Glitch credits Nathana with $20,000 ticket

Nathana Rodrigues, 22, with her $20,000 bus tickets. Photo / George Novak

A Mangatapu woman was shocked to find her Smartride bus card had more than $20,000 on it.

Nathana Rodrigues, 22, topped up her bus card with $10 earlier this week and caught the bus. When she sat down and looked at the ticket she realised it had $20979.88 worth of credit left on it.

Not thinking much of the glitch, Ms Rodrigues thought it would fix itself over night but the next day when she caught the bus again the amount had only gone down by a few dollars.

"The $10 top up went normally, I got another bus and my receipt informed me I had over $20,000 on it.

"I almost had a heart attack, then I thought no this is a print out error, I won't bother with doing anything, then the next time I got a ticket it was basically the same and I thought, 'oh dear this could be real'.

She became worried that it might appear she was "up to dodgy business with $20,000 on my card".

Ms Rodrigues said she had contacted the Bay of Plenty Regional Council and was asked to bring the bus card in to be swapped over. Instead of $20,000, her new bus card contained the original $10 she was after.

Garry Maloney, Transport Policy Manager for the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, said the cause of the error was a corruption in the transaction between the card and the machine.

"This happens occasionally, but it's the first time we've had one reported to us in a while.

"We do regularly run reports to make sure this isn't happening frequently, and when it does the card holder may find their card is cancelled."

Mr Maloney said in such cases, the council would ask the card holder to make contact so the error could be rectified.

"These errors are generally easy to find as the maximum amount able to be genuinely loaded onto a Smartride card is $100."