Riders billed as passes fail on T

Hundreds of riders were charged for monthly passes that the MBTA's new vending machines never dispensed, and T officials said yesterday that it could be days before some are reimbursed.

Riders interviewed said that the machines indicated that their transaction had been canceled, but that their bank or credit card account had been billed anyway. Some who tried at multiple machines were billed more than once.

The glitch is the worst to hit the T's new automated fare collection system, but is apparently unrelated to the first widespread distribution yesterday of the new CharlieCard fare cards, officials said. The new machines -- 400 now and 518 by month's end -- are also used to put money on the CharlieCards, and starting in January the monthly passes will be loaded on to the cards.

But officials said these fare cards -- so-called smart cards with microchips that passengers can wave in front of scanners to get into subway stations and board buses -- are not affected.

T officials made no public disclosure about the problem, caused by an overloaded computer network. The Globe learned of the issue from riders.

MBTA officials said yesterday that while the problem has been solved, they are still analyzing how much money was wrongly taken and how many riders were affected. The problem, which officials said was not fully identified until yesterday, hit its peak Thursday night and Friday afternoon, when hundreds of commuters tried to buy their December monthly pass at the machines.

T officials said there were four periods when the machines malfunctioned and didn't dispense passes, totaling about 6 1/2 hours: on Thursday from 5:06 to 5:43 p.m., again from 6:39 to 8:12 p.m., and from 9:56 to 10:23 p.m., then on Friday from 1:25 p.m. to 5:37 p.m.

Lynn Denekamp, 30, a medical graduate student from Somerville, said she was out $284 after four failed transactions for her monthly combo pass were charged to her credit card. She found out about the problem online and checked her account yesterday.

The extra money coming from her account at the end of the month, when her rent is due, could become a hardship, she said. "This is a serious problem."

Many riders reported that the machines had no signs or issued no message last week indicating that they could not accept credit card or debit card orders.

Georgiana Cohen, 27, from Somerville said the Downtown Crossing station was filled with riders, lined up 10 deep, trying to buy monthly passes on the machines at 5 p.m. Friday, with little help from a nearby T official.

"They would swipe their cards and add their PINs, and the screen would flash that the transaction was canceled," she said yesterday. "There were no signs that the . . . mechanism wasn't working."

Joe Kelley, the T's deputy general manager for modernization, said the communications network for the new vending machines shut down when it was carrying too much information. Financial data was traveling over the same network as data about gate openings and ridership, he said, and that overloaded the system.

T officials said they did not realize until the false transactions were made that the network had a limited capacity. They said that none of the data was compromised and that the problem had been fixed by isolating the financial data and building a firewall.

"It's a hiccup in the system," Kelley said.

Kelley said every customer affected would be reimbursed. T officials had already started giving the money back and are asking riders to contact them at 617-222-4545 or teamcharlie@mbta.com if their transactions have not been corrected.

"We've made it very clear from the very beginning that this is a mammoth effort for the MBTA to go from tokens to smart cards," said Daniel A. Grabauskas, general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

The T believes the $89 million new cashless collection system will help it to stop fare evaders and to better track its finances. Mac Daniel can be reached at mdaniel@globe.com.