Woman gets 'clipped' when buying Clipper Card

SAN FRANCISCO Nancy Ta rides a San Francisco Muni bus to work every day, so it helps to have a Translink Card that lets her swipe and go. Her card is now called Clipper Card and it's supposed to make life easier by letting passengers use one pass to ride many transit systems, including Muni. However, there are glitches. "I got charged twice for the Clipper Card. They said that shouldn't be happening," Ta said. Her troubles started a year ago when she bought a $70 pass to ride Muni for the month of January. Then she arranged automatic payments to renew the pass each month. However, when auto payments started, Ta was charged again for the month of January. She called Translink complaining she'd paid twice for the same month. "They said it couldn't possibly be that you purchased two Muni passes for the same month, so she said it would carry over to the next month, which it didn't. So it's like those $70 got lost somewhere," Ta said. Ta sent in some documents showing she'd bought the pass at Walgreens and paid for it again on her credit card. Translink said she'd get her money back, but that didn't happen. Her Translink Card became the Clipper Card and she still didn't have her refund. "I pretty much got fed up by November, that's 11 months by November and I contacted 7 On Your Side," she said. We brought the matter to officials at Clipper, and they said it was a simple failure of customer service to act quickly. Immediately they gave Nancy a free pass for the month of November. Clipper told 7 On Your Side, Thank you and Ms. Ta for bringing this matter to our attention. We are pleased the story has a happy ending, but sincerely sorry that it took so long to get to the final chapter. Now Nancy's riding again with confidence. "It was quick and it only took two hours and they called me right away. Thank you very much seven on your side," she said.