I’ve now had the experience of trading in our prepaid ticket books and acquiring Experience Cards for my family, and I can report that it is a lot easier to understand once you’ve done it than it is to contemplate all the possibilities beforehand.
BC Ferries is committed to moving us all from paper ticket books to electronic swipe cards by the end of summer. To get the process moving, they are offering to convert our old ticket books for credit on a card at current prepaid prices, which went up about 4% on April 1. The opportunity to do that has just been extended to May 31.
But, after April 15, anyone presenting paper tickets purchased before April 1 will have to ante up the fare increase if they don’t want to switch to a card.
The card system, though still a work in progress, greatly reduces the amount of money we have to put out in advance to get the benefit of the same prepaid fares the ticket books provided. The cards are also much more flexible in terms of use since you don’t have to have a handful of different books to cover every situation.
This was my “experience” last Sunday:
I dug our tickets out of our glove boxes, including some I had for Salt Spring Island, and walked into the Campbell River ticket booth with them. Inside, separate from the ticket window, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, there are familiar faces with another computer who can convert your ticket books into value on the card system and help you set up what will work best for you.
I picked up four Experience Cards - one for me, one for my wife, and two to send to sons who live elsewhere in B.C. I put half the value of our paper tickets on a card for me and half on one for my wife.
You can get cards while paying your fare, but the procedure of cashing in tickets can take a few minutes. The cards come with a brochure that explains how to use them. But it’s better to walk into the ticket booth while you are in Campbell River rather than wait until you are in the vehicle lineup to go home. Then there will be time for them to explain how the new cards work and to answer your questions, and you won’t be slowing down the ticketing of vehicles whose occupants hope to get on the next ferry.
If you don’t have paper tickets to exchange, the cards have to be loaded up with minimum amounts before you can use them. You can do this at the ticket booth with cash or a credit card, or you can take the card home and load it with money online or by telephone using a credit card: $75 or more entitles you to the prepaid vehicle & passenger fare on any BC Ferries’ route that has prepaid fares, and $40 or more gives you the prepaid passenger fare on the same routes. There is no minimum balance that has to be maintained, but subsequent deposits have to be at least those amounts to continue to get prepaid fares.
If you want to use the card anonymously, once you’ve prepaid, you are good to go. Though the card isn’t in your name, it is linked to an account and you can add funds to it. But if you lose the card, whatever value it had can’t be recovered. There are advantages to registering it to an account in your name - and one is loss protection.
At home with my four new cards, I went to www.bcferries.com, clicked on the link “NEW! BCF Experience/Coast Card” and, at the bottom of that page, “Register your B.C. Ferries Experience/Coast Card,” and then “I’m not registered.” I entered the 9-digit number on the back of one card I’d put ticket book money on and the verification number that you reveal like a “scratch & win” number.
I entered all the required information and registered the first card in my name. Now I had the option of linking my wife’s card to my account or setting hers up with a separate account. If I linked hers to mine, then, as the primary cardholder, I would have to assign a portion of the funds in the account to her card and check whenever she was traveling on her own to be sure her card had enough funds to cover her fares.
BC Ferries is working what they call “pooling” which would give spouses, or any two people, equal access to all the funds in one account, but they say that function won’t be available until the fall. So we decided we would start out with separate accounts. Once I’d registered the cards, the accounts showed the dollar value of the paper tickets I’d turned in.
I linked the cards for my two sons to my card and have mailed their cards to them. If they are coming to visit and we want to pay their way (that grandparent thing), I can move funds onto their cards, or if they want to use the cards for their own purposes, they can put their own money on them.
Registration also allows businesses to set up an account with any number of secondary cards which can be given to employees with the primary cardholder determining how much money is available for each one. Registered card use creates a transaction history which both personal and business users can access online and print out for tax purposes.
As I registered our primary cards, I considered that the current prepaid car-and-driver fare from Campbell River to Quadra is $15.15 and from Campbell River to Cortes is $34.95. In the left side menu on the web page, I clicked on “Auto Load/Purchase” and, since we live on Cortes, I set up auto load to add $75 to each of our accounts from our Visa card any time the balance dropped below $35.
If you don’t have internet access, you can do all this by dialing 1-888-223-3779, pressing 4, then 2. That will get you to an actual person who can help you through the process. It’s also the place to call if the online process is confusing.
This change is creating a lot of extra work for the ticket agents while they are trying to keep traffic moving and ferries sailing on time. And, just like us ferry users, some of the staff are just learning the intricacies of the new card system. Please be patient. I believe BC Ferries is committed to making the cards work well for customers as well as for their own ticketing and accounting departments, and they will be responsive to problems customers have and to suggestions for improvement.

Special note to Cortesians:

Through May 31, older Cortes paper tickets can be swapped for new ones, thus avoiding the April 1 fare increase. But unless you make roundtrips between Cortes and Quadra without going into Campbell River, it’s not really necessary to keep any Cortes paper tickets. You can trade them in for credit on a card and your cost for travel will be the same. Just be sure if you are coming from Campbell River and using an Experience Card to get a throughfare ticket.
If you do make roundtrips between Quadra and Cortes, it’s important to keep a supply of paper Cortes tickets until a card reader is installed at Heriot Bay. Otherwise, you may be confronted with having to pay the cash fare, which is $27.90 for a car and driver compared to $19.80 at the prepaid rate. The cash passenger fare is $8.45. The prepaid fare is $5.65.
During the changeover, BC Ferries will continue to sell Cortes ticket books but, if you have to buy them at Heriot Bay, you must pay with cash - and a vehicle/driver book of five tickets is $99. Passenger books of 10 tickets are $56.50.