. I definitely remember exiting once with a negative balance & having the amount removed once from the amount I had when I added more money to my card. And no, I'm not trying to sneak out without paying. Sometimes I'm hurrying to get on the train so when I look down at my card as I go through the gate, I realize I don't have enough money. Hearing how screwed up Metro is, I make sure I resolve all of my monetary issues before leaving the system entirely.

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Stan Desselscum · 626 weeks ago

IT incompetence. That's my guess (not that it's their only specialty). It could be that they're "queuing" charges (or even worse, queuing some update after they've charged your CC), and instead of doing the sensible thing and either updating the relevant database immediately or at least automated nightly, they're relying on a manually triggered "event" such as you using your card some time after the card is ready to be credited. Possibly because they're too dumb to do anything else, or can't afford the hardware/software needed to do anything smarter (gotta pay those executive bonuses out!!!)

There's no way to know for sure, other than to say that they're definitely incompetent and most likely using rubbish, insanely old or crappy "technology".

WHAT ELSE WOULD WE EXPECT FROM METRO

1 reply · active 619 weeks ago

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Kuba · 619 weeks ago

Maybe so, but maybe not. Think of how the system was designed. Imagine what would happen if the gates always had to query some central card database for current balance. A dead communication link could take down an entire station. So they designed those devices, back when (late 70s/early 80s I bet) so that the balance is on the card. And I bet you don't have a SmarTrip card reader/writer just laying around in everyone's home.

So, the only solution they could come up with is to load the balance change requests remotely to the fare gates. There's so many of them, though, that it'd be impossible to fit them all on one fare gate. Thus the requests are loaded onto the gates you are likely to use (based on previous uses), and they have to expire them as new requests get loaded.

It's only logical that the upload request will last the longest on a least-used fare gate. So if you frequently travel between a high-traffic station downtown, and some remote station, you shouldn't be surprised that the update is less likely to happen downtown - the update requests there will be retired quickly, as way more people pass through each gate compared to remote stations.

Basically the on-line option was tacked onto a system that was never designed for such use, and it has limitations. I agree with other posters that such limitations should be disclosed. As it is, I'm merely an engineer who can deduce how it's done solely based on what people report on this blog. I might be entirely wrong, but I doubt it. It fits the reported issues too well.

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fsfdsdfsd · 626 weeks ago

"...this could happen "with infrequent use of the card."

Sounds like they've already moved it to their slush fund as unrealized funds by customer.

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@megster67 · 626 weeks ago

At the risk of jinxing my own good luck, I will say that I have never had a problem adding ad-hoc funds to my card online, and I have been pleasantly surprised that the auto-reload feature seems to work perfectly as well.

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Guest2 · 620 weeks ago

This just happened to me last night, except that I added money, via credit card, at metro station. Leaving my usual SmartTrip card at home, I had to purchase a new one, I added money to the card, but notice when leaving the station at my destination that the 10$ I'd added hadn't posted. Arriving back home, I had a negative balance on the card and it let me exit, but the 10$ I'd added earlier still hadn't posted.

I'll be contesting that 10$ charge with AmEX, good luck Metro!

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llp · 616 weeks ago

I dont think that the system will add money until you touch a fare card machine. If you dont have the minimum fare on the card then it won't work. One solution is to go to the machine to add money and touch your card as if you were adding $$. That should be enough to activate the credit card charge. Another option (which I find is great) is to use the auto-load. Whenever a card drops below $10 it automatically loads $x amount and charges your credit card (like easy pass does). This can be a huge timesaver.

1 reply · active 238 weeks ago

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Carol · 238 weeks ago

That doesn't work! I can't believe this is from years ago and I have the EXACT issue this woman wrote about but I didn't bother doing that - I used my other SmarTrip card and then checked the card that said it had 65 cents on it and it still says PENDING and to touch it to a fare card machine, which I did - I tried every machine there to check the balance, like I was going to add money - and nothing! RIDICULOUS THAT THEY HAVEN'T FIXED THIS YET! Shame on them!!!