Originally Posted by
eng3
Ah yes, I forgot about registering. In that case, I would think that losing a ventra card is probably less of a headache than losing a credit card or having the number stolen.
Perhaps; but honestly, I think most people just want their $5 card purchase fee back to use as transit value.
Originally Posted by
eng3
And I assume ventra has some sort of auto-replenish feature so I guess you don't need to remember to reload.
Yep, they do. That's good for them, because they get to earn interest on that money instead of us. If using a credit card to auto-replenish, it's also easy to forget to update it when you get a new credit card, meaning it's been more than once that I've seen someone frantically fumbling around last minute on Metra, trying to buy their train ticket, as the conductor is standing over them waiting. I usually make sure I have enough loaded before getting on the train, then I only purchase the ticket once actually on the train; although this isn't perfect either (see below.) Nonetheless, I suspect this is a game that some intentionally play, because not only have I seen conductors fail to check tickets period, but I've also seen them say they'll come back to someone having trouble with the app then never do, meaning that person gets a free ride.
Originally Posted by
eng3
Yes, I did use the ventra app on Metra and I did find it un-intuitive.
It's not well designed. In addition to any issues around being unintuitive, it's also buggy. For a long while, the Android version would crash the first time it was opened every day, then it would be fine the second time it was opened. Reinstalling and rebooting didn't resolve the issue. Lots of people had this problem. Didn't get much useful support by contacting Ventra either.