Photo by raider3_anime
Update (2:44 p.m.): SF Appeal has a article up explaining how Clipper is blaming all these sundry errors on a “software glitch.” Windows 98, anyone?
Update (10:27 a.m.): The Clipper website appears to be working again. The cards mentioned in the original post below, well, we’ll get back to you on that.
Update (9:12 a.m.): As of this moment, the Clipper website … wait for it, is down. We’ll update this update as soon as we confirm that it works again. If that happens.
Original post:
Today was the first day for hella new Clipper cardholders. Many of them thought they had loaded their monthly passes onto their card via WageWorks, a commuter-benefit management company, or something like that. But boy, were they wrong.
Basically, the way WageWorks works: Your company offers you a pre-tax savings on your monthly pass, and hires WageWorks to manage the procurement and delivery of that pass to you. Used to be, they’d mail you your Fast Pass a week or so before the beginning of the next month. All was dandy.
Enter Clipper.
In an attempt to get ahead of the inevitable passing of the paper Fast Pass, WageWorks told its clients that rather than waiting until November (the first month without a paper “A” pass), they would have employees get Clipper cards now, and load their August passes onto them. WageWorks asked employees to get cards and to then, via WageWorks website, to register their Clipper cards and indicate the preference for a monthly pass. Oh, wouldn’t it be nice …
The ever-diligent Akit has an account of, well, the way things went down today. The point: People boarding BART and Muni thinking their passes were loaded on their newish Clipper cards were in for quite a shock.
SO! All you WageWorks workers/Clipper cardholders out there, hang onto any receipts from money you might have to spend on transit. If you had set your pass to load onto your Clipper card and then find yourself getting charged to ride, something is wrong. Very wrong.
Also, the cynic in me will need to wait and see whether those Clipper reimbursements actually happen, not to mention within the company’s promised seven (7) business days.
