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NY & NJ EZ Pass Demands Surcharge To Use Credit Card to Pay Toll Violation

Recently I received a “notice of violation enforcement action” from The Port Authority of NY & NJ. This vioaltion was issued incorrectly, once again, due to a broken EZ Pass system that doesn’t recognize when a plate doesn’t match up with the owner of the EZ Pass transponder. I decided to pay the violation, rather than waste time fighting it.

The real interesting part of this story is what happened when I attemtped to make the payment using my Visa credit card on the EZ Pass website www.e-zpassny.com.

The notice of violation enforcement action informed me that I could make an $8.00 payment if payment was made before December 4 2008, or a $33.00 payment if payment was made after December 4 2008. Of course, I opted to make the $8.00 payment by credit card, which was one of three payment options available to me – the other two being payment sent by mail, or payment made via credit card over their automated phone payment system.

After submitting my violation number and plate number into their respective fields on the payment page, I hit the login button and was presented with a message telling me that my payment could not be accepted. I then called the phone number to use their automated system to make payment by credit card. The automated operator also told me that I could not make the payment. I was then transferred to a live operator. I asked the live operator, who identified himself simply as “Mike”, why I couldn’t make a credit card payment for the $8.00 toll payment they were requesting. He told me “You can only pay the full amount by credit card” I confirmed with him that the full amount would be the $8.00 toll fee they were requesting plus a $25 administrative fee. He confirmed this for me and also said “their system was not set up to accept anything other than” the toll fee plus the adminstrative fee of $25. At this point I asked him to escalate the call to a supervisor, as I wanted to see if maybe there was any possible way to avoid the $25 surcharge to use my credit card. Mike then connected me to his supervisor who identified himslef as “Bill”. Bill confirmed what Mike had told me. Bill then confirmed for me that I could only pay the toll fee “by paying the full amount” – the full amount being $33.00 – the $8 toll fee plus the surcharge of $25 to use my Visa credit card to make the payment.

I have been in touch with at least one other person who faced this very same issue.

I did some checking around and found that according to this post here “New York has a law that prohibits retailers from charging a surcharge for credit cards” and that according to Visa’s merchant rules, “… (Y)ou may not impose any surcharge on a Visa transaction. You may, however, offer a discount for cash transactions, provided that the offer is clearly disclosed to customers and the cash price is presented as a discount from the standard price charged for all other forms of payment.”

I contacted Visa to register an official complaint concerning this illegal surcharge and was told to contact my bank about it, which I’ll be doing soon.

If this has happened to you, please comment here about it.

On of our readers writes in with his story:

On 9/22/08 I received a notice from a collections company representing E-Z pass stating I owe $59 plus a $25 fee.

The problem is I moved out of the state in May of 2001 and returned the transponder in May of 2002 with a zero balance. I returned the transponder just before they implemented the $1 per month fee. Plus the account had a zero balance since it was paid through my credit card.

Why didn’t the state/state agency notify me back in 2002 if funds were due? Because the account was paid in full. They went into an old or correct database with minimum concern of accuracy.

This is a fraud, scam and extortion with the state and state agency attempting to obtain fees as a result of mismanagement.

This is truly an outrage.

This is a tale of bad faith, or possibly fraud, on the part of the government which collects highway tolls here in the northeast. But for those outside the northeast, I should probably explain first what E-ZPass is. And before I do that I should also explain that we are routinely stopped while driving on our highways here by highwaymen demanding tribute. The highwaymen here call the tribute “tolls,” but a rose by any other name … you know. If I want to drive from my home in New Jersey to Belmont Park on Long Island, about an hour away, I must pay $11 to $13 tribute during the course of my round trip.

It’s not just the money that is stolen from me. They steal my time too. It is not uncommon to have to wait a half hour to pay a fifty cent toll to leave the New Jersey Turnpike. Even a person who makes minimum wage loses $3 every time this happens, but to the people who whine about the minimum wagers that time is worthless.

Under the guise of making things better, the highwaymen have come up with a new system they call E-ZPass. Drivers request and receive transponders linked to their credit cards, and optionally to their license plates too. Cars equiped with these transponders can drive through special lanes which can detect the transponders without stopping. (Usually there is a speed limit of five to 15 mph to drive through.) Of course “special lanes” don’t just materialize by themselves, especially on roadways leading to bridges and tunnels where real-estate is scarce. “Special lanes” are created from lanes where cash had formerly been accepted. It is so bad that on one recent trip through the Queens Midtown Tunnel into Manhattan on a Saturday evening, it appeared to me that there was only one lane accepting cash.

Fortunately (?) for me, I had already acquired an E-ZPass transponder so I did not have to find out how long the poor people on that line had to wait to use the tunnel and, in fact, the growing waits to pay with cash is what drove me to get my transponder.

I had resisted E-ZPass for as long as I could. I don’t like the idea of an electronic record being made of my comings and goings. I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t be doing. I just don’t like it. I think most Freepers will understand. I also believe the entire system to be illegal. One of the legal principles of our monetary system is a concept known as legal tender. Legal tender is that which must be accepted by law for goods, services, or debts. In the United States, one must accept Federal Reserve Notes, just as if they were the equivalent gold or silver coin they pretend to be. Refusal to accept legal tender voids the debt. Paper money is so ingrained in our psyches that one has to reach for a history book to read of times where merchants would accept only gold or silver, and they would refuse to accept paper claimed to be equivalent. When the government would force the merchants to accept the paper, it would hardly have tolerated a scheme where the merchant said he would accept the legal tender if the purchaser would just cool his heels for half an hour while some low level clerk figured out how to account for the payment, but gold and silver was accepted immediately. The E-ZPass scheme is no different.

Now, on to the bad faith …

Back in October, shortly after I received my E-ZPass transponder, I drove down to Virginia from New Jersey. The tolls begin as soon as one gets on the Garden State Parkway and they don’t stop until he gets through one of the Baltimore tunnels. All of the highwaymen, about ten in each direction, now accept E-ZPass. One of the places that accepts E-ZPass is the Delaware Memorial Bridge. I don’t cross it very often. I don’t recall what the toll is. I don’t even recall if it is collected in both directions.

Last week I received a “Notice of Toll Violation” on a piece of paper bearing logos of both “E-ZPass” and the “Delaware River and Bay Authority.” They tell me, “Your licence plate was recorded by the system for violation(s) listed below. Our records indicate that your vehicle used the ‘E-ZPass Only’ land without a valid E-ZPass account or failed to pay the required toll in a staffed lane. In addition to the toll, a $25 administrative fee has been imposed for each violation listed below.”

Now I guess their equipment failed to register my transponder on my return trip. It is completley within their ability to have matched my license plate to my E-ZPass account and have sent me a note that they were charging my account an extra $3 because they detected this mistake on the part of their equipment.

Instead they pretend that they tracked me down through the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles database which matches my license plate, my address and me. Of couse they have all of this information in their own, presumably smaller database which is probably where they got the information from anyway. They even have a record of my having passed through the toll barriers just before and after the one in question, duly recorded by their equipment and entered into their database. I guess they just forgot to look. In their notice to me they never consider the possibility that I might have one of their transponders even though I would guess that the ratio of “violators” who have an E-ZPass transponder and weren’t detected to those who are actually trying to beat the toll is quite high. But some government fool thinks this is a fun new way to exact tribute from the little people.

If there’s some lawyer here on Free Republic who wants to take these people on with the intent of dismantling the whole system, I might be willing to make myself a test case.

ML/NJ

Source: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/591689/posts

The New Jersey Department of Transportation uses E-ZPass to track the movements of motorists even when not on toll roads.

NJ DOTDrivers who use E-ZPass toll transponders are having their movements recorded even when driving on free public roads. New Jersey Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine confirmed that the state’s department of transportation uses E-ZPass scanners to know when, for example, a motorist drives to the mall on Route 24 in the Short Hills area.

“This isn’t some kind of surveillance,” New Jersey DOT spokesman Erin Phalon told the Star-Ledger.

Instead, the official purpose of the program is counting traffic volume. The www.njcommuter.com website keeps track of traffic volume and accidents on important routes statewide. It is not clear whether the state has access to the identity of the motorists involved, because the New Jersey E-ZPass terms and conditions fail to disclose even the public tracking program.

“Nor are we liable for any third party act taken by reason of your use or display of the E-ZPass tag,” the terms and conditions state.

Toll transponder companies frequently hand over sensitive personal information regarding the movements of individual motorists in cases involving divorce and similar proceedings.

Source: Stop them before they scan again (New Jersey Star-Ledger, 1/29/2008)

NJ Parkway Scam

I am writing to you to express my dismay of your unbelievable, shameful practices!

This change of moving non ez-pass toll booths off road is a shameful attempt to collect money in violation fees from drivers who- have no intention of not paying the due toll- but are unaware of having to practically exit to pay the toll.

I, for one have been driving for ca. 14 years – never once did I not pay the toll, I never once tried to scam anyone. I use the parkway mainly to not get lost, so obviously I will not exit nor look for an exit before my destination. Sometimes I use the parkway to get to my destination more quickly – but either way, I basically drive the same stretch of road and have been for years.

Now with this Scam NJ is running, all of a sudden I receive one violation after another. Understandably I was concerned and upset, because I would never violate the law nor did I but I knew I had no way to prove it, because even when I go to a “maned” booth I never thought to ask for a receipt.

So I called EZ-pass and since it is hard to argue with my cars picture captured – I tried to find out what they exactly accuse me of.

And wouldn’t you know, it is not that my change didn’t register or any of the things I thought might have happened – why NO!! – it was just decided to remove the toll booths all together and just expect people to know they have to go“off road” to pay and then get back on.

The phone rep. had to explain to me where this took place and that there is a sign posted 2 miles ahead – but I never saw it, not that day in question nor when I went back to check! Probably because I wasn’t on the Parkway long enough – who knows, maybe it was just because I was driving along the same road I’d been on many times before and there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. And as for the ez-pass designated lane, usually, for years, one had plenty of time to change lanes once the toll booth came into view.

Now, had I done something wrong, I would pay the imposed fine. But since I did nothing wrong. I refuse to pay! Out of principle.

And after calling the Violations Bureau four times to date, judging by some of the comments the reps made, it seems I am by far not the only one with this problem.

I paid the 70cents. However I refuse to pay the “Administrative Fee”. I will not be scammed by
Government or Criminal. For it is obvious those changes were made to have people fall into this trap and thus collect enormous amounts in unjust fees.

Please have the courtesy to reply, and remove this disgraceful blemish from my record. And make an actual effort to inform people of these changes. Educate us drivers instead of trapping us!

Thank you.

Source: http://www.planetfeedback.com/state+of+new+jersey+turnpike+authority/other/nj+parkway+scam/302173

A great, big, huge FU to EZ Pass. I’ve had EZP for almost the entire time it’s been in NJ – I’m guessing at least 8 years. I love it, even though they started charging a $1/month service charge and took away the toll discount. I can deal with that, since I don’t have to sit in toll traffic, and I do occasionally head into NYC when the bridge/tunnel discounts apply.

Their latest scam is to claim they never received swapped tags. I just got a letter in the mail that they’re swapping a tag “before it has problems” that I swapped over 2 years ago because it *was* giving me problems. Since this was well before the swap program existed they didn’t send me a return envelope, so I sent it to the address on the tag. My big mistake? I sent it regular mail, with no delivery confirmation or return receipt.

The scam? They’re going to charge me $21 for not receiving a tag that they received 2 years ago. Fuck them. I’m considering canceling EZ Pass if they even try to charge me for this bullshit.

So when your EZ Pass comes up for a swap, be sure to mail it so that you get some sort of confirmation that it was received.

Source: http://www.wackbag.com/showthread.php?t=62087

In Ohio in the mail I just received a ‘Notice of Violation’ from E-ZPass, alleging that I had either failed to pay a toll on the Garden State Parkway or had underpaid–the allegation notice did not say precisely what they think I did wrong.

Worse, the allegation notice included two separate violations, one involving my rental car on that trip to N.J., the other involving ANOTHER Ohio license plate. The second violation allegation is an utter fraud.

I have a clear memory of paying all tolls IN FULL (not only on the date of my alleged offense but every single time I’ve gone through any toll booth or subway token turnstile etc.

The worst that MIGHT have happened is that I picked up a nickel, mistaking it for a quarter, but the E-ZPass violation citing my rental car license plate alleges that I owe $0.70. Not twenty cents.

And I remember very clearly counting the change carefully, putting the coins in the collection chute, and waiting for the sign to say ‘Thank You’ (I assume that the sign doesn’t thank drivers who short change the automatic coin-counter.

While I doubt organized crime has a mole at E-ZPass who is sending FALSE allegations out to OUT OF STATE motorists–those who are unlikely to challenge a $25.00 ‘administrative fee’ in addition to a dollar or less in supposedly ‘unpaid’ tolls, or that a hacker is scamming out of state motorists, I am concerned that this supposedly ‘accurate’ E-ZPass system not only wrongfully accused me but accused me without being specific about the charge (whether I underpaid or paid nothing according to their Big Brother System), and that their system concocted or connected a car, license plate, toll location, and time that had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with me and are now trying to shake me down for BOTH alleged offenses.

I am an attorney in Ohio and you can contact me at lit4@aol.com if you live out of state and received a bogus E-ZPass allegation recently, as I will be glad to file a class action against them, and I am also sending my concerns about possible fraud and perhaps criminal activity at E-ZPass to the New Jersey Attorney General and to the Prosecutor in Essex County N.J., as it is my sincere opinion that something ROTTEN is going on at E-ZPass, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to submit to state-sanctioned shake-downs (extortion) (the E-Z Pass letter threatened me with administrative fines of up to $500 if I failed to respond withing 15 days).

E-ZPass has bitten off more than it can chew with me by making false and vague (violating due process) accusations that are baseless AND in error. I would like to hear a rebuttal from a neutral but knowledgable third party regarding my recent experience with E-ZPass.

I think it’s everyone’s duty to FIGHT electronic ‘autocopism’ such as E-ZPass. If law enforcement wants to punish violations, citizens ought to have due process first (be told PRECISELY WHAT THEY ARE BEING ACCUSED OF DOING WRONG) and then be allowed their day in court BEFORE paying the fine (E-ZPass claims that you must first pay the amount they are trying to EXTORT from me before I can contest the accuracy of their charges, which is nothing more bureaucratic nazism). If we all don’t fight this growing tendency for machines and software to find and punish alleged violations of laws or administrative rules, we’re going to wake up with one messed up country quite soon!

Justin
Cincinnati, Ohio
U.S.A.

Source: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/239/RipOff0239797.htm

Though this happened during my visit last October, I’ve been too busy to write about it until now. After I got home, I received three letters from Dollar Rental Car forwarding State of New Jersey “Notice of Enforcement Action” notices to me. First of all, Dollar Rental Car charged $25 to my credit card for handling each one.

Then I had to pay NJ E-Z the missed tolls, plus a $25 “administrative fee” for two of them. (They put two violations on one notice, whereas Dollar Rental Car split them into three violations and charged me $75.

If I had been attempting to evade the tolls, I would have accepted it as getting what I deserved. But I never even saw the signs, not once, but at three separate toll plazas on the Parkway on two different days. Where do they put the signs, on the moon?

For years, if you wanted to take the express lanes, you got into the left lanes. That is now apparently, the E-Z Pass lane. What if you don’t want to take the local lanes? I could see no way to avoid the E-Z Pass lanes without getting all the way over to the right and taking the local lanes. I could see making this mistake once, but according to them it was three times. I can only guess about the other two plazas.

I think they deliberately make this confusing in order to collect more revenue. I emailed E-Z Pass and told them I have been a loyal Jerseyan in exile all these years but that I now felt like burning my Giants cap! (I know, JD thinks I should do that anyway!)

It’s a shame when a visit to your home state leaves a bad taste in your mouth because of a highway authority that puts collecting revenue over the well-being of motorists.

Has anyone else here inadvertently gotten into the wrong lanes on the Parkway and been photographed by the “Big Brother Is Watching You” cameras? I’m not a dense, inattentive motorist. Isn’t this setup very confusing?

Source: http://forum.aboutnewjersey.com/showthread.php?t=1231

Out of the many reasons that New Jersey sucks, their ezpass scam toll ripoff stands out.

This blog will focus on the New Jersey ezpass ripoff scam and will feature stories that I’ve found across the web that go into detail about how the state of New Jersey is using their ezpass system to scam and ripoff motorists who travel through the “Garden State”

Feel free to comment and if you’d like your story featured here, send a message to newjerseysucks1 (at) gmail (dot) com.