sw4400 Posted November 11, 2013 Report Share Posted November 11, 2013 Personally, I'd leave the "Auto-Reload" option off and just manually reload it. There's plenty of venues to do reloads at, both cash and passes... with the hiccups Ventra has, I wouldn't trust them with Credit/Debit info even for a reload. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BiT Posted November 11, 2013 Report Share Posted November 11, 2013 Log in to your Ventra account. Go to Manage Account and then click on Account Settings. Under Notification Preferences does it say "Alert Email: yes"? Also check to make sure your email address is correct. Yes: make sure your Account Settings are correct. That's what caused the class action lawsuit: the card was debited on 9/27 and then again for $20.00 on 10/4 after very few rides but a lot of $2.00 charges to Customer Service and at least one duplicate fare. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted November 11, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 11, 2013 Yes: make sure your Account Settings are correct. That's what caused the class action lawsuit: the card was debited on 9/27 and then again for $20.00 on 10/4 after very few rides but a lot of $2.00 charges to Customer Service and at least one duplicate fare. According to the Tribune, it has nothing to do with account settings. It had to do with what you said in the last sentence, despite that paragon of Truth, Tammy Chase saying there was no charge for calling customer service. Just think, CTA could have eliminated all fares if there were. Sort of chicken and egg, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
owine Posted November 11, 2013 Report Share Posted November 11, 2013 Log in to your Ventra account. Go to Manage Account and then click on Account Settings. Under Notification Preferences does it say "Alert Email: yes"? Also check to make sure your email address is correct. Yes I have it set correctly. I haven't gotten any emails from Ventra since my card was activated after the transition from CC/CCP. Personally, I'd leave the "Auto-Reload" option off and just manually reload it. There's plenty of venues to do reloads at, both cash and passes... with the hiccups Ventra has, I wouldn't trust them with Credit/Debit info even for a reload. Well, last time they didn't reload it automatically, I had to manually load the pass once I noticed it expired. I'm not concerned with them having card information as I load with a pre-tax Mastercard issued by by employer's benefit provider. There is a maximum of $100 on the card at a time so there's nothing for them to steal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted November 11, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 11, 2013 Yes I have it set correctly. I haven't gotten any emails from Ventra since my card was activated after the transition from CC/CCP. Well, last time they didn't reload it automatically, I had to manually load the pass once I noticed it expired. I'm not concerned with them having card information as I load with a pre-tax Mastercard issued by by employer's benefit provider. There is a maximum of $100 on the card at a time so there's nothing for them to steal. Apparently the current stink on the CTA Tattler* was some employer remitting directly but it not showing up in the Ventra accounts. I, of course, would be more worried about someone stealing $100 than $2.25. _______ *Aside from Kevin O'Neil himself getting the runaround from the phone line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
owine Posted November 11, 2013 Report Share Posted November 11, 2013 Apparently the current stink on the CTA Tattler* was some employer remitting directly but it not showing up in the Ventra accounts. I, of course, would be more worried about someone stealing $100 than $2.25. _______ *Aside from Kevin O'Neil himself getting the runaround from the phone line. My situation is NOT the Transit Benefit program offered by the CTA. My employer sends pre-tax money to a third party company which just establishes an account linked to a prepaid debit card to use for eligible expenses. My Ventra account is not established through this third party. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jajuan Posted November 11, 2013 Report Share Posted November 11, 2013 Personally, I'd leave the "Auto-Reload" option off and just manually reload it. There's plenty of venues to do reloads at, both cash and passes... with the hiccups Ventra has, I wouldn't trust them with Credit/Debit info even for a reload. Well outside of the initial issue of kids' Ventra cards not showing balances after their parents' loaded them online, one issue that actually did respond to and fix right away, there have been no reports of anyone having a problem with loading their cards on their own online. So that's an overcomplication to go through all that to reload especially given Busjack's point that suburban riders still have too few* available locations to turn to for a reload. *The last point makes your 'There's plenty of venues to reload' statement false if you're a suburban Ventra card holder. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted November 11, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 11, 2013 My situation is NOT the Transit Benefit program offered by the CTA. My employer sends pre-tax money to a third party company which just establishes an account linked to a prepaid debit card to use for eligible expenses. My Ventra account is not established through this third party. What you say squares with what Cheryl said on the CTA Tattler. But again, having to get a debit card, which apparently can't be used directly at a reader, but must be inserted into a Ventra machine to reload a Ventra card sure doesn't make it simpler than either the employer handing out 30 day passes or direct payment to Ventra working. Your employer doesn't give out a debit card and expect that you will pay FICA with it, for instance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chicagolooper Posted November 11, 2013 Report Share Posted November 11, 2013 Having used Ventra for a little over a month now in various situations, I am finding it is working fine. I am very careful in how I tap the card - actually, I hold the card as shown in the tattler's video - and the charges have been accurate and the card readers have worked fine. I do believe there are card readers in service that may be defective and they will need a program to understand when they need to be maintained. However, I am much more comfortable with Ventra now and even if Metra just used them to collect cash payment of fares on board their trains, I think it would be workable. I was in San Francisco in September and used their similar system, the Clipper Card, and I was very impressed with it. It worked well for a visitor. I think given enough time, Metra can figure it out and get it to work for them. Even with the manual ticket system, if they don't have enough conductors, there have been times when I have had a ticket but no one collected it. Now that they are only good for two weeks after purchase (I am speaking of regular fare tickets) it is tantamount to paying the fare anyway even if they don't collect the ticket. In St. Louis, the system is such that there is no collector, but if the inspector asks to see your ticket and you have none, there is a significant fine - making it to one's advantage not to want to test the system. In any case, I think Ventra is beginning to take hold and I would say the troubles they had were directly related to the lack of planning for the roll out, the mess up of the mailings, and the programming fixes that were needed due to the way people here in Chicago use their cards. Just my two cents worth..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
owine Posted November 11, 2013 Report Share Posted November 11, 2013 What you say squares with what Cheryl said on the CTA Tattler. But again, having to get a debit card, which apparently can't be used directly at a reader, but must be inserted into a Ventra machine to reload a Ventra card sure doesn't make it simpler than either the employer handing out 30 day passes or direct payment to Ventra working. Your employer doesn't give out a debit card and expect that you will pay FICA with it, for instance. It's because my employer is national and therefore only has to worry about one benefit provider that can provide pre-tax transit spending to all employees instead of individual programs in various cities/municipalities. But yes, it would be nice if the debit card the provider issued was contactless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brownliner Posted November 12, 2013 Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 What you say squares with what Cheryl said on the CTA Tattler. But again, having to get a debit card, which apparently can't be used directly at a reader, but must be inserted into a Ventra machine to reload a Ventra card sure doesn't make it simpler than either the employer handing out 30 day passes or direct payment to Ventra working. Your employer doesn't give out a debit card and expect that you will pay FICA with it, for instance. Lots of third party benefits programs give you a debit card to pay whatever the benefit is. Transit, various other travel reimbursements, flexible heath spending, whatever. The employer does not have to deal with the complication of multiple providers, nor worry about how the employee chooses to spend the benefit. And, of course, you can set the debit card up as the recurring funding source, so you don't have to do anything to reload the card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brownliner Posted November 12, 2013 Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 Personally, I'd leave the "Auto-Reload" option off and just manually reload it. There's plenty of venues to do reloads at, both cash and passes... with the hiccups Ventra has, I wouldn't trust them with Credit/Debit info even for a reload. I have auto reload because I don't want to ever think about what the balance of the card is. I want to be able to use it, without going to a train station to put money on it. I don't ride every day, or even every week these days, so the amount I spend is highly variable. Not having auto reload isn't going to keep a ventra reader from charging me twice. It might keep me from being able to get on a bus at 2am. If they excessively charge my credit card, there are other ways of dealing with that, but I rather doubt they'll rack up more than a couple hundred in charges before I (or my bank) notice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sw4400 Posted November 12, 2013 Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 Protagonists telling it like it is regarding Ventra.... Photo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amtrak41 Posted November 12, 2013 Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2013/11/11/ventras-parent-company-an-international-history-of-fare-card-glitches/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted November 12, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 ... And, of course, you can set the debit card up as the recurring funding source, so you don't have to do anything to reload the card. I take it that that doesn't overcome the objection that CTA just took $100, although apparently one wouldn't be able to blame it on the benefits administrator. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted November 12, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 Protagonists telling it like it is regarding Ventra.... Photo It might be, but someone wasn't too creative about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted November 12, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2013/11/11/ventras-parent-company-an-international-history-of-fare-card-glitches/ A good find on your part. This illustrates that this isn't just the usual "CTA doesn't know what it is doing" but that Cubic has had a history of this, which finally blew up in its face. As Geoff Peterson would have put it, London Mayor Boris Johnson should have "kicked Cubic's @$$" instead of putting up with the stuff. The London story brings up two points I made before: The SEPTA proposal (as you put it) of charging the maximum fare if someone doesn't tap out not only won't work, but hasn't. There was the mention of dormant funds. There was the previous discussion about dormancy charges on transit accounts; as indicated, maybe CTA figured out it was easier to bleed the accounts with the dormancy charges rather than just make the money inaccessible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amtrak41 Posted November 12, 2013 Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 While your statement "This illustrates that this isn't just the usual "CTA doesn't know what it is doing" IS true, this article proves it is also true CTA willingly walked into this pile of $hyt knowing full well what it was getting itself into.Did someone forget to "Google" Cubic and these other fare systems to see what goes on around the world ? Methinks CTA set up a very tight trial period deliberately, first with students, then aggravated CC/CCP immediately thereafter, and then a fast closeout of other fare media so as to ram-rod this through, thinking people are too stupid or submissive to fight back, or doing so when it was too little/too late. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jajuan Posted November 12, 2013 Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 While your statement "This illustrates that this isn't just the usual "CTA doesn't know what it is doing" IS true, this article proves it is also true CTA willingly walked into this pile of $hyt knowing full well what it was getting itself into.Did someone forget to "Google" Cubic and these other fare systems to see what goes on around the world ? Methinks CTA set up a very tight trial period deliberately, first with students, then aggravated CC/CCP immediately thereafter, and then a fast closeout of other fare media so as to ram-rod this through, thinking people are too stupid or submissive to fight back, or doing so when it was too little/too late. Actually it can't really be said that CTA walked into this willingly given that Kevin pointed out almost a couple months ago that Cubic manipulated the situation by making the chips used in the Chicago Cards and CCP unavailable, which in a way tied CTA's hands. Someone else made the point that other American cities that Cubic has set similar fare collection systems aren't having the issues to the degree that have been cropping up here in Chicago. So it can't even be said that they didn't research other cities. If they did research other fare collections systems they quite likely would have been looking at American cities before they would European ones, and from the sounds of all the information put together as a whole up to this point, Cubic had an easy time masking its more dicey performance history. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted November 12, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 While your statement "This illustrates that this isn't just the usual "CTA doesn't know what it is doing" IS true, this article proves it is also true CTA willingly walked into this pile of $hyt knowing full well what it was getting itself into.Did someone forget to "Google" Cubic and these other fare systems to see what goes on around the world ? Methinks CTA set up a very tight trial period deliberately, first with students, then aggravated CC/CCP immediately thereafter, and then a fast closeout of other fare media so as to ram-rod this through, thinking people are too stupid or submissive to fight back, or doing so when it was too little/too late. Aside from what jajuan said, the original request for proposals, which probably can better be characterized as a request for information was in 2009.and the contract was authorized in Nov., 2011. So, I don't know what we can say CTA knew 2 or 4 years before this. Also, I'm not convinced that the short implementation period was an intentional screw job by the CTA, while I am sure that other things, such as treating bank cards as cash fares, were. Since this was a phase in to see if the system would work, it rather dramatically disclosed that it wouldn't, and Emanuel and Claypool got the message. On the other hand, it would have been a waste of money to maintain parallel fare systems (including the parallel vending machines CTA now has to maintain) if the new one actually worked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BusHunter Posted November 12, 2013 Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 The thing that bothers me the most about the gapersblock article is that thieves were hacking the accounts. Doing what they wanted with them. (identity theft) That's one reason I wouldn't put too much on the card, I just hope they don't have the ability to purchase and cause an overdraft charge with a negative balance or we are all in danger of that. I wonder what's someone's options if the account has been compromised. Can they cancel an account? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted November 12, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 ...I wonder what's someone's options if the account has been compromised. Can they cancel an account? Supposedly the purpose of registering was that you could cancel the account if you found something. Apparently, though, there isn't anyone that will take your call in a prompt manner at this time. I don't know if this has the usual bank protections, or the usual "the merchant will cover credit reporting information for a year." However, as far as stealing from a transit value account itself, they aren't going to get the money out of it. Then the question would be whether the hackers could use the information in the Ventra system to hack your linked bank account or open credit card accounts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted November 12, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 12, 2013 Not quite what the article's headline implied, but does have an explanation about how reduced fare cards are going out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin Posted November 13, 2013 Report Share Posted November 13, 2013 New decals on readers. https://twitter.com/240front/status/400484300417548288 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busjack Posted November 13, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 13, 2013 New decals on readers.https://twitter.com/240front/status/400484300417548288 Wonder how much and whose money is being spent adding the green and then yellow tags. The green tags didn't make any sense to me. At least the yellow ones with the logo and the card make a bit more sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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