We have an E-tag.

[reynardo]

This is a useful way to pay the tolls around the place on those toll-roads that don't have a manual toll payment system, as we can use it in New South Wales or Victoria - the different systems talk to each other.

Supposedly.

When you drive on a tollway, little electronic sensors read the signal from the tag and charge your account. You hear a little "beep" - there are other beeps that say that the account is low on funds or that it isn't working.

Supposedly.

If for some reason your tag doesn't work, your car registration should be on their system anyway, so that when the cameras at the toll points take a picture of your plate, they just match it to your account and charge it appropriately.

Supposedly.

And if you don't have an account and you haven't paid for anything like a weekend pass, you get a notice in the mail that charges you the toll (anything from $1.40 to $5, depending on where you drove), and an administration charge.

And so can you guess what has happened?

Our tag stopped beeping in January. We rang the tag people in NSW to ask what was wrong. "Oh, it's on the wrong place on your windscreen. You have to move it."

I did. It still doesn't beep. This is also annoying, as sometimes I rent a truck for moving stuff, and you should be able to take your tag in the truck to use it there. As it didn't beep when I took it in the truck, I had to buy a weekend pass for the Melbourne toll system.

So we rang the RTA (NSW) back and they said "well, we have your rego number so any time your car goes through a toll, even if your tag doesn't been we'll still be able to charge you."

And the account statements we were getting seemed to reflect this, so we left things as they were.

Until...

Yesterday there were two toll "late" notices in the post office box. I got home last night and rang the Citylink (VIC) contact number.

"Your tag isn't working."

"I knew that. But I understood that your system could check our licence against the other states' systems and was charging against our NSW account."

"No, it can't."

"That's weird. It's been charging against the NSW account for the last 9 months - I've been using your tollroads all that time and had accounts."

"Well whoever told you that from NSW was wrong. You'll need to talk to them about having the charges fixed."

*sigh*

Citylink has a 24 hour call centre. So I rang the RTA (NSW). It was 5:10 and their system closed at 5.

*sigh*

Rang the RTA (NSW) this morning, and sat on hold for 10 minutes, then finally got a customer service person.

"Hi. The tag's not beeping, hasn't since January, your last person said it would be fine but now I've had notices..."

"Oh. Well, just drop the tag back at an RTA office and we'll give you a new one straight away."

"Minor problem - we're in Victoria, and not near the border."

"Then just mail it."

"So how come the system stopped recognising it? The Citylink (VIC) people said their system wouldn't be able to check the registration number."

"They should be able to. Just ring them and quote the tag number and they'll charge your account."

grumble grumble why didn't they tell me that yesterday grumble smurf.

So I did a bad thing. I rang the Citylink (VIC) people and said "I just spoke to NSW and there was some sort of communications glitch (yeah sure) and your system didn't charge properly against my NSW account." I quoted the tag number and they arranged for the charge to be fixed, and all admin charges have been wiped.

Good.

But:

1) Why the flip didn't the person in January just say "Return the tag and we'll replace it."? Why was he so certain that the lack of beep was just a sound issue and not the tag not working?

2) Why did the person at Citylink (VIC) yesterday not take the account details then so that the account could be charged properly, thus saving me from having to call back today?

and 3) Most importantly, why is one location telling us that the registration number here in Victoria can't be passed through to NSW when it quite obviously has been for months?

*sigh*

OK, off to the post office.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I asked at the time why they thought it was still working, given complete lack of beeping etc. Answer was "batteries usually last for 5 years and you've only had it for 4".

I was unconvinced, funnily enough.

-lederhosen, not logged in.

[besina-sartor.livejournal.com]

Because people usually want to do the absolute least amount of work possible, even if it actually means doing *more* work just to inconvenience people. This is what they teach you in middle management classes -- you knew that right? :D

Seriously, sounds like a shitty predicament, but glad you managed to get someone to take care of it.

(Seriously liking your fox mood icon) :)

[leadgend.livejournal.com]

I just don't drive on the toll roads.

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

That sounds like the "transponder" we have over here, for one particular Express Toll route. It's a big "400-series" (many lanes in both directions) highway and it's the only one built specifically as a toll route.

I don't hear horror stories about the transponder. I do hear that in the earlygoings they had problems because they wanted to be able to snap pictures of license plates and bill people who didn't have transponders. And they could snap the pictures, but people were needed to manually process the results, so it was taking ages for them to do it. I'm sure they've found some way to ease, if not solve, that problem in the many years since then.

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Because they didn't have a was to find their arse with!

[moxie_man]

Perhaps a follow-up letter to both offices and cc'd to the appropriate editorial pages of the local papers would be in order?

Around here, nothing fixes bad customer service faster than bad publicity...at least for a little while anyway.

[crawfoc99.livejournal.com]

I've found the states rarely communicate with each other in Oz.

Sorry you had to jump through so many hoops over this issue. Pleased that you've finally had a resolution.

Hooroo,
Carole