Woman calls out Presto for ‘frustrating’ experience after losing her transit card
Heather Dixon was told to cancel online, but it can take 24 hours for account changes
A Burlington woman who had to watch helplessly as a stranger racked up charges on her lost Presto card is raising concerns about the fare system that is quickly becoming the main way to pay for transit across the GTHA.
Heather Dixon’s frustrations began Monday when she was taking the GO train home to Burlington. As the train approached her station she realized she couldn’t find her Presto card.
“I looked around quickly and I couldn’t see it, so then I just had to get off the train,” she said.
Dixon, 39, who works in publishing, asked a GO employee what to do about her card, which still had $93 loaded on it.
The employee advised her to visit the Presto website and report her card lost. Dixon said she immediately went online and did so, but was surprised to read it could take up to 24 hours for Presto to actually block her lost card.
Later that day she checked her account online and discovered an unscrupulous GO rider was using her card, taking a bus in Burlington, and then heading toward Port Credit. Whoever it was quickly spent about $20.
“It was frustrating to me to know that somebody had my card and was going to use it, and there was nothing I could do about it,” Dixon said.
To make matters worse, Dixon had set up Presto’s auto-load function, which automatically adds money from a customer’s credit card or bank account to their Presto card once its balance dips below a pre-set level. She wanted to cancel the auto-load feature, but in an online help chat on Monday, a Presto representative told her that was impossible as auto-load can only be cancelled before a card is reported lost. No one had told her
that.
Frustrated, Dixon took to Twitter to vent, calling Presto a “horrible idea.” The tweets captured the attention of Metrolinx, the provincial agency in charge of Presto, and by Tuesday the organization promised to reimburse her.
According to Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins, the lag for making changes to fare card accounts online, which includes other transactions such as loading funds, is not unique to Presto.
“Many well-used fare payment systems across the world have wait times associated with online transactions,” she said in an email. Transactions at Presto machines in subway stations and elsewhere can be instantaneous.
Aikins said the reason it can take up to a day for online changes is that all Presto account information is stored on the fare card itself. When a customer makes an online transaction,
the change is logged into the central Presto system, then the updated information is distributed to fare devices. The updated account information is only transmitted to a customer’s physical card once they tap it on a Presto device.
However, the auto-load function can be disabled instantly on the Presto website. Aikins couldn’t immediately say why Dixon wasn’t advised to disable that feature before cancelling her card, but said the agency is updating the messaging on its website to clarify the issue.