Half Fare Travelcard PLUS expiring

Gharromish71

The help on SBB says that there is a top-up option available in:
SBB.ch > Profile > Payment methods > Half Fare Travelcard PLUS > Top up
However, it is not there. Travelcard PLUS is simply listed there, among other payment methods.
The bonus expires today and there is no way to extend it.
Also, when trying to buy a new PLUS on page “Order your Half Fare Travelcard PLUS.”, the “your offers” have 2 entries (for adult and children) but both are grey - impossible to be chosen.
So… what do I do? Do I need to go to the POS?

RedBaron

Gharromish71 Travelcard PLUS is simply listed there, among other payment methods.

This sounds like you missed scrolling further down on the ‘Payment methods’ page, where under the list of payment methods you should find some additional HFT+ entry saying ‘credit balance’.
The ‘top-up’ (or whatever) button you’re looking for should be just below that.

Gharromish71

Well, I can see it there, it is grey and in red it says “expired on” today’s date.
Below is button “view details” that is transferring to swisspass “my services” tab that only has “change IBAN”, “view contract”, terminate" and “show purchases” - no “top up”

RedBaron

Gharromish71
Strange, just 2 days ago I was able to top up mine (which was also in an expired state for a couple of days) on sbb.ch with that button under the greyed out balance details. Topping up is not supported on the swisspass.ch site, only on sbb.ch.

Now before going to a POS, maybe try a different browser first, just to exclude some cookie or browser cache issue.

Gharromish71

I tried chrome and edge, both are the same. Could it be because it is expiring today…? But it would be contrary to what sbb help says. I don’t know…

Gharromish71

I will go to the train station with this.
Thank you for your help anyway and have a nice day :-)

Gharromish71

Good morning :-)
So now I know: The top-up button was not available yesterday because I still had some unused credit. Now that it already expired the top up option is available. It would have been available already before if I had managed to use all the money there.
Now I can top it up and the money will be available from tomorrow - so the advice from the SBB customer service was to buy any potentially needed tickets for today already yesterday.
I hope it helps others :-)
Perhaps the scenario could also be included in SBB help… and the 2 options on “Order your Half Fare Travelcard PLUS.” are unavailable even today but… I can live with that if the top-up works :-)

RedBaron

Gharromish71
Just for clarification (for others): Are you saying that the bonus part of your credit was still unused yesterday?

Because as long as the ‘customer deposit’ part of the credit is being used, topping up the credit is not yet possible, also according to the related T&C and help documents. That’s why that top-up button only appears once the bonus part has been reached (also a notification in the app when viewing the credit).

Gharromish71

Yes, unused bonus and some credit was still there.