“There is one circumstance where a Chicago Card Plus cannot be used to pay for up to seven customers: If six or fewer customers begin their trip while using one card, and they attempt to transfer to another bus or rail line with customers who were not present at the origin of the trip, the card will not be accepted for fare payment of the additional customers.”

So basically… if Sean comes home from work right now, and we wish to go out together before his transfers have expired, I need to use a different card because passback won’t work.

We already experienced this once, last week. I had just come home, and the two of us needed to get to State Farm to sign some forms and turn in my car key (since I no longer had the car and all — don’t know why they didn’t try to get that from me when they came and towed it, or why they didn’t try to let me know they were in fact planning to tow it — but I digress). We didn’t have any cash, and I just had the one farecard, but I thought — gee! There’s that nifty passback feature. We can share.

Nope. Doesn’t work that way. The farebox just flashes “invalid” or somesuch when you try it, and the driver gets all uppity.

I found this ancient discussion about the passback “feature”. I’m glad to see that the annoyance has carried over to the new Chicago Cards… Do people not use passback, or something?

I guess we’ll probably buy a second (non 30-day pass) card just for this purpose. Dumb. Since you can’t get transfers with cash anymore (also dumb).