If your Dutch is that bad, I do definitely want to see it ;-)
On topic: I can reach the site from my home in The Netherlands at the moment, but not through some proxies in other European countries and the US I tried, so there indeed seems to be a problem with reaching the site from abroad. I never heared that before 'though, so maybe this could be a temporary issue?
Presumably the website is prohibited to certain countries due to some reasons. But the website is not part of NS, but of transaction manager TransLink.
I cannot access it even using a NL proxy, but maybe these are recognized as a proxy. I was experiencing it for the past three weeks though, so I don’t think it’s just a temporary blip.
Could someone who has access to the website check for me if there’s any other way for contacting them? (Other than phone.) Thank you everyone!
I cannot access it even using a NL proxy, but maybe these are recognized as a proxy.
If I use a VPN, some servers will work and others won't. It's a bit of trial and error.
You don't necessarily need to select a Dutch server. It can work with (some) foreign servers as well.
I tried another VPN and finally accessed it. And it told me that I won’t get my balance anyway because I no longer have a Dutch bank account. WOW. I guess I will eat the cost, but this feels like a fraud, especially since they don’t specify you need a Dutch account in the original form. I just did more digging.
According to the page https://www.ov-chipkaart.nl/en/credit-refund you can enter any IBAN.
According to the page https://www.ov-chipkaart.nl/en/credit-refund you can enter any IBAN.
The card needs to be expired for that, because the balance is stored on the card itself. If the card expired more than a year ago, you need to send it to OV-chipkaart. Of course, you could also send it to them if it hasn’t expired yet.
Edit: ov-chipkaart now also refunds balance of cards that expired longer than a year ago.
According to the page https://www.ov-chipkaart.nl/en/credit-refund you can enter any IBAN.
At least for me it only shows the Dutch IBAN format (every country has its own) and other formats don’t pass through.
At least for me it only shows the Dutch IBAN format (every country has its own) and other formats don’t pass through.
Ah, that’s a bad thing because numerous IBAN formats (and lenghts) exist. They probably only accept 18 characters, like NL01BANK0123456789
According to the page https://www.ov-chipkaart.nl/en/credit-refund you can enter any IBAN.
At least for me it only shows the Dutch IBAN format (every country has its own) and other formats don’t pass through.
Then just contact OV-Chipkaart customer service, let them know their form is broken (because it only allows certain IBAN formats) and send them your request in plain text:
https://www.ov-chipkaart.nl/en/contact-form
I tried, we’ll see what comes out of it.
To everyone who helped me - thank you. It finally worked, and over the course of two weeks and three message chains with the customer support they promised to just send me the money without the form. This week I received it. Thanks, everyone!
