Dear MTA,
Today I was with my daughter at the Grand Street subway station. I had to refill my Metrocard because it only had $1.25 on it. As you know, it costs more than that to ride the subway these days, and that ride is not worth more than a dime if you ask me. I know you haven’t asked me, but I’m telling you anyway.
Anyhow, I inserted my Metrocard into the vending machine because all I had with me was my debit card in terms of funding for this expenditure. Well, as soon as the Metrocard entered the machine it got stuck! I was extremely surprised as that has never occurred in my entire native New Yorker life.
So I did what any reasonable human being would do under these circumstances, I went up to the token booth (yes I still call it that even though we’ve moved on to Metrocards) and asked the woman sitting in the booth:
“Hi, my Metrocard is stuck in the machine, what do I do?”
“Did you get a receipt?” She asked.
“No, because it’s stuck in there and the screen is frozen.”
“Here’s an envelope. Send your card to this address so you can get reimbursed.”
“Well I would do that except my Metrocard is actually stuck in the machine and now I have to pay an extra dollar to buy a new Metrocard.”
The woman just stared at me. Samara ran away towards the Metrocard vending machine.
I didn’t want to pay an extra dollar to get a new Metrocard when there was a perfectly good one stuck in the machine.
Now you may be thinking “So what? It’s only a dollar!” But it’s the principle of the whole thing.
What’s the deal MTA. Why are you charging one dollar for new cards? Service has gotten worse and the train still smells bad.