Subway and bus riders are fuming over OMNY glitches that billed them late, kept them from tapping through turnstiles — and has them enduring lengthy waits for customer service on the MTA’s new fare-payment system.
Commuters have been caught off-guard in recent weeks by bugs that, in some cases, have charges showing up days late on bank statements and, in some cases, creating trouble while tapping.
Vanessa Campos, 28, told THE CITY that she was charged 18 times between Monday and Tuesday despite just taking a pair of round trips between her home station in The Bronx and her job in Manhattan.
The tip-off, she said, was her phone repeatedly vibrating after she tapped in on Monday morning at the Kingsbridge Road station to take the D train to 125th Street.
“It just kept buzzing, back to back, back to back and I’m like, ‘Ok, it’s not a text message, it’s not a call,’ and it was just a bunch of transactions,’” Campos said. “So when I went on my bank app, I saw 12 transactions from yesterday and this morning, I tapped it once and got charged for six trips.”
But MTA officials insist riders are not being charged for trips they didn’t take and instead pinned the issue on bugs that they say will be worked out — by the end of this year.
That’s when the MetroCard goes the way of the token and is replaced by the tap-and-go fare-payment system now used by two-thirds of all New York City Transit riders.
The bugs can include delays in processing bank-card payments, which then show up in bulk on bank statements.
“We have not seen anybody overcharged,” said John McCarthy, MTA chief of policy and external relations, told THE CITY Tuesday evening on a joint call with Jessie Lazarus, the transit agency’s deputy chief of commercial ventures. “What we’re seeing is delayed charges and then they come in a cluster.”
Lazarus said that ongoing upgrades to OMNY’s software could show up throughout the summer, leading to delays in processing.
The MTA’s aim, she said, is to make the OMNY system “bulletproof” by the time the agency sunsets the MetroCard and moves to full tap-and-go. But she acknowledged that riders may sometimes encounter slowdowns in $2.90-per-trip taps being processed if there are software issues.
“Our goal and our North Star is kind of instant [payment] settlement,” Lazarus said.
The commuter anger over charges marks another chapter in the sluggish transition from to OMNY from MetroCard, which itself began replacing the token in 1994.
A commuter speaks to an MTA customer service worker at the Fulton Street Transit Center, May 20, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
On social media, riders grumbled about payment for trips showing up while they were out of state, over being locked out for weeks from using pre-tax benefits cards that allow access to the transit system and of failing to connect to OMNY customer-service representatives through its phone line and online portal.
Several people said the customer service line routinely said there were over 100 people waiting to be helped ahead of them.
“When I call customer service, my calls are repeatedly dropped,” one rider posted to X.
Chelsea Hall, who commutes between Elmhurst and Hudson Yards on the No. 7 line, told THE CITY that her attempts to get answers on why her pre-tax benefits card was repeatedly declined yielded nothing.
“It seems like a mess, especially since I tried to reach out to customer service and I still haven’t heard back from them over email,” Hall, 33, said. “Using the train and the bus here is the only way that most people get around, so to have to add on an extra five or 10 minutes to your commute to buy another fare card is an inconvenience and a waste of time.”
According to the MTA, pre-tax benefit cards issued by a third party are also facing similar software issues.
In an attempt to ease rider concerns, the MTA on Tuesday evening posted a notice on its app and its website warning of “tap-and-go processing delays,” and noting, “Rest assured you’re not being overcharged.”
The shift to tap-and-go technology has been plagued by numerous problems, including software issues that slowed its debut and not yet being available for use on Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road.
Parents of schoolchildren have also lodged numerous complaints about their OMNY cards, as Chalkbeat reported in February and March.
MTA officials insist the kinks will be ironed out in time for the full shift to OMNY.
“This is our system adding capacity and becoming scalable so that by the time we get to MetroCard sunset in January 2026, we’re good to go,” Lazarus said.
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