MTA Contractor Scrambles to Refund Fake Charges After OMNY ‘Upgrade’ Goes Awry

A fare payment glitch locked countless commuters out of the MTA's tap-and-pay OMNY system and saddled them with false bulk charges after a July 13 software update went awry, officials said.

The snafu happened after OMNY contractor Cubic conducted a planned overhaul of its software, the firm said. Many riders only noticed the issue when OMNY fare readers rejected their attempts to enter the system.

"I couldn’t get into turnstiles or onto buses or anything. It just kept going red," said Moni Hendrix, a Brooklyn commuter.

Neither the MTA nor Cubic revealed how many people were affected by the snag. Wait times swelled to more than 100 people deep on OMNY's customer help line on Monday, as riders sought to get the incorrect charges refunded.

"We are aware some OMNY accounts have experienced inaccurate charges impacting balance or account status in the week following," Cubic's General Manager for the region Christian Henry said in a statement to Streetsblog. "Some customer issues have been resolved and we are currently working to resolve the remainder within the coming days — including the automatic issuance of refunds where appropriate."

The global meltdown by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike also temporarily disrupted Cubic's ability to service people calling the phone help line, according to the company. The fare flop, however, was not due to the larger tech outage that disrupted computers across the globe, according to MTA officials.

"This error occurred during a major system upgrade performed by Cubic, an external vendor," said MTA spokesperson Kayla Shults. "We are working with the vendor to quickly resolve any remaining customer issues, including the automatic issuance of refunds where necessary."

It's not the MTA's first issue with Cubic, which has faced scrutiny after failing to deliver on OMNY's promised unified fare payment system on time.

Transit officials recently demoted Cubic and handed commuter railroad fare payments to a different company, after several missed deadlines and budgetary changes amid heavy turnover at the company as well as the MTA in recent years.

Riders faced with fake charges and locked out of the system said the saga undermined their confidence in MTA fare collections. Several received emails over the last week telling them their OMNY card was suspended due to unpaid balances on their accounts, which usually amounted to less than $10.

"It said 'suspended' and you have to pay this $2.90 before your card can get unsuspended," recalled Hendrix.

Some commuters received multiple fare charges on days they didn't travel before their cards deactivated. Affected riders also couldn't cross-check the trip payments, because the MTA has disabled a ride history feature since last year over privacy concerns.

"This has been a week, this is pretty bad," said Rebecca Baird-Remba, a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist who has not been able to get her card to work for fares since she got her first email about the suspension a week ago, despite her calling the customer service line three times for help.

"This is ... a pretty shocking technical glitch that has affected, I would assume, thousands of people," Baird-Remba said. "I would love to see them acknowledge it and take it seriously and say this is not going to happen again."

One rider whose transit pass was also cut off speculated that the bulk payment requests might have triggered fraud alerts within the system.

"Maybe because it posted so many transactions that were the same amount at once, that may have triggered my credit card to be declined," said Sunny Ng. "I’ve worked in e-commerce and I know that banks don’t like if there’s multiple of the same transactions."