Some CharlieTickets can't be transferred to cards
I recently went to a pass sales office to have some CharlieTicket value transferred to a CharlieCard.  The clerk told me that some of my tickets couldn't be transferred because they said "CentralEncoding" on them.  He said this is a new policy.

I asked what the reasoning behind the policy was.  He said some organizations such as halfway houses give out stored value tickets that are already discounted, so they won't allow the value to be transferred to cards which would provide an additional discount.  I told him I got the tickets as an on-time service guarantee refund.  He said he could only give a refund or transfer the value if I brought in the letters that came with the on-time guarantee tickets.  Since the letters only mentioned refunds rather than transferring to CharlieCards, and since I never needed them in the past, I no longer have the letters.

Fortunately, as with most arbitrary bureaucratic nonsense, there's an easy workaround.  Just add some value to each ticket, say, 5 cents, at a station vending machine.  The machine will print new tickets which won't say anything about CentralEncoding.  Maybe if I really want to waste the T's money I'll put each 5 cent transaction on a credit card.

On the plus side, the ridiculous value transfer process was a little quicker this time.  The clerk didn't write down the serial number and value of each ticket on a paper log, nor did he type the serial numbers and values into the computer, as in the past.  After checking the value of my tickets by transferring them onto fresh new tickets, he added the values up on a pocket calculator and typed in the total (in 2 batches, for some reason).