Did you ever look at your EZ Pass statement or are you like me and “replenish” when you see a low balance. Worse yet, during the Season of not so BROKE, were you on automatic replenish?
Like many, I have been an EZ Pass customer probably since its inception. How cool is it to breeze through those EZ Pass lines while others are waiting in those long non-EZ pass lines “fishing for coins” to pay their toll? We are saving so much gas not idling, waiting, I would think.
I jumped for joy the day Exit 6A (the connector road between my town, Florence , NJ
Note for the out-of-towners: Exit 6A – only ONE ezpass lane into PA and it’s FREE coming back into NJ (how very kind of them!)
FIRST LESSON learned: EZ pass’ interpretation of “low balance” and mine are two different things. When I discovered this information I immediately untoggled the auto replenish box. I may not have been BROKE back then but I still didn’t want them to replenish when I wasn’t expecting to replenish!!
We were smooth sailing for a couple years until one of my son’s began to go to PA more frequently, MUCH more frequently (of course there was a girl there!!). I think crossing that bridge into PA made him lose his memory at times because somehow he kept forgetting to tell me that the toll was flashing low balance. I would know soon enough however when I received the violation in the mail! I looked over the paperwork, noticed what happened, paid the violation, paid the toll and added funds to my EZ Pass account. Maybe not the best procedure but it worked.
It wasn’t until I became an advocate for the BROKE (how do you like that title? I just made that up! lol) AND received 2 violations in the mail on the same day that I noticed we were being charged 2 different amounts for that exit. Some days it was $1.45 other days it was $1.95.
LESSON TWO – Make a LOT of time to make the calls! My journey to the correct answer began…The toll charge stated NJ Turnpike, so I called them first.
NJ’s QUICK reply – it’s not our fault – that’s right NJ is a “no fault state” how could I forget?!! (lol). Your transponders are from PA and you were entering PA, you better call them.
PA’s reply was QUICK too…at first. “Better call NJ since you live there.” Nice try but not this time Mr. PA EZ Pass Rep! Then the questions began.
“Is one of the cars bigger?” he asked. Like how much bigger? They are cars, all about the same size, was my reply. “Then it’s not that, I better get the supervisor,” he said.
OH NO not the supervisor!! Luckily I didn’t have much planned that day because I just knew this was going to take some time. “Sorry miss, I just can’t explain it. You are going to have to file a Customer Care DISPUTE FORM for this so we can investigate.” I just have a few questions before I go that route…
« Do we now get charged on the size of our car? No
« Do we have to pay more if we go through during rush hour? No
« Do we pay more if more than one of our cars go through on the same day? No
« Do we get a discount after every three entries? No
« If our car is gray do we pay more? No
« Was there an increase in that toll? No
…there is just no explanation as to why this happened, please fill out one of those forms…
It took me about 2 hours but I downloaded all the statements from Feb. 2010 – current (they are the only ones available at this time) and put them into an excel spreadsheet. On Our cars went through Exit 6A 100 times. 40 of those times we were charged $1.45.
60 of those times we were charged $1.95. There is no rhyme or reason to when we were charged the higher amount. I sorted that spreadsheet every which way you can imagine and came up blank – no explanation! OK, so we are talking about $30.00 here that was overcharged that I can see. I can’t see further back than 2/10 so who knows how bad it really is.
Do yourself a favor and look over those statements. Who knows! They may be overcharging you too and you don’t even know it!! Update to follow when I hear back from them…
The $1.45 rate is the off-peak rate. The $1.95 is the peak hour rate. Look at the times in your spreadsheet. The peak periods are 4:30 to 6:30 pm and 7 to 9 am and all day on Saturday and Sunday.
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