What a disgusting dark pattern to be put to use in public transports.
I don't think this can be classified any other way than a scam. Sure, they scam you out of a couple of dollars, but they do it on a massive scale and at the expense of thousands upon thousands of people.
No, the point is to incentivize people to keep their cards, ie: conserve. It's a good thing, just like the charge for a new card. I'm a New Yorker, so at least some of us like it.
The correct way to do that is to charge a deposit for a new card. That's how London's Oyster cards work, although it's a scam in other ways (to get the "deposit" back, you need a proof of address, i.e. if you're a tourist, you can't get the deposit back (except on some specific tube stations)).
That wasn't my experience. I just went to a ticket desk and they not only gave me my deposit back but also the remaining balance on not one but two cards. Wasn't a hassle at all.
That was at the underground Victoria station ticket counter.
> to get the "deposit" back, you need a proof of address,
That's only for registered cards. Which makes perfect sense, because they're registered to an address to prevent people stealing them and returning them for cash
That's a rather bad argument; that's like saying you should only be able to use cash that is registered to an address, to prevent people from stealing it.
Yeah, it's an interesting comparison. For the Oyster card, you just need proof that you live where you say you do. For bit coin you just need to not lose your key. Similar purpose. Different execution.
note: lose as in someone steals it.If it's totally lost the money is gone, as we know.
That's frustrating for rare users (tourists, etc), but seems optimized for the regular traveler.
The rare user might prefer to buy Exactly One (or two or four) tickets, as they know they won't use the excess. This is similar to the frustration of a first-time user at the bay area ferries, where the process of registration, app installation, etc, is much less convenient than most parking.
The regular user, however, doesn't care as much about the initial overhead, as the convenience outweighs the overhead. A remainder balance on the card is less frustrating than for a tourist, as they know they're going to fill it up again.
That said, it would have been nicer if the transit company had phrased pricing in terms of Number Of Rides, rather than dollars (dollar amounts made up):
It is still strictly worse for the repeat riders if they get a card valued at 10.41 than 7.91. The only reason for the city to even allow someone to do it is to underhandedly get more money when someone inevitably loses their metro card.
When I last travelled to London, with kids, I was researching how to get an Oyster card. I'd used one before but borrowed from relatives in London, that wasn't going to work this time.
So I assumed I'd need a "tourist" Oyster as I wasn't a resident. But when I looked in to it as a tourist you had to book well in advance so they can post a card to you - whilst if you ignore the "tourist" offering you can just pick up the card at your arrival station (Victoria for me, very easy, was from a machine IIRC). Also the charges seemed higher for tourists somehow and there seemed to be difficulties giving the card back and getting a refund - I could see no reason to have a tourist Oyster.
One of the kids travelled free, with me, as it happened which was great. The only problem is that the automated turnstiles wouldn't let us through separately without us paying twice (for which we'd need a different Oyster) and I got "munched" on a couple of occasions one of which gave me a very sore back, it was quite vicious.
In the situation you are travelling with a kid who is eligible for free travel, rather than going through the barriers you should've just spoken to the the person on duty. Theres always at least 1 person standing by one of the barriers that would let you through.. takes like 5 seconds longer but doesn't involved getting munched :)
The cards expire ~one year after the first purchase. At that point you'll have up to two years to transfer the balance to a new card. I don't see the conservation.
It is weird how frequently the cards expire. I was quite surprised to visit Tokyo and have my Passmo card still working after not being there since 2009. (They expire 10 years after the last use.)
MetroCards are so cheaply made and thin that you'd be lucky if you can actually use one on a daily basis for a year without it becoming mangled or unreadable. The MTA probably enforces a one-year expiration to avoid the expense of having to deal with massive numbers of complaints about unusable cards.
Because of the unreliability of MetroCards and MetroCard readers, the MTA is planning to phase them out in a few years and replace their card readers with equipment that can directly read contactless (RFID) credit cards.
The police want you to keep the same card so that the citizenry are easier to track. Fill up a card 1,000 times with cash and just one time with a credit credit and your entire transit history through the system can be found.
However, if the police arrest a suspect, they can still find their transit history by examining any card they have in their possession, regardless of how it was bought. So if you plan on committing a crime (or just don't want to be tracked), you should buy some low-denomination MetroCards with cash at random locations and discard them immediately after passing the turnstile. And you should leave your cell phone at home too, since that also leaves a trail of where you've been. Don't drive to the scene of the crime either, since you might be identified by one of the NYPD's license plate scanners (or a red-light or speeding camera, or an E-ZPass toll scanner). And if you manage to avoid all those pitfalls, you might still get identified by one of the thousands of surveillance cameras around NYC. It's getting very hard to travel anonymously in NYC.
I'm a little skeptical of the arguments made by this article, even though I really enjoy the enthusiasm behind it. I've been using an unlimited for almost always, so I'll have to verify the refill options at the machines, but I know you can refill your cards with an arbitrary amount at the manned booths.
Also, in conjunction with the good counter-points being made by others here, let's not forget his points rest upon free money. Without that bonus, he'd be a dollar short, not 5 cents. In fact, with option 3 (the $39 one), he literally received an extra subsidized ride. $39/2.5 is 15.6 => 15 rides. But with the free bonus he is able to take his 16th ride.
I suspect this has more to do with poor UI, than anything else. Take a look at the Citibike UI if you're not an annual member. You will have less hair after having used it. Makes the MTA one seem glorious.
It's like those stores that always have half the store "50% off," they just always charge more and expect you to only buy the things on sale and feel like you got a great deal when in reality you paid what they expected you to pay.
i.e. that "free 5%" you get when buying a card comes is the same damn thing as just charging 5% less on the per ride costs in the first place. It's not free money at all. You just feel like it's free. Honestly, that "free money" only further supports the idea that the MTA is run more like a penny-pinching crony business than a public transport system.
It's free in the sense that they don't have to offer that at all. Obviously there is some kind of attempt at profit in the system on the MTA side of things. I'm not really sure how your argument would work with my unlimited card, but yes, "Hah."
Like every other for-profit company on the planet?
There's a measurable difference between the bonus and no-bonus option, and in this case, that's 5%. That is the offer. Given the option between the two, I'll take the bonus knowing fully well in either scenario they are profiting.
AT&T's classic monthly rates factor in subsidization, and thus are substantially higher than ...whatever value you seem to be wishing that they charge - I sincerely hope not at-cost. If they offer a 5% discount, they're still profiting, but you're paying 5% less than you would have. That is something, and that is an offer.
There's a measurable difference between the bonus and no-bonus option, and in this case, that's 5%. That is the offer. Given the option between the two, I'll take the bonus knowing fully well in either scenario they are profiting.
You're comparing apples and oranges. Compare the 5% bonus with simply lowering the cost of fares an equivalent amount.
Indeed, the whole "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" bit.
I think there's a strong likelihood that the numbers 9, 19, and 39 were chosen because with the $1 card fee, they make nice round multiples of $10. Put a $20 bill in, get a $19 card.
That is great when you are buying the card new, but why do that for the refill screen? Surely the typical rider refills more often than buys new, so you are going to make change more often than you would with round number charges for all transactions.
I switched back to a money card from an unlimited a while back. This is correct. I can't recall if it's 10/20/40 exactly, but they're all multiples of 5, for sure.
I can't edit my original reply anymore, but after checking out the machines for myself in person, I really do think the author only outsmarted his own OCD. You can refill your card with a credit card with any value greater than or equal to a dollar using the "Other Amounts" UI path. Machines will also take coins as small as 5 cents. People in the booths will take any amount. In most cases, that should allow you to zero out your card or come really close if you really wanted to. Knowing that, I feel his points rest on confusion based on historical pricing changes and the 5% bonus.
First off, the bonus. For my purposes, I will call it "free", but as one response was so happy to point out, nothing is truly free, but I won't debate whether something should be provided at-cost or not here. However you feel, $2.5 is the price for one ride, and anything below that from the perspective of the buyer is essentially gratis. Assuming the bonuses were not there, for all three default payment paths, you would have $1.5 remaining. And hey, the lowest amount you can refill with happens to be a dollar! $1.5 + $1 = $2.5 = one perfectly balanced card.
Now for the price change. Cards were free, so essentially you really were paying for a balanced amount that would leave you with no remainder. Again, ignoring the bonus, you were essentially putting $10, $20, and $40 on your card - all values perfectly divisible by $2.50. Now cards cost a dollar. That's a different debate, but that explains the $1.5 pre-bonus dangler.
He goes on to mention, "If they really wanted to fix the issue, they could ask “How much do you want on your MetroCard” instead of “How much do you want to pay”. But don’t count on those changes coming to a MetroCard Vending Machine near you anytime soon, given how lucrative the current set up is."
But prior to the one dollar surcharge, that is essentially what it was doing. It's been updated to reflect the dollar surcharge, and it has always elected not to show the final amount + bonus. Including the bonus would be just confusing, especially if you were trying to pay with cash/coins. "Oh hey, I want $10 to be on my card, including the bonus." "Okay, please enter $9.524" Yes, that's right, it's not an even $9.5. 10 / 1.05 = 9.5238~
If there's any "answer" here, it's that they wanted the cheapest/smallest amount of software updates that they could get away with using their original software/ui.
Millions of people are just visitors to NY, and tourists (like me) visit irregularly enough to not keep that card between visits. They will not expect the vending machine to give you an amount that does not divide evenly in rides, because that is not how these machines typically behave.
I think it's fair to call that a dark pattern, especially for a public service, it is simply a hidden tax for tourists.
Did you read my comment? What numbers would you suggest to be displayed that are also bill friendly? 11, 21, and 41? That requires a minimum of two bills. Again, the "other payments" button is fairly prominent...
It's not about what can be done though, it's about how people actually behave. Some non-insignificant amount of people will leave a few cents on the table here or there.
Thats the ground state of this system as they have designed it.
>Thats the ground state of this system as they have designed it.
As I mentioned, excluding the bonus, and prior to the dollar surchage, that wasn't really true. The values were perfectly divisible by $2.5.
But if you look at the author's own images, the "Other Amounts" button is pretty prominent. Short of a brand new auto-rebalancer option, what would you suggest? If my claim is true, and that they wanted to have the cheapest transition / software update they could manage, that option would violate that. They essentially changed a table of numbers (I assume) and most of their old UI was reusable.
The next cheapest option that would satisfy your requirement is to blow out all 3 quick options (and eliminate the bonus) and have only an "Other Amounts" path, essentially forcing manual re-balance.
Couldn't agree more. The OP seems to only be doing this to keep peace with his/her own OCD. I somewhat empathize with the pain; it used to drive me crazy too.
Here's a much better way of "outsmarting" it: buy an MTA EasyPay Xpress card[1]. The card will be linked to your credit card, so you will never have to worry with insufficient fare again.
Plus you still get 5% every $5, with the convenience of auto-refill, and full protection if you ever misplace your card.
yes that's how I top up my oyster card (the uks equivalent) if I need to top up I put whatever change I have with me on the card gets rid of all that heavy 50p's and pound coins
My apartment complex does something similar. Rent can only be paid online, and paying via Visa, MasterCard, Amex, etc costs $45. Discover costs $55. Even eCheck costs $1.95. Yes, this is on top of the cost of rent. So a $1400 rent becomes $1445 if I pay by credit card, leading to an extra $540 per year for the privilege of paying rent. They don't accept cash or check in person, so you have no choice but to pay the fees.
So then pay by eCheck for the minimal/reasonable $2 fee. Why should you expect them to eat the ~3% fee that they incur should you choose to pay by credit card?
Exactly. Nont enought people understand that when you pay someone "$1000" with a credit card. You are actually only paying them $970. i.e. you're not paying them your full rent.
People shouldn't have to understand it; it should be baked into the cost of the product up front. Don't tell me rent is $1400 (plus some extra amount), tell me rent is $1445. Don't tell me the product is $5 (plus 6% sales tax), tell me it's $5.30.
If you want to charge me $1000, then put the price at $1030 or whatever your fees come out to. Anything else is disingenuous.
It's not though. This is a very American attitude because that's just how it's been in America. But now companies (and customers) are realizing that this is bullshit.
People want lower prices, so one way companies can lower the price is to pass the credit card fee on to the consumer, while also giving them the option of using a different payment method with a lower fee.
Personally I would always pay with cash/e-check if there was a financial incentive to do so. Offering the same price for both is just silly since the cash customers are basically subsidizing the credit card customers.
A better way to do this is by offering a "cash discount", so the stated price is never added to, only subtracted.
So why not have rent be the cost of the lowest price payment method, with an extra charge for paying with a card being the cost of the card fee minus the cost of the fee with the lowest cost option? Then there's a "free" option where you're paying the price that you were quoted, or the option to pay a convenience charge for using a card? Telling someone rent is $X when rent is actually $X + $Y is ridiculous.
And I'm not sure your point on "a very American attitude". I live in America, so... yes? When I tell someone my address, they don't look down their nose and say "that's a very American address". Of course it's American. That's where I live. Contrary to some opinions, American things aren't always automatically wrong just because they're American. I'm sure if I lived in Belgium I would pay tax and VAT and credit card processing fees and think nothing of it. But I don't live in Belgium. I'd have the same reaction if my landlord asked me to pay rent in Yen just because there was a favorable exchange rate for him.
My point is that, Americans expect paying with credit card to be the same as paying with cash. In a lot of other nations, that expectation does not exist.
And you're right- a better way to do it is to have the lowest fee added to the cost.
Companies have always realized that CC merchant fees are bullshit; but their agreements are also bullshit and some even prevented merchants from merely informing customers of the fees.
Why should it be baked in if you do not have to pay with a credit card? Rent is not $1445 because you don't have to pay that much. You would have a point if you said that rent is $1402.
You don't want all these taxes and charges mixed into the price because them people are oblivious to the fact that they are being skimmed by the government and credit card company: that there is a portion of the income that isn't for the actual product or service. ("Hidden charges are bad" principle).
The issue in credit cards is that merchants are in fact required to hide the cost: they are not allowed to charge extra for credit card transactions. Likewise, they are not allowed to give a discount for cash transactions. ("Hidden charges are bad: so banks like them!")
The apartment building may in fact be breaking the merchant agreement by applying this charge. This is a good thing; vendors should fight against that hiding.
See, if rent is $1400 and you can pay exactly $1400 by any method: credit card, check or cash, then you're being ripped off if you don't use a credit card! They are pocketing the merchant fee that they would have had to pay on the credit transaction. Why would you care, it's $1400 to you either way, right? Wrong: if you use credit, you "earn" points. If you have a credit card that earns 2% of purchase prices in points, you get 28 points, and if these points can be be converted 1:1 for dollars in some way (like buying an airline ticket), that's 28 bucks! So it's like you're really paying $1372 for your rent, and getting a $28 kickback. The building coughs up a merchant fee, and some of that is kicked back to you in the form of points. Doesn't that person paying by check look like a complete sucker now, if the amount is the same for all methods of payment?
The card user is effectively getting a discounted rent, and supporting the leeching credit card company too, which gets a cut of the discount. Why should the building support that? If rent is $1400, it is not fair that someone pays only $1372, after getting a $28 kickback in points, which comes out of a $50 fee that the building has to pay. The building is robbed of operating income, which means that the rents are higher than what they should be.
Now vendors of goods like credit cards and pay the fees, and comply with the rules of hiding the fees, and not offering cash discounts. Why? Because credit cards encourage rampant consumerism. They bring in business.
The apartment building doesn't need this argument: you owe rent and that's it.
Interestingly, the IRS in the US evidently allows taxes to be paid by credit card. But there is a charge:
The same arguments apply: without a charge, you'd be getting a tax break, analogous to the rent break. The government is not a store; it does not need to attract "customers" to pay taxes.
In the state of CA, the payment terms must be in the lease:
If the agreement does not specify the form of payment, any form will be considered acceptable. If rent can be paid in person, the agreement must include the days and hours payment will be accepted. If rent can be paid only by mail, then it is presumed paid on the date it is mailed, if the tenant can show proof of mailing. If rent can be deposited at a financial institution, the owner must disclose the account number and name and address of the institution, which must be within five miles of the tenant's residence.
I'm curious if you could force them to take cash by paying during a grace period at the beginning of the month. If the month already started then your contract could be setup so that you already owe them all the money for the month. If you owe them money then paying cash is basically _always_ a legal payment option, as in, they cannot refuse your money because it's cash and then say you didn't pay. Make sure to ask for a receipt.
This assumes you're in the US though, and you would have do get a kick out of yanking their chain, willing to play the game, etc, but it could be fun/funny.
When I've asked, I was told the only options are what is listed on their website. The suggestion is eCheck, as it's cheapest.
Additional fees (including the common "plus tax" at the store) are a scam and should be abolished. If that were the case, the MTA issue in the article wouldn't matter.
The problem is your landlord wants your full rent amount and it depends on how you pay them. If you pay through a medium with fees, I'd argue you should pay those fees.
It should be made apparent how they accept money and what the associated fees are before you sign your lease. That's the only malice I see.
Apartment rental companies in the US don't usually accept wire transfers (which is crazy itself), but they usually accept checks, and fortunately you can write an exact amount on a check.
In addition to incentivizing the re-use of cards, there's another good reason no one seems to have pointed out: the MTA needs money to keep the fares as low as $2.50.
They have a history of not making enough money, and everyone in NYC gets in a rage whenever the fare has to be hiked up. So if they're able to make some extra money off of tourists, for the benefit of all the regular New Yorkers, that's fine by me.
As a New Yorker and a long-time subway rider, I get in a rage because I perceive the MTA to be mismanaged. Though performance of the system improved noticeably in the 90's and beyond the MTA keeps notoriously obscure books, and seem incapable of budgeting and planning. I understand that fares will go up for a number of reasons, but too often the MTA finds itself in the hole to a few hundred million bucks and cannot explain why.
Not sure where the scam is. At a glance it doesn't seem to be exploiting some kind of rounding bias past a threshold. It just happens to keep a strange remaining balance that you keep anyway. Nobody throws away the cards anymore because now it costs a fee to get a new one. So you end up always spending the money you put in.
Really, the only people I see likely getting caught out on this are tourists leaving with unused balances. The argument that "they get the money sooner" seems like nonsense to me. They get the money when you put it on the card, either way.
Re: the tourists, Metro in DC has an approach that I assume is for charging tourists more, which is that paper farecards (instead of the reusable SmarTrip card) get a surcharge of $1 on each trip. They're very open about the surcharge, so if you don't like it, then you can get a SmarTrip; however, it would then take a pretty involved computation to end up with zero balance at the end.
I'm actually pretty favorable toward the DC policy. Increasing tourist revenue (who probably are going to be pretty willing to pay slightly more for limited subway use) in a tourist-heavy spot seems like a reasonable approach to subsidizing the heavier commuting users of the system. With Metro specifically that may not be a huge deal because so many people have their commuting paid for as a benefit, but I like the basic idea.
The DC metro system does not offer an "unlimited pass". Each trip costs what it costs, and deducts that amount from whichever card you have. There's two rate schedules, rush-hour (pricier) and non-rush (slightly lower price).
I suspect the reason advertised to the DC metro's govt. managers is that the paper fare card (the one that now has a $1 surcharge) is a disposable item. Once run down to zero, or rolled over to another card in a fare machine, the old paper card becomes trash. Therefore I suspect the govt. regulators were told the fee was an "encouragement" to save resources and buy the reusable plastic card vs. the throw away paper card.
Now, the fact that they get an extra $1, per trip, out of most all tourists (and locals) who don't notice the surcharge up front (it is advertised, just not that boldly...) was never really discussed at the regulator meetings.
If they really wanted to fix this, the text would read "How many rides would you like to purchase ($2.50 per ride)". Of course, this only works if every ride is $2.50.
NYC Subway fares are always $2.50. Really, as confusing fares go, this is nothing compared to DC's Metro. At the top of the machine, above the head of anyone who can actually fit in the train, there's a massive listing of fares to each other station in the system (on and off peak, which are different). In order to fill your card perfectly, you need to know exactly which stations you'll be using and when. Granted, most tourists will be traveling within the distances that get the minimum fare, and off-peak, so they could just go by that minimum fare. There's just no actual indication of that fact.
Oh, and if you want a plastic RFID card rather than magnetic paper that will fall apart within 3 trips, you need to spend $10 for $8 of fare. (EDIT: And another commenter mentioned something I'd forgotten: those paper farecards also come with a $1 surcharge per trip.)
Seconded on the DC Metro. Flat fares would improve the experience greatly. Not only would it make it easier to calculate how much you need, but it would avoid the hideous backups that occur at many stations when the flow of people exiting the station is constrained by the fact that everyone has to scan their card again before they can get out. The idea gets proposed quite often, but it never goes anywhere. I recall reading something a couple years ago though that said for a flat-fare system to be revenue neutral in DC, the fare would have to be $2.90. Apparently the concern is that that would end up decreasing ridership, particularly among people who are just traveling around the urban core of DC.
There could be an "unlimited ride" card, like NYC has. It would work out to be about $125/month if that $2.90 is accurate compared to the $2.50 for NYC and everything else being equal.
The system being implemented on the commuter trains in Southern Ontario Canada allow for riders to set a "default exit", so when a user doesn't tap-off, the system assumes that's where they got off the system.
each ride with the magnetic paper also costs $1 extra, to incentivize using the RFID, but the RFID cards stop working after a month and when they do you have no way to get the balance off of it the way you do with a paper card. yay!
I was one of the first people in DC to get the Smart Card. That original card lasted for more than ten years. The first (much thinner) replacement card failed after two months. The second failed after three months. I complained to WMATA and they completely denied any change in the card design. I've been back on paper fare cards ever since.
The original SmarTrip cards came from a company that went out of business, but used proprietary technology. WMATA eventually found another company to create the cards, and I believe this came about the time when new SmarTrip cards reduced in price from $5 to $2. So perhaps not a change in the design, but definitely a change in the manufacturing.
I was just in DC and I noticed that on the buses some times you have to swipe 3-4 times just to get it to work? Is it just a weird software glitch or my bad luck?
I've had DC Smarttrip cards last years. Actually, I've only ever owned two since they were introduced. They definitely don't stop working after a month.
There's a few comments here that say it only applies to tourists, because the problem is only manifest at the card's end of life: lose the card/stop needing it and that's the point you get shafted for the excess balance. Fingers crossed a resident won't see a card EOL, they'll just top it up over and over, and so it seemingly doesn't apply.
But equating long life with infinite life isn't quite right here. Every card will stop being used some day. If the MTA know with certainty that X proportion of cards do EOL with Y USD on them, then they can safely consider X × Y as earnings and spend it immediately, ergo the moment of first top up is the true moment of shafting. I'd bet good money that the MTA's internal figures record earnings from excess balances by counting cards newly registered, not cards recently expired.
I studied econ at a good school, and I can tell you that an economist would 100% equate this with theft. Because it is.
edit:
This - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8274314 - is a very good point. Ensuring cards always have a meaningful balance on them is probably the best way to stop people treating them as disposable (I imagine their cost is non-negligible). If they're given out free, it's clever, but if you have to buy them (like London's Oyster cards) it's even more of a scam. To have a totally clear moral conscience the MTA should really let you return the card and cash out.
The numbers, $9, $19, $39 are set so in the common case of someone paying with a $10 or $20, with the $1 card fee, no change needs to be refunded. The MTA machines only dispense change in coins, and because people are unlikely to pay with coins or small denomination bills like ones, a different default would mean more frequent refilling of the change reserves.
Oh yes, it would go over much better to promise a $10 card and then give only $9. That's _definitely_ theft.
> if a new card is needed
This is the "new card" screen. That question has already been answered if you get here. The "topping up" screen advertises $10/$20/$40 instead of $9/$19/$39 (making the intent perfectly clear).
The whole reason for my comment was that I thought the analysis going on here was wrong. I put forward a pretty solid case for why the chatter up to then wasn't the right way to look at the dynamics here.
If we're analysing it and getting it wrong - how can we reasonably assert that the average, passive consumer is correctly informed?
The use of the word 'theft' was evidently an almighty error here. How about:
Monopolistic profit-seeking behaviour which is enabled by the consumer's lack of information about the transaction and a purposeful complication of the transaction mechanism
Further, in what way does it "disturb" you? Are you terrified by the notion that maybe one day you'll try to sell me something and I'll scream theft? What a spine-tingling, yet wholly unlikely, nightmare that would be. And are we talking Girl Interrupted-disturbed, or something deeper?
I'm going to get blasted for saying this but what I find mildly disturbing is the willingness of people to jump to the defence of organisations which are trying to screw them (even after a blow by blow explanation of exactly how they're being screwed) just because they're publicly-run.
Hating on econ is trendy in this kind of scene at the moment, but most economists aren't these mystical agents fighting for some kind of fantasy right-wing utopia - just scientists that observe things and speculate on their properties. Economics is fundamentally the mathematical description of aggregate human behaviour, and so any paper with a new idea that makes it into popular culture is all too easily interpreted as some kind of manifesto for social change, after which the hate piles on thick and fast. It's an unfortunate misunderstanding that's creating biases which could ultimately end up depriving society of a lot of very useful knowledge.
> If we're analysing it and getting it wrong - how can we reasonably assert that the average, passive consumer is correctly informed?
These are two different sets of knowledge. For the buyer to be informed requires only that they know what they're getting (probably this rounds to three trips for $9 in the minds of most, I'd wager) and what they're paying (clearly marked). If it's worth it to them at the time of transaction, the transaction happens. Simple.
None of the rest of this stuff matters to the buyer. They've paid $9, they've got three trips, and there's a little bonus money left, encouraging them to keep the card instead of tossing it and worrying about the $1 for the next one later.
Suggesting that the buyer should be incensed at the seller because the seller is somehow unfair, but only in a way that didn't affect what was being sold and for how much, is more politics than economics.
> For the buyer to be informed requires only that they know what they're getting (probably this rounds to three trips for $9 in the minds of most, I'd wager) and what they're paying (clearly marked)
No. 'Complete information' as it's called includes anything that would materially affect the buyer's consumption decisions. The article author sought out full information, figured out what was going on, and adjusted his behaviour accordingly. The fullness of the information he uncovered was so novel, in fact, it made to #1 on HN.
> Suggesting that the buyer should be incensed
I didn't, I spoke for myself alone
> only in a way that didn't affect what was being sold and for how much
This is a very shallow analysis. The point is that the passive consumer thinks they've paid $1 to cover the cost of the card and the rest of the credit is their 'property' (or asset, at least) when in reality it's highly likely that another ~$2 of said credit will fall into the ownership of the MTA. The effective price of the card is > $3 in that case. The moral problem arises if the MTA designed it this way, which the article suggests they did, and I'm inclined to agree.
It's disturbing because it is a revelation of the way economists apparently think: You believe that unless I act in a way that is beneficial to your profit margin, and in a way that is objectively not in my best interests, then it is theft. The implications there being that every private individual is worthy of contempt unless they act in blind, ignorant support of the profits of the corporate oligarchy.
You used the word Theft on purpose, maybe not consciously, but because it came to your mind first. It reflects your true opinions on the matter, and they are quite frankly disgusting.
Judging from your replies elsewhere you don't or can't comprehend just how repugnant your attitude is. It is not my social or legal responsibility to maximize MTA's revenue. The fact that it would even occur to a person like you (who studied economics) to classify "not getting ripped off" as theft makes me want to beat the shit out of someone.
If you use the subway twice a day, 5 times a week, you're only one round-trip per month away from break-even on a monthly unlimited. So unless you really never do anything else, its a pretty sensible option.
I don't. But if you have one of these cards and only top up using the default options as the original post describes (and I imagine most people do), it's effectively impossible for one of these cards to reach a zero balance. It will always EOL with a positive balance.
Not so with Oyster, mine hits zero or very close quite often. Difference there is you buy an Oyster card up front.
I'm not sure what the deal is now, but orignally the amount you paid for a London Oyster card was refundable (along with any remaining balance). That and the daily spend limit on Otster meant it was usually cheaper for tourists to buy these than a travelcard.
Yes oyster on the tube is a LOT cheaper than actually buying a ticket - I just have one for the odd occasion I need to make a tube journey.
The real rip off in the UK is the rail season tickets nd the above inflation increases. For a lot less than I will be paying to travel 60 miles to London in Germany I could get country wide travel !
Commuter tickets into London are crazy. I had to work with a client on site the other month and stayed in Crawley (about 30 miles outside of London), I paid £22 to get into London that morning. In the evening I travelled across the country home (about 150 miles) for £15.
> Your MetroCard can be refilled with time and value for about one year. The MetroCard Vending Machine will tell you when the card expiration date is coming up, and will issue you a new MetroCard at no charge with all your purchases on it.
I haven't had my coffee today. I took that quite wrong at first.
I can tell you from experience that the cards don't last a year. They are very flimsy and they stop working sooner than that. If a card becomes too damaged to read you are supposed to send it in to some MTA address to get a replacement but I've done that and never heard back from them. You can also go to their office in lower Manhattan during business hours and do it in person. Which is okay if you work downtown, but useless otherwise.
I really hated this too, so I wrote an app a few years ago for this, to tell you exactly how much to put on your card no matter how much you have on it. [Inserts shameless plug for Metroptimizer.] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/metroptimizer-2/id649185762?....
The author doesn't seem to realize the MTA has tried and failed to get rid of the bonus. The only reason the bonus still exists is because of political pressure. Therefore, it's unlikely a "dark pattern" by a nefarious public agency that the people need to "outsmart".
As another commented mentioned, it's about charging a full dollar amount (after $1 new card fee) for people paying with cash.
Yes. If you are a daily commuter, you should be buying the unlimited card anyway. If you live in NYC and just the subways frequently (as I do), then you just refill when you run out. Whether there is $2.45 or $0.00 when I run out and need to refill doesn't matter to me. No matter what I'm cursing at the train that invariably pulls in at the moment I run out of money and hustling to the nearest machine to refill hopefully before the train pulls away. Which is why I would never waste the time to enter a specific amount.
If you are a regular commuter, but don't ride enough to make the unlimited card work, there's an EasyPay MetroCard[1]. It refills automatically via credit card (and you get the 5% bonus) so you never have to use the machines.
In Holland it's much worse. You aren't allowed to use public transport unless you have minimal 20 EUR balance on your card (or agree to be tracked and I assume have your travel data sold / 'lost').
This applies for return journeys, so after the first leg of the journey you need to make sure there's 20 EUR left or you're screwed.
Other than the obvious money-grab by the authority (1 million cards x 20 EUR x 1% / 12 months == 16666 EUR income each month), what's the reasoning behind this? Only financially solvent individuals can use public transport?
Fair, per-kilometer pricing. Quoting from the english version of the page linked above[0]:
When you travel on credit, a boarding fare will be debited from your card when you
check in. When you check out, the boarding fare will be refunded and you will be
charged for the number of kilometres you travelled. If you do not check out, you
will pay the full boarding fare.
Not everything that looks like a blatant money grab is one. Hanlon's Razor[1] prevails once again.
I'm assuming they have variable pricing based on distance traveled, and 20 EUR covers the highest fare for the system. That could just be my optimistic bias speaking though.
To be fair, this is price agnostic, and they are the same patterns they've had when the subway/bus price was 2.25. The remainders, while still more than a couple pennies, were definitely smaller than the current setup. It also allows for the MTA to continue price hiking (ugh) without people ending up with even larger remainders: "I have 2.50 on my card but now it's 2.75!"
What they should have done was update these price points alongside the price change that occurred to keep remainders at or under a dollar. A "fill to the next ride" option could also be a great way to even out the remaining cost.
While this still isn't perfect and screws over tourists (particularly when they removed the 1 day unlimited!), I imagine this is non-issue for the majority of New Yorkers (myself included).
I also imagine there's good reason here. Imagine all the trash that gets created because someone will finish up their metro card completely. The extra $1 fee per new card was likely a newer solution to prevent people from throwing them in the streets or in the subway trench, and providing an odd remainder on the card may have been a historical way to do the same. Imagine, if you had an extra dollar sitting around on your card, you probably would reuse it, and not throw it out.
That said, the fact that anyone can get from Sunset Park to the Bronx Botanical Gardens (a 20+ mile drive) for 2.50 isn't so bad of a deal.
I always thought "turnstyle" and its variants ("turn-style" in this post) are misspellings of the word turnstile. However I have seen it quite a lot online in different articles. Is "turnstyle" actually a different spelling for turnstile?
This is the antipattern that "Microsoft Points" used to use, except there you were forced to buy a round number that wasn't divisible into the quantity you wanted.
That's an interesting article. However, seems very confusing at all to have a card with money on it to travel with the metro. According to the comments here, most other cities (in USA I guess) have it the same way as well.
In Barcelona, where I live, the system is different. You buy a card with travels on it instead. One travel is a entry to the metro until you leave the metro. So if you buy a card with ten travels, you're sure to get ten travels. If you buy 50, you get 50. This seems like a much more reasonable system.
Metrocard also works on other systems: the Airtrain JFK, which is $5 per ride; PATH, which used to be only $2.25 per ride; MTA express buses, which vary in price.
These systems are used because people don't want to line up and buy tickets before every ride.
The same with the cards we have here. One travel is one ride, with metro, bus or tram. Also the "trains" that goes to up on the mountains use the same card.
Having credits for travels vs money on the card won't make any difference on how you buy the tickets. Only how easy it is for the consumers/users to use.
It isn't reasonable for the fares to be the same. They are determined by different transit agencies, and have different costs. The select bus service is a much different experience than the subway, and as such is priced much higher. Having a cash balance means you can decide what to use it on, when you use it instead of when you buy it.
Indeed. PATH and AirTrain are run by the Port Authority, which is a multi-state agency. The subway is run by MTA New York City Transit, which is part of the New York state government.
If all rides cost the same (i.e. price is not dependent on distance traveled) why don't they sell cards with X number of rides on them? The "rides" on the card could act like forever stamps, in that they would be valid even if the price per ride someday increased. This seems like a much fairer system that would still encourage people to buy in advance and keep their cards.
I guess this makes sense if you're visiting NY and you're only going to use the subway a few times. If you live in the city though you're probably just refilling the same card over and over. Then the logic of filling the card up doesn't hold up. you should go for the largest "bonus" you can get and try not to lose that card!
Putting money on the card barely makes sense at all if you use the subway frequently. My honeymoon was in Manhattan for a week, and we were out and about every day. For a $30/person flat rate, you can use the subway unlimited times for a week. Even if you only use it 2 times per day, that's $35 at $2.50 per ride. The $30 was a much better deal for us, as we used the subway many times every day to get to museums, food, etc. For a month, it's a $112 flat rate, which comes out to ~$25.85/week. That means if you use the subway more than 10 times a week, it's better to get the month flat rate.
This makes sense on the surface, but the confounding factor is that the NYC MTA cards are rather flimsy. Bend these cards just a little bit and they sometimes don't scan as smoothly. The trivial inconvenience of social pressure while attempting to swipe an inconsistent card with a bunch of other people behind you waiting to push through the turnstiles is enough to cause me to consider purchasing a new card.
Yes, most of the time we're just refilling the same card over and over, but these cards also have an expiry date of 1 year. This is still a good hack to keep in mind.
>This makes sense on the surface, but the confounding factor is that the NYC MTA cards are rather flimsy. Bend these cards just a little bit and they sometimes don't scan as smoothly.
I have plenty of criticisms about the Metrocard system, but I've had no problems keeping my cards operational until they expire. I keep the card in a regular card slot in my wallet, use it 2-4 times a day and refill it once a month. No issues in years.
Say what you will about the SF bay area's public transportation system (yeah, it's kinda bad), at least we have RFID cards that are actually sturdy (I've had my current card for over 3 years), there's an auto-refill system that you can set up online, and I don't even have to take it out of my wallet to use it.
When visiting NYC I found it insane that those flimsy cards are the normal monthly tickets. I'm comparing this with the Oyster card in London which is a normal RFID card – I've had one for 5 years and it still works perfectly.
If your card expired with balance still remaining, you can exchange it at the window for a new card, transferring the balance and not losing anything. Or you can do it by mail.
Provided the magnetic strip can be read. Usually the card is so beaten up from usage over the year that the magnetic stripe will become unreadable before the an unavailable balance is left to be transferred.
If you live in the city and use the subway often, it is easier to get a 30-day unlimited ride pass. Lots of employers will even provide monthly unlimited ride passes as a pre-tax benefit via TransitChek.
I'm no expert in economics, but bear with me. The MTA operates a natural monopoly. In a natural monopoly you don't have competitors, so your customers can't turn to someone else to receive better service. Furthermore, the government has granted them the right to be the one provider in this market.
I think that this makes them somewhat of a public service. Normally quality of service comes from the pressure of competitors, but in this case there are no competitors. I think the government has a responsibility to see that this is clearly a dishonest tactic and fix it. If the government doesn't enforce honest practice, than it won't get enforced at all (because competitors aren't there to do it). (sorry for the somewhat confused argument, but there's really something wrong with this)
For most intents and purposes, the MTA is the government. NYS sets up lots of various quasi-governmental authorities, because the authorities can issue debt without having votes, whereas the state government needs to have voters approve bonds.
2. It is merciless. (Would the city really lose out if it gave three rides for $2.50 and then one for $2.45? They already have a 5% bonus (whose main purpose is to trick you into a -20% bonus) would a 5.03% bonus be unheard of?)
3. To achieve fairness, this system burdens the entire city with a cognitive load.
It's not theft, it's fraud. "But how can it be fraud?" you clamor, all of the terms are spelled out clearly. The fraud is not in the financial transactional terms, but in the trust to place in our leaders.
We entrust them to choose fares and design a fare-paying system that is merciful, fair and doesn't enforce an undue cognitive load. This system violates that trust. How can they expect the public to remain peaceful and satisfied while they're deliberately infringing on our trust in this way?
I just keep a $5 balance available on my unlimited use card. That way even when the unlimited time limit runs out, I don't have to go and stand in line to refill my card while I miss my train.
I just put the $2.50 back on it (and renew my unlimited) as I'm leaving at my destination.
I guess for those who don't ride enough for an unlimited to be worth it are gotcha'd this way.. I ride 20 times a week, though (break-even on a 7-day card is 12 times a week; monthly is 6.4 times a week. I tend to lose my card occasionally, though, and the hurt from losing a $112 card is a LOT higher than losing a $35 card. Yes, they have a recovery system. No, I've never gotten it to actually work).
I never knew you could carry a cash balance alongside the unlimited use... This will save me from this incredible annoying situation. Thank you!
Now, just to remember to refill the 5 bucks when I run out of that...
Side note: I never really understood why they don't have MC booths _inside_ the station. My assumption is it's too costly between maintenance, and security when the machine needs to be emptied vs. how much they stand to make from it. But, ever since they introduced the credit/debit only machines, it seems like it could save people a bunch of time when they only realize _after_ they've swiped, that they are out of cash.
I've put money on an unlimited card and it doesn't work. When the card expires, swiping it merely brings up the "card expired" message and there's no way to deduct the remaining balance.
I guess my MTA experience has changed much today after all.
I wonder if there's a difference between starting out with cash vs starting out with an unlimited (when getting the card). I don't see why that would matter though.
I love the way they do it in Taipei. They have attendants at every station where you hand them your card and cash. 2 seconds later your card is updated. It's actually faster than using the machine as there's never a line.
Still fundamentally wrong. They should ask: "How many rides you wan't to buy" instead of offering an amount to load after which you have to make the math on your own.
The more insidious aspect of this are the psychological pattern of people like my parents (who belong to a different generation) that will pick the UI path that causes the least apprehension. My parents are both very intelligent people, but they struggle like many with user interfaces on machines.
Every time I am in NY to visit, there is a stack of cards waiting for me - so I will spend 20 minutes in the morning down at the train station filling each of the tickets up to a sane number.
Wait, how long has it been like this? Haven't lived in NY for a few years but they used to give you a nice round number bonus. This is the crappy kind of thing businesses do that governments should specifically not do nor need to do (trick you with dark patterns, force you to give a no interest loan/gift, etc.). And I should point out it's regressive. That $1.95 matters a lot to some people. Incredibly shitty, IMO.
I'm not convinced it is a giant ploy to screw you, I think it might be a hold over from before the last fair raise. I don't remember the bonus changing, but the fair changed.
How are you being forced to give them a no interest loan/gift?
If you add money to the card, they give you 5% extra. Good luck getting 5% out of your savings account.
If you add only $2.50 to the card, then they receive no gift. The problem is waiting in line to add $2.50 to the card before every ride, which is why nobody does that.
In NYC you can get the unlimited monthly passes with auto-refill from your CC at the end of each month. Nothing could be simpler and is a great value esp. compared with prices of anything else in high cost NYC.
It is much cheaper and easier to use than Wash DC. Also, the train frequency even at 11 PM and later is every few minutes in Manhattan. Just wish we had the Verizon WiFi access that the DC Metro has....
Yes, I was waiting for this post to touch on the value of the unlimited pass ($112 for 30 days).
If you work 20 days a month, and use the train to commute to and from the office, then you're paying $100/mo just to commute. If you take the train just 5 times outside of your daily commute per month, you start getting free rides. I don't think I ever met someone when I lived in NYC who was buying prepaid cards instead of unlimited ride cards.
The "left behind" balance on prepaid cards are the same dark pattern as every gift card in existence: the issuers bank on some (most?) balances being lost or leftover or forgotten.
> You could even write it on the back of your Metrocard if you can figure out how to get ink to stay on it.
If I want to write something on a credit card, I put some clear tape over the ink afterward.
I've never seen a MetroCard, but based on photos online, it looks like heavy paper stock with a glossy finish. So a sharpie and some clear tape should do the trick for the lifetime of the card.
I remember a similar thing when I lived in a building with it's own laundry card system. You could only put on money in increments of $5, and every wash or dry cost $1.70. The math there meant that you had to do an exact multiple of 50 loads over the lifetime of the card, or else you would wind up orphaning money.
Probably--but probably not for the reason you're implying. In both cases, it's likely just how things ended up by reason of the various paths they took to get to where they are today.
That's why here we have tickets on our cards, not money. The drawback being that a ticket for one city or zone can't be used in another one. And of course, every city's ticket bundles have different sizes, just like hot dogs and buns packages.
I have never seen the options ending in $9, does this only show up if you're paying cash? When I pay with credit card I always get $10 and $20 options. If it is only for cash users, $19.05 is a really terrible experience for someone paying with a $20.
Doesnt this $2.45 left over money make the bookkeeping more complicated for them? Because in theory someone could come back after a couple of years and refill his card so its not possible to book those $2.45 as profit.
With big enough numbers (and I assume there are a lot of these cards in circulation) it shouldn't be hard to make statistics and know exactly what percentage is never going to be claimed again.
That's the same tactic used by banks at a different scale, if everybody attempted to claim all the money in their accounts (during a bank run for instance) the whole thing would collapse, but they know it's not normally likely to happen so they keep only a fraction of the total savings available at any time.
MetroCards expire about two years after the date of sale. The balance from an expired card is still transferable (but rarely is ever transferred) for 2 more years after expiration. After that, it's fare :) game for the MTA.
Theoretically, yes, but most people don't. Most big transit agencies with passes like this have calculated unused values from transit cards as part of their budgets.
The current pricing has the potential to cut down waste.
If your metro card has zero balance, you may as well toss it out.
If you're carrying a balance, you'll refill it at one of the kiosks.
I doubt Metro can keep the money. There is an escheatment law whereby unclaimed money will need to be turned over to the state. It is a big hassle to them IMHO.
My way is far simpler: fill and refill with $50. The 5% bonus adds one $2.50 ride, for a total of 21 rides. Easy peasy, with no weird values to memorize.
You can just buy a $20 card, pay $21, get the bonus, and then add on the remainder of the next closest $2.50 block, in a second transaction, by using the "Other Amounts" option, which permits any amount greater than $1 (including change, as in $1.99). If you can't fathom the math for this, while thinking on your feet, too bad for you.
And yeah, this takes longer, and people waiting behind you might be impatient. But this is New York, so everyone else can go fuck themselves.
That's a really great example of reusing capable hardware.
The clipper card system used in the Bay Area by BART etc is technically capable of this as well, but it hasn't been implemented and probably never will :(
It's basically the same here in London; although if you're a local you're more likely to have an annual (or monthly) pass or possibly automatic top-up if you pay as you go.
Not sure that is totally fair, especially as Oyster allows you to go into negative balance over a journey as long as you have enough for the minimum fare on your card when you touch in.
I will use this next time I'm in NYC visiting, I'm frequently leaving with small dollars or change, and I end up losing the card or forgetting about it [as MTA's plan]
Most tourist probably buy unlimited ride card, fixed period, so they they dont have to worry about refills. It pays for itself if you average three rides a day.
The MTA is no doubt using the same software or maybe even the same system as the NYPD for facial recognition.
Reusing cards, or buying cards for anything other than cash, is basically like an automated license plate scanner.
Use cash, and switch cards regularly. Never give them your name or bank card to associate with their unknown record in the facial biometrics database.
I would be unsurprised to learn that this is used to get people to reuse cards in an effort to persist a unique identifier for facial matching, as the video data can be correlated with swipe logs.
I don't think this can be classified any other way than a scam. Sure, they scam you out of a couple of dollars, but they do it on a massive scale and at the expense of thousands upon thousands of people.