Punked By the CTA

Something weird is going on with the CTA's Chicago Card Plus -- the fare card that attaches to your bank account and is supposed to simplify the process of using public transportation.

Some wonky expiration dates on as many as 3,500 cards have left those people without working cards and scratching their heads, thinking this is anything but simple.

Full disclosure: this happened to me, and I feel like I got punked by the CTA.

It all started several weeks ago, when I got a postcard in the mail, saying my Chicago Card Plus was going to expire in 20 days. I went online as the postcard instructed, but the CTA's Web site showed my card wasn't going to expire until November, and I couldn't order a new card.

A couple of days later I got an e-mail from the CTA, saying that the expiration notice I got in the mail was wrong, and confirming my card was fine until later this year.  So, I chalked it up to a computer glitch and went about my business.

But yesterday, I got another e-mail from the CTA, this one saying that the first notice was right all along, and my card had now expired.  Ha ha!  The e-mail told me to go online to order a new card, and they apologized for any inconvenience.  The only thing the e-mail left off was a "you just got punked" subject line.

When I went onto the CTA's site this morning to actually apply for a card, I of course encountered some kind of system error on their site that stopped me from applying just then.  The punking continues . . .

In the meantime, the CTA's e-mail promised -- I'm assuming to me and about 3,499 other people -- that we'll get free rides until our cards can be replaced. But the e-mail fails to say how we're supposed to go about getting those free rides, since our cards no longer work.

To get the answer, I resorted to Twitter, of course. Lots of people are tweeting about what happened, and according to them, drivers and 'L' station workers are supposed to somehow "know" that I'm supposed to get a free ride, and let me on the train for free.

Reporter Sharon Wright and I tried that out a few times today, and it did work in all but one case.

Since there are thousands of people who are supposed to be getting these free rides for an unknown amount of time, I wondered how many people will try to ride for free, even though this whole debacle didn't affect  them -- and how much that's going to cost the CTA?

I contacted the CTA's media relations folks early this morning, and the nice woman who answered promised they'd get back to me.  A short time later, I got a call from Noelle Gaffney, who explained what happened:

Basically, when the Chicago Card program started about four years ago, there was a high demand for the cards.  The CTA outsourced the coding of the cards, when an expiration date is hardwired into them.  But somehow, a batch of cards shipped to the CTA had one expiration date hardwired in the card, and another date on paper.  Gaffney said the CTA's records were wrong, and they didn't know it until Monday, when the cards started to expire and people called in to complain.

Gaffney said the CTA sent a bulletin out to all its drivers and rail station employees, telling them that if anyone has a Chicago Card Plus that reads as expired, they should let them board anyway.

But there is one caveat:  Anyone whose card expired this way has to contact the CTA, either online or by phone, to confirm their address before another card will be shipped out to them. It'll take about 10 days to get the new card in the mail, and the deadline to have your new card in hand is Aug. 15.

The CTA also issued this press release, posted on the CTA Tattler:

The Chicago Transit Authority has alerted approximately 3,500 customers who use Chicago Card Plus that the expiration date listed online for their account may be incorrect and that the card may expire this week. The incorrect expiration dates impact only 1.1% of all Chicago Card Plus as there are 329,645 cards in circulation.

The cards are encoded to last four years and more than 50,000 Chicago Card Plus cards are due to expire in 2009 - with the majority expiring in July. CTA has been sending email reminders to customers whose cards are due to expire, however, because of a programming error that occurred when the cards were originally encoded, some cards are due to expire earlier than CTA records indicated.

I told Gaffney that this had happened to me, and she said a CTA customer service rep would double check my account to make sure a card was being shipped to me.  A few minutes after we hung up, they did call and told me it was on the way.  So, while I had that punked feeling when this all started, it does seem they're doing everything they can to make it right.  And for anyone else out there who doesn't happen to have the phone number for CTA's media relations, Gaffney assures you that a call to 1-888-YOUR-CTA will set things right.

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