road toll violation

[cliveo]

Hi everybody,
I'm UK based. 2 months ago I was in Florida and, today, I've just received from the hire car company (Dollar) a notice that I violated a toll charge of $0.50 at Curry Ford toll so I have been fined this amount plus a $25 admin fee which Dollar have very kindly paid on my behalf via my credit card..
The allegation is ludicrous as we travelled as a party in two cars and nowhere did we seperate ie we passed through all toll gates one behind the other - in any case, who is going to 'evade' a toll charge of 50c and how would you do this without crashing the barrier?
I have received no official road agency documentation, only the Dollar letter, and for all I know this could well be a scam.
Ok, $25 is not important in the context of a holiday costing $2000 and there seems little point in arguing the matter via Dollar,but you will, I hope, understand my annoyance.
Has anybody any thoughts on this situation>
Thanks.
CliveO

[FLRoads]

The OOCEA (Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority) may have sent the notification and fine to Dollar who in turn passed it on to you. I use to live in the Orlando area and used the toll facilities often. I believe that they do have it set up where you are allowed so many "violations" through their toll facilities without any penalty. Perhaps the specific vehicle you were renting had previous violations and had passed the maximum allowed. Have you called Dollar and inquired about the allegation? That is what I would do.

Sorry to hear about your bad luck, but hope you had a good holiday in Orlando

Cheers

[cliveo]

Thanks FRG,
It's an interesting theory but I know with certainty we did not violate any tolls so how come we are said to have done so on a specific date.
We don't have many road tolls in the UK but I have been driving in the US for over 30 years and so would like to think I'm reasonably familiar wth the procedures but what's bugging me is how one 'violates' the toll payment process - short of just gatecrashing through which, obviously, I didn't do.You infer it's a common enough occurence so what, precisely, happens; how is the barrier by-passed?
Your further thoughts would be appreciated - thanks.
CliveO

[FLRoads]

As far as the toll plazas in the Orlando area, none of them have "toll gates" (or barrier in your case) that only allow one vehicle to pass at a time, so no gate crashing would have occured. For instance (not related to your case but an example just the same), I've seen in many instances where a car is directly on the bumper of another car going through the toll plaza, since there is no barrier to block that second vehicle. And I have had it happen to me. It's unfortunate that that happens but when there are no barriers but I believe they do it to keep the traffic moving. I have also heard that some motorists get charge double toll when vehicles ride directly behind you when going through the plaza (as in the example stated above), which is another unfair occurrence people have to deal with with the toll authority.
If I were you and wanted to pursue this further, not only would I contact Dollar to find out why you were fined, I would also contact OOCEA. Here is a link to the contact page: http://www.oocea.com/Corporate/about/ContactUs.aspx

I hope this information helps. Keep us posted on this as I am sure you are not the only one out there that this has happened to.

   

[Scott5114]

It's also possible you ended up in a transponder-only (i.e. SunPass or whatever Florida's transponder system is called) lane inadvertently and, having no transponder, were billed for a violation.

[SSOWorld]

That's if you went through one without a gate.

[cliveo]

Thanks guys for the further info.
Have to confess I'd forgotten there are no 'barriers' as there are in most of Europe.
I contacted OOCEA as suggested and was surprised to learn from them that the Expressway Authority gets ONLY the $0.50 and the admin fee of $25 goes to, in this case, Rent-a-Toll, whoever they might be.I'm afraid I don't understand the technicalities of all this, but never mind.
OOCEA provided a link to RaT (appropriately named?) and I was able to input the violation number and 'view the incident' which is great except that the image is 'not available'.Well why am I not surprised!
The only thing I learned from the website is that the violation relates to Sunpass(1) which I assume relates to the point made by Scott5114 and Master son?
These lanes are surely marked quite clearly and I cannot see how we could have strayed into one inadvertently;in any case, as I said at the outset we travelled in 2 cars and always followed each other through toll areas so if one 'strayed' then so did the other!
And as these areas are electonically monitored then why would there be no image available?
I remain convinced there is a nice little earner here for somebody ie a scam of some sort, but don't see how I can do anything from over here.
I haven't approached Dollar as cannot see them being willing to discuss this

[mightyace]

I did a quick check on their website (http://www.rentatoll.com/), and the company is one of a growing number of companies that provide "rental" transponders when you are in a rental car.

Now, if it was on your rental, you should see other toll charges on your rental receipt as well as the rental fee for the device.

If you did legitimately, if unknowingly, rent this device, then the violation could be from a time when you went through a tolling facility and it failed to register the device.

If you did not rent such a device, then you may be the victim of a clerical mixup where the violation got tagged to you instead of the actual renter of the device.  If they or OOCEA could provide an image, you should be able to clear this up.  In this case, IMHO, I don't think that it's a scam but rather incompetence on the part of OOCEA, RentAToll, and/or your rental company.  The part that is unreasonable is the $25 processing fee for the violation.  Unfortunately, that kind of fee is fairly common for things like this, photo red light or speeding cameras, bounced check fees, etc.

I at least hope you can figure out what happened so that you can keep it from happening again.

Good luck!

[cliveo]

Thanks,MightyAce,interesting info.
We didn't rent a transponder and we didn't go through a Sunpass lane so the mystery remains.
I might just see what Dollar has to say - if they choose to reply I'll let you all know if anything of interest transpires.
Thanks again,everybody.

[Scott5114]

You may also want to contact your credit card company. I remember that MasterCard was willing to throw their weight around on our behalf when Hertz tried to charge us for chassis damage to one of their cars. If your card company says to Dollar "this is the way it's going to be" then they'll have to listen, since the card company can easily do a chargeback and then Dollar will lose all that money.

[cliveo]

Ok, Scott, thanks.

[cliveo]

Hi everybody - this is just an up-date of progress for information only.
I visited the RentaToll website where it is possible to view an image of the alleged violation but, at that time, it just said 'no image available';so I went to Dollar and asked for further info and eventually they e-mailed me an image.
This was contradictory as, whilst it did show my rental car, it showed a Search Parameter being wrong date/time/location, and then underneath a different set of data with a different date/time/location; so I told Dollar I was confused and they replied that so were they and they're refunding the charge in full!
So all's well that ends well.
Thanks again to everybody who responded.
CliveO

[Bryant5493]

^^ Good deal. At least you didn't stuck "holding the bag."


Be well,

Bryant

[FLRoads]

Even though it took a while, glad everything worked out for you.

[mightyace]

Glad to hear it went well.

Yet another thing to be aware of when traveling.