On Wednesday evening it became known that the BVG had made a serious mistake when introducing the new 29-euro ticket.
Since the chip card for the ticket is not available until November, tickets for October can be accessed freely via a link on the BVG website. The 29-euro ticket became a 0-euro ticket.
The loophole was first noticed by the journalist Sebastian Pertsch. He realized that the buyer of the ticket for the upcoming October does not yet receive a haptic chip card – but only a printed slip of paper on which you have to enter your name yourself.
You could print out the slip as many times as you wanted. However, Pertsch points out that people who print out the slip and use it to drive BVG are probably committing a criminal offense by scamming benefits – even if inspectors cannot check it. In the meantime, the BVG has reacted to the loophole. She justified the gap with the short lead time that had existed during the introduction.
In the future, the order confirmation must be presented together with the ticket
The BVG informed T-Online that they wanted to take action against the fraudulent acquisition of services with the free ticket. In the future, it should be necessary to show an order confirmation in addition to the photo ID for the ticket. In this way, the transport company wants to ensure that nobody is traveling with a 0-euro ticket that they received via a Twitter link. The BVG wants to point this out in future in its FAQ.
There will be another change on Friday: From now on, the name of the ticket buyer will be automatically printed on the ticket during the ordering process for the ticket. So only the real buyer can use it.
The BVG also apologized to its honest customers. They should be informed about the changes soon. The paper ticket was necessary to make the short-term start of the 29-euro ticket possible in October. It was developed together with the Verkehrsbund Berlin-Brandenburg (VBB).