SmarTrip Reviews

Absolute joke of an app. Apparently you can’t make an account unless your birthday is today as the date will keep resetting. And that’s only one of the hundred terrible design choices/issues with SmarTrip. Save yourself the trouble and keep using the metro card.

SmarTrip does not work, does not update, and can not provide information about bus/train schedules. It has so many bugs it is worthless. I have downloaded my this app card to my phone and that does not work sometimes when I need it too. Metro has a lot of work to do to get SmarTrip working on par with there system. Lol. Remember when they stated the trains will be back to operational status in Oct after that derailment. It’s March!

I attempted to add funds to my card via SmarTrip over a week ago and they are still pending. My credit card was charged instantly. Not sure why it takes so long but I’m contemplating filing a dispute with my credit card company and deleting SmarTrip. Buyer beware….

The electronic card wouldn’t recognize my new phone and I no longer have my old phone or the physical card so now I lost over $5 as it can’t be used. I had to buy a new card. Never using SmarTrip again, even if I have to carry the annoying card around.

It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to add a “this app” mobile card. I still can’t figure out how to transfer the balances of my plastic cards to the mobile card. This is a very hard to comprehend app.

Most of the instructions are extremely vague an unhelpful. App is extremely difficult to navigate to. The unlimited pass makes no sense and it’s a TOTAL SCAM. The fact that you to jump a million hoops and go through a million people just to add $10 to this useless pass is a total joke. This whole system setup just feels like a scam to steal money from people. Do better.

Took the time to create an account, clicked activation email and continued to sign in…. Password wrong… ok it’s not wrong but change it anyway… click link .. answer 3 security questions and change password to same as original… nope. Not allowed to use same password, huh??? Ok new password… accepted … done. Nope wrong password on sign in again…. Fool me once shame on you… fool me twice shame on me. Good bye.

Short review: I was charged for 4 passes when this garbage app told me that the purchase didn’t go through.

Longer review: I was in DC and went to buy a 3 day Metro card through SmarTrip . SmarTrip said the first transaction had an error, so I tried again. That didn’t work, so I tried again. When that didn’t work, I tried another credit card. Also didn’t work. In total I received 4 transaction error messages.

A few minutes later I checked my email and saw that I had 4 purchase confirmations in my email. I tried to contact WMATA and they didn’t respond, so now I’m having to dispute the multiple charges with my credit card company.

Just buy your tickets from the machines in the stations.

Don’t even bother using this. Just use the fare machines and you’ll be fine. SmarTrip took my money and I ain’t happy about it. I know WMATA has so many issues right now and this is one of them. Literally has me wishing I could drive. >:(

VERY buggy. Some stations it works and others it doesn’t. Buses are fine.
Websites are NOT helpful AT ALL REVAMP video, pics -DO A FOCUS GROUP!!!
I’ve reached out to support via email and not very helpful.
Ask someone to reset at the stations and they have such a bad attitude that I see why their ridership is down and ppl jump the gate. When ppl are visiting not only your city but your “system” be not only helpful but friend to ease the anxiety.
I’m going back to using a card!

SmarTrip has a time delay from the this app card system when adding value. Added $10 to my card on SmarTrip at 11am, still showing as pending at 4pm, so then I had to physically add money to my existing card at one of the station machines to ride the train. Why would I have to wait 1 day to ride the bus before the card updates with my paid value? Take a lesson from the NYC or LAX metro system and update your payment systems. Kind of disappointed that this is the metro app for our nation’s Capital.

I loaded 7 cards with 3day passes at 7:30 one morning. At 9am I tried taping the card at a faregate to load the pass. It didn’t work. I continued to try all throughout the day with zero luck. Pass was still pending on all cards. Then I’m told I must wait 24hr from the time of purchase, tap the card at the faregate and then it could take another 4hrs to activate. What on earth?!? This is absolutely ridiculous! People buy these with the intent to be used right away! Not wait 24+hrs to “activate” then wait another 4hr!

This has to be the worst metro and/or app to exist. I’m in town for just a month so it made sense to buy a monthly unlimited pass; however, it won’t be active until May 1st. That’s half of my trip here.
Why would I buy a pass to use later? I need to use this now. This is the worst setup.

Maybe it’s my older phone. Wouldn’t even give me an option to purchase a card. Called customer service. They said I have to buy a card at the station. Gf has newer phone no issues. I don’t understand

2 stars for the clean User Interface. But Anyone who rates SmarTrip above three stars must just be thrilled with the newness of not having to navigate their mediocre website after waiting 10+ years for an app.

Downloaded in March '21, and had a problem the first day:
1. All Day Pass ($13) was on hold and unusable for days, then randomly applied over a week later (&apathetic cust. svc)

2. Critical Instructions for managing& loading passes & $ to this app are missing, obscured, & convoluted.

3. At least 3 x, Glitches caused "add stored value" to be unavailable until reported to cust svc

4. Sometimes the card readers don't detect the correct balance or requires excessive tapping

5. Auto-Load glitch quadrupled the amount withdrawn from my bank/credit card

6. No ability to transfer balance btwn cards (THIS SHOULD BE TOP PRIORITY after basic adding value/ passes.

7. Completely Non-working or extremely cumbersome functions like "add a favorite line or station" -- just remove until they work!!!

8. IF YOU CONTACT CUST SVC WITHIN SmarTrip , the customer/ card& phone info should AUTO POPULATE INTO THE FORM OR EMAIL -OR- INSTRUCTIONS SHOULD BE IMMEDIATELY VISIBLE --:

9. We shouldn't have to wait 4+ days to be contacted by Jamie to say: please provide XYZ Info.

10. Something else but it slipped my mind

Good app. However, would love to be able to sync plastic card, iPhone wallet AND Apple Watch altogether (perhaps next version update?🤞). You currently can only have one of the above active at a time. In other words, if you want to use SmartTrip on iPhone, your plastic card no longer works. If you set it up on watch, your iPhone no longer works to pay.

DO NOT PUT MORE THAN ONE CARD ON SAME DEVICE. The gates can’t differentiate between cards if they are on the same phone. It works fine at the gates, no problems with the Tap feature but just make sure everyone has their own account, with their own card, on their own device. Otherwise you spend half your day fighting with the gates and having to get assistance.

Downloaded SmarTrip and went through all of the effort to do so. There was no instruction regarding use of only one card per phone or device so I bought two and it didn’t work. Even the drivers said that each person having a card would be best for groups. I now have a wasted purchase on my phone app. We gave up and bought cards. It was so much easier.

I was easily able to download and add money using Apple Pay to SmarTrip to create a digital card to tap on and off the metro. My only suggestion would be to either move the year of birth to the first spot or not limit the month and day based on the current year.

Not sure why there are any poor reviews: read the instructions, watch the videos, use SmarTrip . Simple. Convenient.

Tried to add my this app card to wallet, which has this app benefits/money tied to it, and all it did was give an error message. Tried several times.

When I open SmarTrip the only thing it says is “Opps - unsupported device detected” and the closes. I have an iPhone 11 Pro, why wouldn’t this be supported???

When I go to payment method, I can't click on applepay so I can add the smarttrip to my wallet. Why is that? That was the whole purpose of me installing SmarTrip and I can't do that one thing.

When I type my last name, which has a hyphen, they won’t let me create my account, saying “special characters or numbers are not allowed”.

Using an iPhone 11 Pro Max, and getting and unsupported device error code?...I guess no other words need to be said

Saw the press release about Apple Pay. No options functional in SmarTrip . Website instructions do not work. Even the apps home page functions do not work, like “add a favorite line/station”. At least I can see the balance of my card, right?

I’m on iOS 13.5. It says unsupported device off the bat ):

App and new this app logo look great! Really like that I can move my plastic card into SmarTrip by touching it to my phone, that’s something I’ve never seen before. Good work WMATA.

Excited to use this new app for riding Metro!

Not only can I manage all my cards, I can now put one in the Apple Wallet and travel without carrying my card, only my phone which is terrific!

I have so many different cards, it’s wonderful to have them all in one place! Works smoothly to add cards and easy to use! Thanks WMATA!!!

I was able to access my account and information. The feature to add favorites is appreciated. Glad to see Metro making upgrades like this

My problem is more within the wallet app. You add cash to your digital this app but it doesn’t update the remaining left after a trip. For example. You add $10 & then you take a trip. The remaining balance doesn’t update so you’ll have to check SmarTrip for the updated remaining balance.

Finally, my phone becomes this app. Great job!

Loved being able to convert my card to one in the wallet...

SmartTrip cards are a rip off! You can not receive a refund, even when living out of state. There's a totally unjustified requirement that you live outside of 100 miles which is beyond ridiculous. I live in Baltimore and it doesn't share the same Transit company as DC. There is no where in Baltimore that the SmartTrip card can be used. This is criminal and should be investigated.

Be sure to place your phone camera on the reader! This detail should be part of the instructions! We had trouble with the gate reading the app on our phone. I asked a WMATA employee about and she said to remove and redownload the app. That didn’t help. Later, several employees saw us having trouble getting through and told us the place the phone camera over the reader. Works every time now!

I used my SmarTrip app for the first time today — my first trip on metro rail in over a year. Both entering and exiting, it took many tries and tapping at several gates before the gate would open. I kept getting messages that said “try again.” Is it the system? Was I doing something wrong? I use ApplePay all the time without problems. Any suggestions appreciated. I have an Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max running iOS 14.4.2. Thank you.