SFist Jay decided to use his first Clipper card yesterday, given that it was August 1st and Muni is phasing out the paper FastPasses soon. Having procured a free card from one of the representatives at Civic Center one day last month, the only step that seemed to remain was going online and putting an August FastPass on there. Right?

But no! This is in fact not a quick and one-step process, and like so much that Muni touches it is already a little bit broken [Clarification: We recognize that Clipper is a regional thing and not just Muni's choice, but for many who read this site the impact will largely be felt as a replacement for FastPasses, and thus we associate it with Muni]. You see, after paying your $70 for a Muni+Bart FastPass, you still have to wait 24 to 72 (!) hours for your payment to register and for the card to start working. Also, there is a second cryptic step, according to the confirmation page on the website about your balance not being loaded until you've tagged and loaded it, or something. Please read along with us below and help us understand what this means.

Please note that when you add value online, it can take up to 3 days for the value to be available to be loaded onto your card, and you must tag your card to a card reader to load the value. Your card balance will not be updated until you have tagged your card and loaded the value.