It’s been about two months since Metro gave riders the option to pay by simply tapping a contactless credit card or using Apple Pay at the gates, but rider Tanya Lervik — who commutes from College Park to Gallery Place — recently noticed some strange charges on her credit card account.
The charges were for $2.25 cents, the base fare to enter the Metro system.
“I saw a couple of pending charges from Metro, which was weird,” Lervik said. “[…] But I never use my credit card for Metro because I have the Smart Benefits through my work, and I always use my card separately. It’s not in a wallet. It’s not on my phone.”
She quickly started wondering how she could have been charged on the credit card even though she only uses her smartrip to pay. She said her credit card is usually in a tote bag she carries with her.
“It’s on one shoulder or the other,” Levik said. “I usually stand back because I don’t want somebody to follow me through the gate, and then I go through, so I don’t know if it was the gate next to me or if enough time had passed that it scanned me as I went through.”
Metro told News4 it’s investigating this matter, known in the industry as “card clash.”
But a section on Metro’s frequently asked questions website about the new service reads, “what happens if my physical cards and devices are accidentally charged at the same time?” In part, the website said only one card will ever be charged at a time.
Metro’s advice to anyone going through the system right now: Just try to keep credit cards, Apple Pay and SmarTrip cards separate as you make your way through the faregates.
This whole coincidence is enough to have some other riders wondering.
“That seems like a problem that needs to get resolved immediately, honestly yeah for sure,” said one rider.
As for Lervik, she has successfully disputed one charge and is waiting on another to get resolved.
“And then magically I’m hearing back from Metro today,” Lervik said. “They just sent me an email.”
Metro told News4 that upon review, the customer’s bag came into contact with the faregate and her card was inadvertently charged. Metro also said more than 1.8 million trips have been paid for with credit and debit cards since the program launched, and there have only been 138 refund requests.
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