SmarTrip 4+

There is something that doesn’t work right about this app. After you give them all of your personal information, then navigate to accept multiple terms, then verify your account via email it still doesn’t work and let you login. Hopefully this is the official app of SmarTrip but it feels very untrustworthy. I think it is safer for anyone visiting DC to buy a pass at the machines in the station. You don’t have to give out personal information and the cards work. MWATA can’t go digital for a long time unless they find a better vendor for their wallet accounts.

There was a slight delay in emails being sent last week. Hopefully, you received yours and if not, please give us a call at 888.762.7874 (M—F, 7 am—8 pm)

If you purchase a plastic card, we still suggest that you create an account and register your card to protect your balance. You do have the option to buy a virtual card directly in Apple Wallet and bypass creating and registering an account. -KB

It’s hard to overstate how terrible this app is. TL;DR: after I finish this review I’m deleting it. I found it significantly easier to just use the plastic card and even gave up my attempt to use the app to recharge my card: going to a station and using a credit card was so much easier. For the nerds who care, the reason is that the input checking is buggy and rigid. For example, I had to give “today” as my date of birth, since it simply rejected my attempt to enter my birth month. Later, with some help, I figured out if I tried to enter my birth month, a few months later than the present month, the app would think I was trying to choose a birthday in the future and reject it. You can only reliably enter a birthdate if you start with the year (which is on the right) and work back to the month. This is only an example: the app is riddled with this kind of bad coding. And everywhere instead of letting you correct something it doesn’t like, it wipes the entry and makes you start over. In summary, stay away: got a stored value card and recharge it at stations. It’s a stinker

our app uses. If you have any additional questions please give us a call at 888.762.7874 (M—F, 7 am—8 pm) -KB

Asks for way more personal info than it needs for metro rides, in my opinion — there’s no way you need my address, phone number, and email just to sell me a train ticket, not to mention only the email actually needs to be accurate to get in and buy a ticket (leading me to believe it’s the only thing you should actually ask users to enter — why take the risk of storing additional PI if you don’t need it? Maybe phone is fine for MFA, but there isn’t MFA, so ??). Lack of autocomplete is frustrating — should just be an additional attribute you add to inputs, no? Had to suffer the registration forms twice because the validation on the email field broke when I tried to use Apple Hide My Email, and it wouldn’t let me continue even after entering a valid email. Bought two tickets because the UI was super unclear where my purchased ticket landed.

You can buy a virtual card directly in Apple Wallet. When you register your card, you are protecting your balance by providing the optional security information. Thanks for the additional details. Our developers use this feedback for future updates. -KB