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.
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.