The Chronicle‘s Rad Sallee runs a sad story from a METRO patron who missed the transit organization’s deadline for moving balances from the old stored value card to the Q card:
Karen Clark had a busy lunch hour on March 31, including a birthday and a doctor’s appointment, so she put off a trip to a Metropolitan Transit Authority RideStore.
Unfortunately for her, it was the the last day that balances remaining on her stored-value fare cards from Metro could be transferred to a new Q Card.
The next morning, April Fools’ Day, Clark received the traditional unpleasant surprise. After standing in line 45 minutes in the RideStore at 1001 Travis, she was told the transfer deadline had passed.
Three of her old cards, with a total of about $200 on them, had become as worthless as Cinderella’s coach at midnight.
[The incident] raises an interesting legal question: When Metro sold the old cards, wasn’t that an implicit promise to honor them until their balances were exhausted?
[snip]
We asked University of Houston law professor Richard Alderman, who specializes in consumer issues. This one, he said, is: “What were the terms of the contract when the cards were sold?”
Alderman said Clark may be out of luck “if there was something that said they were subject to change in X days’ notice or expired at a certain time.
“But if people were led to believe they could use these for a reasonable period of time, such as six months or a year, then Metro could be in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act,” he said. “Texas is a state where the fine print matters a lot.”
Clark, who still has her old card, fished it out of her purse and read the fine print.
“This card is valid for payment of the base fare on all fixed route service until the value is used up,” it reads.
The cutoff did seem a bit abrupt, even though METRO was forthcoming about it.
Here’s an interesting question that the intrepid local media might want to investigate via public information request: Just how much money did METRO make from abandoned balances on the old stored value cards?
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