Comments on: ORCA Card Customer Service

By: Mike E

Mike E — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:18:32 +0000

Yes, the 30 day deal only happens when you add funds on-line. There’s the 24 hour or so delay between your card being charged, and the funds becoming “pending” on your online account. That’s when you have 30 days to tap and get the “pending” funds transferred to the epurse.

If you use the Orca ticket machines to purchase funds, they do transfer on the spot. I imagine (but haven’t tested) that if you have pending funds, you could go to the ticket machine, and check your balance, and this would count as a “tap” without actually spending funds.

By: ORCA eats my OWL « Cheeto Fingers

ORCA eats my OWL « Cheeto Fingers — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:30:02 +0000

[...] have also read that ORCA deactivates your card if you don’t use it for 30 days, though I have not yet gone that long to test it. In these cases, people had trouble getting their [...]

By: ORCA Privacy - Seattle Transit Blog

ORCA Privacy - Seattle Transit Blog — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:04:48 +0000

[...] hasn’t been a particularly well-run project, and I suspect it’s partly because no one is really in charge. So it’s important [...]

By: Zed

Zed — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:30:08 +0000

Sounds like Autoload is the way to go for you. Hope it works out, I think ORCA is great, much better than messing with change and paper transfers.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:29:56 +0000

We actually have a choice of a pass or just e-purse. I ride my bike most of the time (although after our move in Feb. it’ll be less because of the ugly traffic route I’ll have to contend with). A pass wouldn’t pay for me. Whatever option you choose comes out of your check but it’s pre-tax so whatever you spend on the bus reduces your taxable income. But if I load the card myself that doesn’t apply. The 1040 would still show it as taxable income.

From the link it also looks like if you turn in the card the total value minus an administrative fee is returned to the company. They don’t separate out what was loaded by the individual. Shouldn’t be a problem though since they’d know how much was refunded for which card but the payroll and tax BS might get a bit messy. My guess is it would all get added back to taxable income so you could end up having a taxable income greater than your salary.

Oh, and it says this too:

The Cardholder must take all reasonable care to prevent an ORCA Card from being defaced, altered, damaged, lost or stolen.

So custom card graphics are a no no. I’m guessing this same stipulation applies to all cards?

The Autoload feature looks like it would work for me. If I set up a credit card it will autoload a specified amount ($5-300 in five dollar increments) and it will do that up to five times per month. The transaction doesn’t happen until the E-purse balance is insufficient to pay the fare when you tap in. That avoids the 30 day foible and would have me covered between pay periods if I end up using it more than planned.

By: Zed

Zed — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:58:36 +0000

From what I’ve read it looks like you’ll be able to manage your work-provided ORCA card yourself through the website. You should be able to add value to your e-purse yourself instead of having your company do it. Are they providing you with a monthly pass? Or just a card with e-purse funds? Here’s the ORCA Business page, maybe there’ll be answers to your questions there;

http://www.orcacard.biz/ERG-Seattle-Institution/welcome.do

By: Bernie

Bernie — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:10:52 +0000

OK, let’s see if I’ve got this now. The problem with “frozen” funds occurs only with online transactions to put money on the card. This limitation exists not just the first time you activate your car put for all on line transactions. Although, it shouldn’t be a big deal since you’d have no reason to load funds unless you plan to use the car.

So the question I have now is how are payroll deductions handled? Are they the same as an on line transaction? That would be more of a problem since you might not know how much you’re going to use the card or use it at all. Plus, making constant changes every pay period is a pain for both the user and for administration. It would be nice to come up with some average amount that feeds the card even over the summer where I wouldn’t likely use it at all. Or, if I’m able to access the card like a normal epurse I can just use the online payment for managing the balance. You lose the tax saving of having it pulled out directly but for me that’s not going to be a big amount.

By: Zed

Zed — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:11:51 +0000

litlnemo’s right. The only time you have to worry about a time limit is when adding funds to your card online. Once you add funds using the online system your card must be tapped at a reader within 30 days to complete the transaction and transfer the funds to your card. If you don’t do this your funds will still be held in an account, but you’ll have to call customer service to get them transferred to your card.

I usually don’t bother with the online system and add funds using a TVM. If you use a TVM your funds will be added to your card immediately. I know there aren’t any TVMs on the Eastside, but I heard that pretty soon you’ll be able to buy and service ORCA cards at places like Bartell’s.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:33:17 +0000

That’s good news indeed. It seems that it would be to the advantage of the system to have lots of stored money sitting inactive. They don’t have to send out a monthly statement so anything stored on an epurse is in effect an interest free loan. I’ll sign up at work and just make sure my balance isn’t so much that if it get’s frozen I’m out a big deal. Hopefully once I get the card I can find a way to load money other than payroll. Weird system.

By: Martin H. Duke

Martin H. Duke — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:24:53 +0000

Bernie,

litlnemo is correct. The key is to use it once, although software is software and someone may have a counter-example.

By: Oran Viriyincy

Oran Viriyincy — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:45:29 +0000

What’s the 30 day deal? Does that only happen when you add value to it online?

I never had problems with it when I do everything in person. If you want a card for guests just go to a ticket machine and get a free card loaded with $5. Get two. You have instant gratification and avoid that poorly designed website (that needs to be fixed). Of course I commute downtown everyday so doing it online is more trouble than it’s worth.

Here’s a workaround to avoid the online problems for infrequent users.

First, if you don’t already have a card, order one online. Then load the minimum $5 and set up an Autoload on your card. Wait at least 24 hours and go to a Link or Sounder station, tap in, wait a few seconds, and tap out to cancel the trip (no charge to you). If getting to a station is inconvenient, board a bus once. That should add the $5 and Autoload to your card. That’s it. Funds added to your card with Autoload don’t expire after 30 days. I can confirm that. The last time I used my ORCA card was more than a month ago (I use my employer provided PugetPass) and my money is still there.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:35:18 +0000

That’s a big question! If it’s true you just have to load and use within 30 days and then it’ll sit inactive but ready to use forever I’m good with that. If I have to use it once a month then that’s a deal breaker. The deal through work is I have to assign an amount to be deducted from my check every pay period. I don’t want that to go into a sink hole during the summer that I can’t recover. Could they possibly have made this any harder?

By: litlnemo

litlnemo — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:28:53 +0000

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the 30 day expiration only happened if you didn’t tap the card on a reader within 30 days after loading, but if you do, then the rest of the total does not expire. So you load the card, tap within 30 days, then your balance will not go away even if you don’t use a bus for 6 weeks. That is how I understand it to work. So don’t load the card more than 30 days before first use and it should work OK.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:59:46 +0000

That’s true. If they offer you a refund then you have no basis for a chargeback. You can choose to not do business with them but you can’t use a chargeback to change their business model.

This 30 day thing is a deal breaker for me. I want to get an ORCA card through work. The company is moving and although I ride my bike now about 95% of the time I anticipate that at the new location I’ll use a combination bike/bus/drive/bum-a-ride during the winter. But during the spring/summer/fall I could easily see a month not using the bus. If they can’t sort this out and cash is a hassle then I’ll just drive the day’s I don’t want to bike.

I also want to get an ORCA card for out of town visitors. The 30 day deal puts the kibash on that too.

By: litlnemo

litlnemo — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:31:10 +0000

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just take the refund. When the retailer is giving you a refund, it isn’t really appropriate to do a chargeback. They are trying to give your money back.

By: litlnemo

litlnemo — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:29:55 +0000

Well, that would not be cool, so I hope they don’t listen to your recommendation.

On the other hand, if ORCA is violating their merchant agreement with Visa (which seems possible) I do hope Visa has some words with them and forces them to follow the agreement. But it would be very much NOT good for ORCA not to take Visa.

By: Bruce Burger

Bruce Burger — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:57:19 +0000

To their credit, Sound Transit just called me to try to fix the problem — but all they can do is either put all the funds on my card (which I don’t want — I made 3 deposits because I thought the first two deposits hadn’t gone through) or cancel the card and send a refund. Not wanting either of those outcomes, I told them I would pursue the chargeback approach. I explained that their goal of increasing the time period to use the card before it expires to 60 days instead of 30 days would be only a modest help; they should instead assume that if you put money on your card, you intend to use it. She sounded sympathetic but not optimistic that this will happen soon. (I am hoping the attorney general will insist otherwise.)

By: Bruce Burger

Bruce Burger — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:14:19 +0000

Good idea — I just initiated a chargeback with Visa. I also recommended that Visa terminate their relationship with ORCA due to deceptive and unlawful practices.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:09:42 +0000

If you paided with a credit card initiate a charge back proceeding. After a few hundered of these, which include a hefty processing fee charged to the merchant, this problem might get fixed.

By: Bruce Burger

Bruce Burger — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:57:18 +0000

Let’s be clear — they are NOT cancelling deposits, since they still keep the money they took from your credit card. They are just stealing it from you if you don’t start using it within 30 days. And there are many occasional riders — like me — who want to keep an ORCA card but may not use it for a month after adding funds.

I assumed 2 transactions hadn’t gone through for some reason and added more. Now they say I have to put all the funds on my card or request a refund in person and pay a processing fee for the refund.

If a bank “expired” deposits because they weren’t used for 30 days, that would be considered a criminal act. So is this. I have filed a complaint with the attorney general. I also may try suing in small claims court — I’d love to hear an ORCA lawyer try to defend this practice.