Julie Fredrickson Abbreviated
So today is my last day at Ann Taylor. One of the consequences of this is I am closing out various corporate benefits. And I am discovering that I am going to lose $511 and there is nothing I can do about it.
So, like many folks I enrolled in the ADP run TRIP flexible spending accounts while at Ann Inc. I put in pre-tax money to help with my transit expenses each month. Good idea right? Well kind of.
For a period of time I had a debit card on which money would be put that I then used to buy my MTA card. At one point I lost the card. HR told me no big deal while the card gets replaced just save receipts and submit the expenses.
So I submitted expenses for $213 dollars (aka two months of transit cards or you know 6 weeks of processing for a new credit card if the timing is wonky) to ADP with receipts and all that goodness. ADP receieved it but after spending an hour on the phone with them they claim that Ann Inc only allows you to use the debit card and the receipts I submitted are invalid. Well sucks to be me since the debit card expires tonight at midnight.
So I went to go buy $611 of Metrocards figuring ok inconvenient but it is what I have to do since the card expires tonight. I lose the money if it is not used. So I buy two $50 cards figuring keep it lower. Then the MTA machines says it can’t process it. I talked to someone at the MTA and it turns out you can only make two purchases per day as a fraud protection mechanism. So I have $511 in a TRIP account and I have literally no way to get the money off the debit card! I can’t buy any more MTA cards because of the fraud protection limits. The receipts I believed I legitimately expensed per my HR department will not be reimbursed. And even so my plan was to buy Metrocards with the remaining money post expenses as you apparently build up a lot over two years of employment but thanks to the MTA restrictions I have hit my limit on how many cards I can buy today.
This feels terribly wrong to me. How is there no way I can get my money back after following what I thought were the proper procedures of a government tax incentive plan to purchase public transit. I am convinced there has to be some consumer fraud element to this I am missing. And of course now it is 9pm so ADP is closed, the MTA has no way to help me and the Human Resources department at Ann has gone home and at midnight that money goes POOF. If anyone has any ideas what I can do to fight this let me know.
