For anyone riding the $1 fare LC Transit commuter or local buses enabled with Smartrip, typically those going to the Wiehle Metro and not into DC: As happens from time to time, at least a few times this year and at least a couple dozen over the years in my commute, the driver or the garage inputs the wrong code into the fare box and passengers get charged $9 (the long haul DC Smartrip fare) instead of the $1 fare Metro station buses. Until the last 2-3 months, the County's transit office worked on behalf of passengers to get the overcharges refunded to affected passengers Smartrip cards which often took two or three days. Now if overcharged, you have to call WMATA's Smartrip office who does not typically handle many Loudoun County transactions, so have fun with their 'customer service?' handling that.

To keep yourself as a LC Transit commuter or local passengers on a $1 bus falling victim to the inconvenience of initiating and waiting for an $8 overcharge refund, here is what I am doing. Go to most any Metorail station, buy a new $10 Smartrip card which $8 fare on it (one-time $2 fee for new card) and use it only for LC Transit $1 Smartrip bus trips, and keep only $1-$8 on the card (personally not bother registering it since less than $8 on it). That way next time the supposed $1 LC Transit bus where the bus fare box is incorrectly coded $9, your Smartrip card with $1 to $8 on it will not work. After advising the driver of such and if the driver cannot figure out how to correct the fare box trip code, as happened to me twice in the last two months, you ride free. (One caution, keep this Smartrip card stored separately from the one you use Metrorail or any bus system. In many cases, you can store in it sleeve you have your office badge with no effect on either one (in my case, that works)).

If you are a regular commuter, perhaps slight 1-2 minute inconvenience if passing through the Metrorail station to refill your card every 4 days with $8 (can do this if see train at least a few minutes away or upon exiting the Metro). If you regularly ride with the same group of people on your LC Transit Metro or local Smartrip fare bus, perhaps designate one person to buy the $8 card, and that person boards the bus first to identify with their card if the fare box is overcharging (as in a movie, now performing box scan).

As many who reload their Smartrip cards at a Metrorail station or online with a credit card (in some cases to get credit card rewards), if a per transaction credit card fee is charged to WMATA which may pass a portion to Loudoun County, know this is more costly to them for that with a bunch of $8 transactions; however, have given LCDOT multiple opportunities to get this right voicing concern more once over the years, but their bus vendors, Transdev for most of the Smartrip trips and MV Transit if they have any local buses in the western part of the county with Smartrip, continue to make this overcharging error more often than many LC Transit passengers would like. (Hmmmm, say 220 commutes per year after weekdays, holidays, days off, snow days x 2 = 440 / 8 = 55 refills a year x say $0.30 credit card per transaction fee to WMATA/LC Transit = $16.50 per passenger). So using the suggestion above, you can keep from being impacted from what LC Transit vendor employees should do right in the first place.

Looks like a scimming scam is going on at Metro. Someone has figured out how to scim off all the "oops" excess fares into their own pocket.

This sort of thing is going on at stores also. You have to check your receipts and also carry the sale flyers with you, but Walmart doesn't have sales flyers and I catch them doing this occasionally. One of their tricks is leaving price tags on the shelf for a sale price 2 years old, like Triscuits for 2/$4.00 then getting home to find out that the register actually charged the real current price of 2.89 or so per box for them.