Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Putting small amount tickets to good use!

I may be the last BART commuter to learn about this, but better late than never! For quite some time, I've seen the scrolling screens on the platforms mentioning organizations that take unused small amount tickets as donation, but have not remembered to look into it further. I've been saving my small amount tickets for a long time in an envelope and I would guess, by now, they add up to over $50. BART stores don't take these small amount tickets (under a certain amount, I forgot exactly how much) and I just didn't take the time find out what else I needed to do to turn that change into a larger amount ticket. Thus, the tickets have just been sitting there in my drawer.

Today, I was reminded again by the scrolling bulletin about donating small amount tickets to organizations. I researched on the Internet and learned that there are actually quite a few places that take small amount tickets as donation. For example, Project Second Chance, Homeless Prenatal Program, Genard AIDS Foundation to name a few.

I'm sure many of you already knew about this and have been donating for years, but I'm glad that I finally learned of it and can put the huge stack of unused small amount tickets to good use.

If this is the first time you've heard of it, better late than never!

6 comments:

Josh said...

You could also try what I do. I usually buy a discounted $48 ticket at Safeway, and when I've taken my last trip I can with it, there is still $1 left. Rather than lose that $1, I pop it into a ticket machine, swipe my credit card, and then I can recharge the ticket.

If you take the same trip every day, you know how much your daily fare is (in my case, $9.40). So I take that $1 "ticket turd", add $17.80to it, and I have a ticket that will buy 2 round trips exactly. I don't put maximum value on the ticket because I'm a cheapskate and would rather buy the discounted tickets at the store.

Anonymous said...

Ticket Exchange windows
(for those wanting to combine tickets, not donate them)

Are at Civic, Embarcadero, Powell (m-f) and specific days at BayFair, 12th St, & Berkeley.

They can combine tickets and fix (trade) demagnetized tickets in for working ones.

bartmusings said...

I tried to bring some small tickets to Civic Center and there are limitations to what they can accept. They cannot be credit card purchases or something like that...

A huge stack of my tickets got rejected and I couldn't combine them into larger amount tickets.

Anonymous said...

Yep that sucks..

No exchanges with Credit Card purchased tickets..

I always use the debit feature, they can exchange those.

Anonymous said...

And there is a new ticket consolidation window at the Richmond BART station (see http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2008/news20080804.aspx)

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