The Hassle of MRT’s Stored Value Tickets and mCash Cards

I don’t really know what’s the problem with the MRT system but recently, I have experienced the hassle of unavailability of those MRT Stored Value Tickets. 

Going to school and to the office, in order to escape from the heavy traffic of EDSA, MRT is a good choice for transportation. But almost all of the metro pips are using the MRT for hassle-free transpo. The fact that they can’t supply enough number of stored value tickets for their regular patrons is really causing me headaches.

I actually commented about this before in a blog post of a friend. Good thing, that time, I haven’t experienced that stored value issue. Ayala Station is still capable of selling tickets. But this time, aside from Ayala, North Avenue and Cubao Stations are all incapable of selling the tickets. 

To avoid the hassle of buying the single journey tickets, I tried using the mCash MRT card. These cards are also called the KitKat cards, AXS, E-Cash Wallet, G-Pass or whatever! Aside from the fact that you’ll never had to wait on that long line to reload, you get to experience the same hassle-free ticketing system like that of the stored value’s. But to be honest, it’s not!

As I’ve said, I tried using that mCash card today. But all the tap ‘thing’ on the MRT stations in Cubao and North Avenue are not working well. I had to ask the assistance of the security guard to let me in after tapping the mCash on that non-working mCash reader.

In fairness, the system is very promising. Though it has been in the market for like two years (according to their website, the service became available in 2008), the service hasn’t improve yet considering that the mCash card readers are not working properly.

For the meantime, while waiting for the stored values became available in all ticketing outlets of MRT, I’ll be using the mCash card. Hopefully, it will not cause me to be late in my work and school schedules.