Subway and bus riders are fuming over OMNY glitches that billed them late, stored them from tapping via turnstiles — and has them enduring prolonged waits for customer support on the MTA’s new fare-payment system.
Commuters have been caught off-guard in latest weeks by bugs that, in some instances, have prices exhibiting up days late on financial institution statements and, in some instances, creating bother whereas tapping.
Vanessa Campos, 28, informed THE CITY that she was charged 18 instances between Monday and Tuesday regardless of simply taking a pair of spherical journeys between her dwelling station in The Bronx and her job in Manhattan.
The tip-off, she stated, was her telephone repeatedly vibrating after she tapped in on Monday morning on the Kingsbridge Highway station to take the D practice to a hundred and twenty fifth Avenue.
“It just kept buzzing, back to back, back to back and I’m like, ‘Ok, it’s not a text message, it’s not a call,’ and it was just a bunch of transactions,’” Campos stated. “So when I went on my bank app, I saw 12 transactions from yesterday and this morning, I tapped it once and got charged for six trips.”
However MTA officers insist riders aren’t being charged for journeys they didn’t take and as a substitute pinned the problem on bugs that they are saying can be labored out — by the top of this yr.
That’s when the MetroCard goes the way in which of the token and is changed by the tap-and-go fare-payment system now utilized by two-thirds of all New York Metropolis Transit riders.
The bugs can embody delays in processing bank-card funds, which then present up in bulk on financial institution statements.
“We have not seen anybody overcharged,” stated John McCarthy, MTA chief of coverage and exterior relations, informed THE CITY Tuesday night on a joint name with Jessie Lazarus, the transit company’s deputy chief of business ventures. “What we’re seeing is delayed charges and then they come in a cluster.”
Lazarus stated that ongoing upgrades to OMNY’s software program may present up all through the summer season, resulting in delays in processing.
The MTA’s purpose, she stated, is to make the OMNY system “bulletproof” by the point the company sunsets the MetroCard and strikes to full tap-and-go. However she acknowledged that riders might typically encounter slowdowns in $2.90-per-trip faucets being processed if there are software program points.
“Our goal and our North Star is kind of instant [payment] settlement,” Lazarus stated.
The commuter anger over prices marks one other chapter within the sluggish transition from to OMNY from MetroCard, which itself started changing the token in 1994.
A commuter speaks to an MTA customer support employee on the Fulton Avenue Transit Heart, Could 20, 2025. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
On social media, riders grumbled about fee for journeys exhibiting up whereas they have been out of state, over being locked out for weeks from utilizing pre-tax advantages playing cards that enable entry to the transit system and of failing to hook up with OMNY customer-service representatives via its telephone line and on-line portal.
A number of folks stated the customer support line routinely stated there have been over 100 folks ready to be helped forward of them.
“When I call customer service, my calls are repeatedly dropped,” one rider posted to X.
Chelsea Corridor, who commutes between Elmhurst and Hudson Yards on the No. 7 line, informed THE CITY that her makes an attempt to get solutions on why her pre-tax advantages card was repeatedly declined yielded nothing.
Based on the MTA, pre-tax profit playing cards issued by a 3rd occasion are additionally dealing with comparable software program points.
In an try and ease rider issues, the MTA on Tuesday night posted a discover on its app and its web site warning of “tap-and-go processing delays,” and noting, “Rest assured you’re not being overcharged.”
The shift to tap-and-go know-how has been stricken by quite a few issues, together with software program points that slowed its debut and never but being out there to be used on Metro-North and the Lengthy Island Rail Highway.
Dad and mom of schoolchildren have additionally lodged quite a few complaints about their OMNY playing cards, as Chalkbeat reported in February and March.
MTA officers insist the kinks can be ironed out in time for the total shift to OMNY.
“This is our system adding capacity and becoming scalable so that by the time we get to MetroCard sunset in January 2026, we’re good to go,” Lazarus stated.
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