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Wednesday, July 20, 2011

This Crazy Train's Presto Chronicles, Chapter 8: Voodoo

I checked my Presto balance online today. Saw something interesting ...

Apparently on July 15, somehow, despite taking the 5:20 pm train from Union, I managed to tap my card at Danforth Station at 8:20 pm for a Card Query. I live in Clarington, sixty some-odd kilometres away from the Danforth GO Station. True, I could have gotten off the train when it arrived in Oshawa, gotten in my car and drove over to Danforth Station for a card query and then, hopped in my car for the hour ride back. But I didn't.

See for yourself (click to enlarge):


Voodoo. No wait, ghosts in the machine! Crossed wires? Bad programming. How about we just get this fixed, m'kay? I called GO Customer Care, cracked some jokes, got some possible theories, such as my card got scanned as I was passing by on the train ...tickets were checked ... Impossible, I said. I was on the 5:20. Just a communications error? Yeah, it happens.

All the more reason to trust technology, you say! No, really. I can tell you from experience that strange sh-t goes down with technology.

Now I just need to figure out why my Presto card is cheating on me.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

You do realize that it just means a "ticket checker" person scanned your presto card during the trip right? :) It just proves that you were checked and had a valid ticket for that trip while on the train.

Anonymous said...

To follow up... don't be stuck on the timing of the "card query" lines... since it's a non-financial transaction it doesn't update in the system with the same priority as financial transactions, thus sometimes resulting in "inaccurate" times.

Squiggles said...

For some reason I thought you had given up on PRESTO and went back to the paper passes.

C.J. Smith said...

I can't recall having passes or tickets being checked on Friday night.
In fact, I'm sure of it. But I do recall there was ticket checking at some point last week ... Thursday? So that makes sense. Thank you.

@Squiggles
Presto and I are like bad lovers.

Uncle said...

Doesn't the 5:20 stop at Danforth and Scarborough??? You could have got off to do and quick scan and jumped back on before the doors closed.......
or you could have clung to the side of the train while it was enroute to Scarborough.....then swung back through the doors and sat down just like nothing happened.....

yeah, either one of those is completely plausible to me....

lswgirl13 said...

Really though, you gotta check your card history from time to time, I do it probaly twice a month. My card was doing wacky things last Fall and one of customer services brilliant theories was that my card somehow had an "overactive" superhero chip and was scanning if I was in the general vicinity of the machine. Yeah, right.

C.J. Smith said...

Makes me wanna draw a Superman cape on a Presto card.

Anonymous said...

Your card must be sneaking out when you're not using it and secretly riding with another passenger! Your card is cheating on you!

C.J. Smith said...

I know! Whore.

Anonymous said...

Another reason not to use the presto.. its technology is ghetto and not safe. Thats why other cities stopped using it!

Chris (Brampton) said...

There's a card query on mine from exactly the time it was checked by an inspector last week. Not technology gone wonky, just something you don't normally expect to see.