Ventra

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There was absolutely no thought made into the creation of this horrible app. First tickets are stored on your device, but you still need a connection to their servers to use those tickets. Why!? But again, they’re stored on your device, so if you upgrade your device, wipe it, or do anything outside of turn it on you have to call customer support to retrieve your tickets. Going through their site and clicking “retrieve tickets” does absolutely nothing. It’s like these idiots think your Metra ticket is the only thing you think about when using our phone. The app also asks for your password EVERYWHERE. As others have stated this has the affect of weakening security as most people (myself included) will opt for a weaker password because of these annoyances. But the biggest gripe is that we can’t move tickets seamlessly. If you’re going to require an internet connection then my login should be all I need to access ALL my tickets. At least this way I can share tickets with my wife and kids. Ridiculous that I have to call and speak with someone to move tickets around! If you’re making things more difficult to use then just plain paper, then you’re doing it WRONG!

Lost out on $15 because of this stupid app! I have two cards attached to the app because the first one I had expired and they will not let you remove any, you can only add more.. So I originally added $5 on Friday and after getting on the train I seen it said my working card was in negatives and I thought how is this possible? I just added $5. So I look and it’s showing that I added the 5 to the wrong card which I thought was weird because I never add money to the wrong card. So Monday morning I know I have to add even more because I’m in negatives from Friday. This time I make sure I’m on the correct card and add $15. It shows it it the right place so I go ahead and scan my Ventra and get on the train. While on it I get an email that my account is low.. how?? I think to myself, so I go and check the app again. Now it’s showing the $5 I put in on Friday went to the correct card and the $15 went into the other. This is when I realized the stupid app moved my funds from one card to the other. I let ventra know through email and they ask me to call them from 8-5 which is the time I’m at work so I can’t. So I basically lost $15 because of this app which is something I can NOT afford to just throw away. UPDATE: ventra closed the non-working account and place the fund back into the correct card. I guess emailing eventually worked.

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Ventra app swaps my cards randomly when it wants to, even after I’ve selected the correct card and go through the whole process to add funds, it might still put it on the wrong card. Took me a week and a half to reach somebody because their customer service hours on the phone are a 8-5 when everyone is at work with nobody on the weekends. By the time they got back to the email I had sent, I had already dug out the spare card that my money was wrongly sent to and just spent the money I had put on the other card so there was nothing to switch over. The app never shows your correct balance unless you refresh, so sometimes I don’t know I don’t have enough funds until I try tapping on the bus and embarrassingly can’t get on. The app doesn’t always load either. Or at least I used to say that, because all the issues I just listed happened when I had my old iPhone 8. Now with my new iPhone 11, the app doesn’t even load at all. We’re talking five, ten minutes of me just staring at the loading screen with no result, so I keep having to load my funds in the browser which slows me down. This app is useless. I literally cannot use it.

Being unable to remove registered CTA cards is pretty annoying. I have two on there from over a year ago with a $0 balance and they’re either lost or were thrown away, but they’re just sitting there on the app and there’s nothing I can do. No point in registering the CTA cards I guess unless you intend on keeping the card until it expires. The Metra train tracker is nice as a basic schedule, though it’s never helped with indicating late arrivals of trains. It took them a while to update the schedule to reflect the temporary new one coinciding with the COVID 19 issue, but it’s there now. Buying Metra tickets within the app is really convenient on my iPhone—it accesses the wallet feature so you can choose which of your cards you wish to use to make the purchase without having to renter all the information. Never had a problem with it, and it’s really a modern era godsend to have it after so many near or total misses of trains due to long ticket lines at stations.

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I deleted the app completely and reinstalled it because no content would load last night when trying to update my balance and pay my bus ride. I spent another 25 minutes this morning resetting my password and updating my balance. The temporary password was complicated with multiple capital letters and symbols. You have to re enter this password on almost every screen to confirm any transaction. When I finished, I received an error that the transaction wasn’t processed because I didn’t have connectivity (I was on WiFi at home). Then the app logged me out, so I had to re-enter this temporary password multiple times to do another transaction. Only for the app to tell me: error duplicate transaction. Third time I logged in I was able to change the temporary password before being logged out. I didn’t get an email confirmation about the first transaction, but the FOURTH time I logged in I was able to see an updated balance before receiving another error and being asked to log in again. At this point I’m late for work and walking to the train hoping for the best. Please get it together.