Dutch OV chipkaart company pockets €30 million in ‘forgotten money’

What happens if your OV chipkaart expires and you still have money on it? Do you think you get it back? Oh, nee! Translink, the company behind OV the chipkaart, keeps it all.

Technically, you can reclaim your money. But the company barely publicises this, so people don’t know they can get their money back.

Because of this, most of the 6.5 million people with an anonymous travel card don’t reclaim their money, reports AD.nl.

Not enough transparency

Of course, if Translink publically advertised the fact that we could get our leftover money back, we would do that. However, that really isn’t the case.

READ MORE | It’s official: Dutch public transport is the second-most expensive in the world 

Where is this leftover money going? Helaas, it isn’t clear. Translink allegedly uses the money for some pretty vague IT projects.

On top of that, you can only get your money back for the past five years at the most. Any longer ago than that, and your money is gone.

Translink’s response

By the end of last year, Translink had almost €19 million in expired travel expenses from travellers. Add traveller credit to that and €36 million in expired cards, and Translink is taking home a pretty fat wad of cash.

Although the company says in their annual report that it makes an effort to return the unused money, the numbers just don’t add up. They have too much profit from the leftover cash and not enough publicity about the chance to get it back.

Translink spokesperson Gebrant Corbeen also says that it’s the traveller’s responsibility to request a refund and that it’s very hard to reach cardholders with anonymous cards. 

That would all be fair if they made an effort to tell us that we could even get our money back in the first place! Well, at least now we know.

Have you ever managed to get your money back from an unused OV Chipkaart? Tell us in the comments!

Feature Image:Depositphotos
Julia de Oliveira Moritz
Julia de Oliveira Moritz
Júlia was born in Brazil, but she’s been away for more than half her life. At five years old, she moved to Nigeria, and at 14, she came to the Netherlands. She came for her education and stayed for… something. She’s not sure if that something is the vibrant springtime or the live music bars. All she knows is that this is her new home, at least for now.

4 COMMENTS

  1. I have tried. Yu can “try” via this page. https://www.ov-chipkaart.nl/saldo-terugvragen. Interestingly, the page works, but after you have filled the form and click the “Send” button, nothing happens. There is no response from the page.

    It looks like they have discovered a good side source of income, and have no intention of entertaining suckers who want their money back.

  2. As frequent visitors to the Netherlands we had chipkaarts, when they were close to expiring we had to take a couple of bus rides to get the balance below the level where we could get a refund from the station in Haarlem. Didn’t have a problem.

    As a side question are Chipkaarts still used, we haven’t been over to Haarlem since well before Covid.

  3. I have tried, from the UK, with about €50 on the card. I filled in the paper form, attached my chipcard, and sent it off. I heard nothing. When I contacted them again, they said send a photo of the pink form, but of course
    I hadn’t taken one, so I’ll have to start again. I did take a photo of both sides of the card, fortunately! I’ll have to see what happens next. My card ran out during Covid.

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