MetroCard Mail-In

It worked!

Do you have old pay-per-ride MetroCards in your wallet?

I don't find that the cost of the monthly MetroCard works out for me (As I said here, one has to use the $112 card 48 times just to break even, so if she takes a day or two off from work in a month, it may not be worth it.) So, I buy the pay-per-ride cards.

A few months ago, I realized a had a few expired cards in a drawer, and thought it would be wise to transfer the balances. Three of my four cards had been expired for over a year, and had small balances on them. The forth was an old monthly card, and that one was just a loss -- I didn't activated it in time, and now I cannot use it.

At a subway booth, I asked for a couple envelopes to mail off my old cards. I filled them out, and sent them in back in August... and didn't hold my breath to get anything back. I don't have a huge amount of faith in mailing something out and getting money back, but since it took just a few minutes to fill out the forms (postage is free), it was worth giving it a try.

Well, yesterday I got back new MetroCards with my balances! My $8.48 is now on my current card, and while it's just three rides, that's three more rides than I was getting before. If you have any old cards sitting around, it's worth mailing them in -- otherwise it's just useless cash in your drawer.