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TTC's presto service is nuts

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

I have to use the TTC tomorrow, and realized that I would have to sort out my payment card. I couldn't work it out on their website so I spoke with someone. It turned out that the card was inoperative because:

1. I'd lost the previous card and had had it replaced.

2. I then added a "top-up" rule to the new card, so that whenever the balance went below $20 another $50 would be added.

3. Then I had to wait for 24 hours, go to a station, and tap the card once (e.g. use it for a trip). But if I waited 48 hours, the card wouldn't activate the "top-up".

Realizing that I would have to do all of this again, I asked if there was another way, and there was. I could simply go to any station and use a machine to manually transfer money from my credit card. That would not, however, get the automated top-up working. So I asked the agent to remove the auto top-up that was in place on the website, and resigned myself to doing manual top-ups.

What a system.