Dag, Strippenkaart!

(This post was originally intended to be published February 3.)

Don't get me started.

The Dutch like to make things complicated, in the name of efficiency. They devised many years ago the strippenkaart, an ingenious system to standardize payment for public transit throughout the country - but which proved to be, at the same time, both impossible to decipher and easy to cheat.

Since before our arrival last fall, the Dutch have been slowly easing the strippenkaart out, to be replaced with a nation-wide stored-value card (like the Charlie card in Boston, or the SmartTrip card in DC). But unlike the Charlie and SmartTrip cards, the people who designed the OV Chipkaart wanted it all: something that would work on all public transit throughout the country, but that would also charge you per kilometer. Thus you have to tap your OV Chipkaart whenever you get on or off a bus or tram. If you mess up, your punishment is a 4 euro charge. If the machine messes up, your punishment is a 4 euro charge. One of these two scenarios happens surprisingly often.

Take me as an example. Granted, I am not Dutch, nor do I speak Dutch. But I am an intelligent, educated, and careful person who has successfully used stored-value cards in myriad metropolitan transit systems. (Update: On a recent trip to London, my use of the Oyster card was flawless.) I would venture to say that the problem is not me. But in a two-day period last November, between the REM subway in Rotterdam and the HTM trams in Den Haag, Jeff and I managed to lose 16 euros. Now this is where the exasperating part comes in.

Whatever the cause of an OV Chipkaart mess-up, if you want your money back, you have to apply for it. I have now long surpassed the time-for-money value ratio for our 16 euros, but it's become a matter of principle. With HTM, it took standing in line, 30 minutes with a Dutch form and six weeks for them to refund 3.30 euros out of the 4 euros they owed me. (And for the record, that was a clear machine mess up.)

For Rotterdam - oh, Rotterdam - I waited in two separate lines, spent more than 30 minutes deciphering a Dutch web form, then waited two months to no avail. When I finally made it back to Rotterdam in person, a nice lady explained that of course I couldn't use the online application form (don't ask me why) and gave me paper applications - which she partially filled out for me - that I submitted the very next day. Four weeks later, still nothing.

I also don't understand how tourists are supposed to use public transportation anymore, since (1) the stored-value cards cost 7.50 euros (yes, please let me pay you for the privilege of having you take my money and refuse to give it back), and (2) if you ever do succeed in convincing them to give you your money back, they will only refund it to a Dutch bank account.

I am so scarred by this experience that I have not used my OV chipkaart for three months. I have gotten by by reverting to the good ol' reliable strippenkaart. But the strippenkaart was phased out of the Hague area on February 3. (Why February 3, a Thursday? I don't know, and I also don't know why they ended up extending the deadline anyway. What can I say, it's Dutch.)

Oh, strippenkaart - how I will miss you. For now, I will have to await the popular uprising against the OV-chipkaart.

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Update: On March 30 - 144 days after our fateful visit to Rotterdam last November (but who's counting) - the Rotterdam metro refunded 9.66 of the wrongly deducted 12 euros to our bank account. Whatever, I'll take even partial victory at this point.

I celebrated by promptly forgetting to "check out" the next time I took the tram - at the cost of another 4 euros. Sigh.