Presto users billed for tapping cards before they are valid

OC Transpo says refunds coming, but one user reports runaround

When OC Transpo started giving out Presto cards to expand its testing of the problem-plagued card system for paying transit fares, Gilles Coughlan was eager to get one.

Coughlan routinely rides the No. 124 toward downtown, where he’s a drugstore manager, and buying a bus pass using a Presto card made as much sense as it ever has before.

But it’s turned into a spectacular bureaucratic odyssey, all over $2.85 he was incorrectly charged as he tried to activate his new pass.

It’s peanuts compared with the millions of dollars already lost by Metrolinx, the provincial agency supplying the system to OC Transpo — a system that was supposed to be in wide use as of last July 1, but is only now limping toward full activation.

The distribution of thousands of cards to people like Coughlan starting Jan. 18 is a step in that direction.

There’s a complicated interplay of information between the cards and the thousand or so readers roving the city aboard OC Transpo’s buses. To sync all the information among a user’s online account, his or her card and the readers, the readers need to have their data updated when they pull into garages and a card needs to be tapped on a reader once the reader has the most recent information loaded onto it.

To keep everything in order, OC Transpo asked riders who buy passes or fares online to be sure to tap their cards on a reader somewhere within seven days of the transaction.

Which is what Coughlan did: having bought a Presto pass in advance for February, he boarded a bus in January, flashed his paper pass for that month, and tapped his Presto card just to sync it up. And the machine, detecting no current pass on the card, dinged his account $2.60. Because Coughlan’s account has no cash in it, he’ll have to pay that much when the time comes to buy a March pass — the Presto system lets riders run tiny overdrafts, as long as they’re paid off eventually, with a 25-cent surcharge.

What followed was an odyssey between OC Transpo’s and Metrolinx’s call centre, each saying the other was responsible for arranging the tiny charge reversal.

“They said, ‘Oh, yes, you’re entitled to a refund’,” he said. They just couldn’t work out how to get him one. In theory, Metrolinx maintains customers’ accounts. If Coughlan had a cash balance on his account and wanted it back, Metrolinx would mail him a cheque for an amount over $50 or he could get a smaller amount in person at an OC Transpo counter. But he doesn’t have a balance. He just wants his charge reversed.

(Metrolinx’s French-language service was only so-so, too, Coughlan added, though the deal with the city is that it’s supposed to be topnotch.)

They said someone would call him within five business days. Nine days later, he said, he got to talk to a manager.

“All he could say was that I would get a refund, but he could not say when.”

Coughlan ended up at OC Transpo’s counter at the Rideau Centre, dealing with a staffer who’s equipped to take payments for Presto card, but not, apparently, to reverse charges applied to them.

OC Transpo acknowledged Friday this has been a problem, if a small one. The agency’s manager responsible for customer service in the Presto program, David Pepper, sent answers to the Citizen’s questions via email through the city’s mediarelations office:

“OC Transpo and PRESTO have identified a handful of cards of the total 13,000 NEXT-ON with PRESTO card holders who have a monthly pass on their PRESTO card that went into a negative balance because they tapped before their pass was valid on February 1,” he wrote.

The seven-day tapping window has been extended to 30 days, which should solve the problem for any new Presto-using rider who gets a pass for the first time — there’ll be no need to tap a new card before the pass on it is valid. In the meantime, Pepper wrote, Coughlan and others in his position are entitled to refunds.

“OC Transpo customers requiring reimbursement are asked to contact the PRESTO Customer Call Centre at 1-877-378-6123,” Pepper wrote.

That’s not a lot of help, Coughlan said upon hearing that.

“I’ve already called the Presto call centre before,” he sighed. “But I’ll certainly try again.”