I was in San Francisco this week, and tried to use my Clipper smart
card on the BART train from the airport. Faregate said see attendant,
attendant's terminal said BLOCKED. Sorry, said the attendant, you'll
have to buy a separate ticket and call the service center when it's
open tomorrow morning.

When I called the service center, they could see that my card had been
blocked due to my card company changing the card number, but they
could also see that I'd given them the new valid card number so it
should work. The Clipper seems to work like Oyster, the updates are
downloaded from the central computer to the faregates, and are loaded
onto your card the next time you tap it. Tap it today, it should
work. Tried it on an addfare machine, BLOCKED. Grr. Called them
again, hmmn, we pushed it out, should be OK tomorrow.

The problem, I think, is that I only use the card for a week every
three or four months when I have a meeting in San Francisco, so it had
been about two months since they emailed me about the card problem and
I'd fixed it, so whatever they loaded into the faregates had timed out.

The day after that, it finally worked, but what a pain. The day after
that, for the first time I can remember, they did a ticket check on a
Muni streetcar, guy with a handheld reader and a display that said YES
or NO in large letters when it tapped your card. Lucky my card was
unblocked.


--
Regards,
John Levine, , Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly