On 12 Dec, 17:14, Roland Perry wrote:

So the money does expire, and quite quickly too!

I suppose it depeds on how you define 'quickly'

As a tourist, I have a Metrocard I used for about three days in 2004.
Any balance is now toast.

I believe that is the case, though I'm not certain if there is any way
to recover the outstanding balance on a Metrocard which has expired
too long ago to be able to transfer it to a new card at a Subway
station, e.g. by posting it to the MTA offices, but I don't think so.

The last Pay-per-ride Metrocard I bought, on about the 8th or 9th of
May this year, expires on the 31st of May 2009, so it could be used
for just over a year, and then any outstanding balance could still be
recovered for, I think, two years after that. For a typical New
Yorker this would not be a problem; they would be unlikely to keep a
card which had expired, and was therefore unusable, for over two
years, and then try to transfer the balance left on it. For the likes
of you and I, who make occasional visits to New York it may be more of
a problem, but I would think that most of us would avoid topping up
the card with much more value than we were going to use on that visit,
unless we knew that we would be returning soon. I've never done a
transfer from an expired card, and didn't even know it was possible
until quite recently. I've probably lost the odd Dollar or two on
some of the cards I've bought, but no more than that.

The situation with the PATH Quickcard is rather different; it expires
after just 180 days, less than six months, and any remaining rides
will not be refunded or transferred. I suppose this stops somebody
buying a large number of rides just before fare increase, and using
them for a long time afterwards, therefore getting reduced price
travel, since Quickcards store a number of rides not a value, but
since they are likely to be totally withdrawn soon it probably won't
matter for much longer. Also, fare increases seem to be much less
frequent there than they are here; the Subway and PATH have each seen
just one rise since my first visit in April 2002, though those rises
were large, from $1.50 on both to $2 on the Subway and $1.75 on PATH.

A few months ago I read a debate, by a group of New Yorkers about how
much they should top up on their card so that amount, plus the bonus,
equaled an exact number of rides; it seems that a recent reduction in
the amount of the bonus has made this more difficult than it used to
be. I just couldn't understand this, what difference did it make
whether they had an exact number of rides worth on the card or not? I
asked about this and they seemed to think I was quite stupid to not
see a problem with having an 'unusable' amount, less than one ride,
left on the card. I still can't see what the problem is; when yo next
top up the amount is added to this small remaining amount, you don't
lose it.