At the station today I gave up on trying to get the card machine to use my primitive American magnetic swipe card and paid cash at the booth.
Tomorrow I will be trying again. Is it possible to get a 3 day pass from the machine, the big machine at the Berri Station, or do I need to go back to the booth and use my french learned from this forum with some cash to buy it?
Eeek good question. I'm going to guess yes, since my boyfriend only recently upgraded his credit card and recharged his opus fine in the past. Though this is a guess. Is it a Visa or Mastercard?
You could just go to the booth and ask. Most tellers will understand english, particularly since all you really have to get across is "3 days" and show your credit card.
At worse, get cash :/
Edited: 10:25 pm, November 20, 2012Wow I'm surprised this question has never occurred to me before since Ive been buying so many passes in Montreal. I always pay cash.
The easiest way to get a card if you are a tourist would definitely be to just go to the booth. They will roughly understand what you are talking about. I don't think credit cards work but a debit card might.
I have bought day passes using my US based corporate credit card at the booth. I find it doesn't often work in machines - anywhere in Canada. Not being a Quebecer my french, while better likely than yours, is enough to be understood by the attendants. And in the Berri station there are usually hundreds of students going through and I have found when stuck they are often the best to ask to translate if I've run into a problem.
Just ask the attendant for "pass trois jours, s'il vous plait".
Edited: 8:15 am, November 21, 2012Well I did try the attendant route, when I showed him a card he just told me to go to the machine. Showed him the card and told him tthere was no chip, he just shrugged and looked at me.
I'll try the machine again today and see if I can find someone there who might know, or just use up some of my remaining cash and go to the teller, might be the easiest way to go.
I have used my credit card that has no chip yet and it worked. Of course a Canadian credit card, US, I really don't know. But for $16 why go to the trouble and just pay cash instead. I do suppose that you alredeay have some Cnd funds with you.
As I have stated, from experience with my guests, credit cards that are not issued in Canada will generally not be able to be used to buy metro/bus tickets at the automated stations. Nothing to do with swipe or chip at all. Canadians cards, chip or swipe will work. There is an exception at the airport as far as I know, but most of the downtown stations you will need to use CASH.
(I've mentioned this a few times... people just seem to ignore what I'm saying.)
Canadian cards... work. US cards... don't work. Foreign cards sometimes work, if the machine has been upgrade for Chip & Pin, but swipe foreign cards also generally don't work.
