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Comment by knorker | Hacker News Reader

A metrocard machine once just ate a $20 from me, and then gave me an error message saying it was unable to charge by card, or hand back the $20.

And if I wanted my $20 back then I should send a letter to some address.

I did, but I guess they just saw "oh, doesn't even live in NYC. Fuck him, and thanks for the free $20".

I'm still bitter.

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That happened a lot. Even worse, you'd buy a metro card, lose it, and find it only after it's expired. Why they would expire I don't know. Once it's expired it no longer works. You could mail it back to them and ask for a refund, but seeing as you aren't sure how much money was on the card, most people just ate the loss.

I for one, am not sad to see this whole thing go away.

As someone who traveled to NY for work just-often-enough for my MetroCards to be constantly expiring, this felt like an intentional grift to fleece visitors.

It’s perfectly incentivized to never be fixed.

Really? In my memory the cards last for 2 years. I've got one I got last year that will work until 2023. That seems like a fairly reasonable amount of time for a paper card to last for. I don't live there, but I regularly get 2-3 uses out of my $1 metro card before it expires.

If you're in from out of town, why are you leaving a ton of money on your card and/or not buying the $33 unlimited pass for 7 days that essentially pays for itself if you take a single trip each day? There's no minimum value you have to put on it either, so you can just put $5 on before every round trip or such and worst case you're out $2.50 if it expires before you use the return trip if you're trying to be that cautious.

I've got my issues with the MTA, but it seems far from an intentional grift.

If it's expired for less than one year, you can transfer the balance using a Metrocard machine or by asking any station agent. If it's less than two years expired, you can ask a station agent for an envelope so you don't pay anything and they'll mail you a new card with the balance. Have done this a few times with old cards– they'll even combine the balances onto one if you ask.

An expired Metrocard does not forfeit the value. You can put it into a machine and it will issue a new one with the balance rolled over.

They expire quickly (12-18 months) because the magnetic stripe wears out quickly.

> Why they would expire I don't know.

I have a (not directly) related hypothesis I heard stated once about vouchers and bonus programs once.

If the operator takes your $20 to buy a metro card, they made $20 of income. The $20 of "value" the card now holds is accounted for.

Assuming a metro card never expires would means that the operator would have to account for this value to be in existence for perpetuity.

If 1% of metro cards never expired but still had 20$ on them, there would be an ever-growing amount of money-to-be-accounted-for which (I've been told) is a bit of a nightmare since it's technically a liquidity, but obviously unavailable to the company.

It's obviously shitty for the customer, but there's seemingly some sort of (tax/business) logic behind it.

It would be available with some risk management. If you prepay something (meal tickets, gift cards, etc.) that becomes a current liability to the company. On use or expiration, income is credited and the liability is debited.

The company can spend the cash as they see fit but if the item is refundable or use of the item incurs costs, they need some cash on hand to handle people digging up old cards and using/refunding them.

> The company can spend the cash as they see fit but if the item is refundable or use of the item incurs costs, they need some cash on hand to handle people digging up old cards and using/refunding them.

Right, and if you're heavily investing, you would want to minimize the necessary cash on hand.

I remember hearing that's why a supermarket had a scheme recently where they would redeem (virtual) bonus points for a rebate directly applicable to your purchase (as opposed to accumulating until some arbitrary limit before that would happen) - simply so the company could figure out what percentage of people would take that chance to redeem the points.

In the US, discounts applied to taxable items reduce the sales tax. If you're given a credit instead, it's applied after the sales tax. If a store gives you $5 non-refundable credit, they end up paying some sales tax for you. If they give you a $5 coupon, then the whole amount can be applied to a subtotal before tax.

However, the coupon has no accounting value beyond its $0.0001 face value.

I'm sure there are even more oddities and complications a tax accountant can mention that I'm not even aware of.

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