Toll Road Follies

Curmie got two bills (of sorts) for toll road fees today. 

One appeared on his phone; it was an obvious scam.  Curmie’s cell has a New Hampshire number, but he hasn’t been in that state in about three and a half years, and to the best of his recollection has never driven on a toll road there, even if there are any.  This is perhaps the third time he’s had one of these threatening messages.  The last one was from a phone number from the nation of Tuvalu; this time he didn’t bother to check before tapping the “delete and report” tab.

The other one came by mail, and was actually legit.  Well, sort of.  Curmie and Beloved Spouse were able to get away for a brief vacation in San Antonio between Christmas and New Year’s.  Our GPS took us onto a toll road near Austin on the way there; we took another route on the way home.  Anyway, we owed the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (what a title!) a grand total of $2.71, $1 of which was a processing fee.

Anyway, the outside of the envelope reads, in big letters, “Past Due Payment Required.”  Whoever was sorting the mail at the post office couldn’t have missed it, nor could our mailman.  Needless to say, there was nothing past due about our account, and those assholes knew it.  The invoice wasn’t even processed until the 11th, and just arrived today.  So we begin with a defamatory lie.  Way to start off on the right foot, CTRMA!

But there’s a $15 fine if you don’t pay the bill by the actual due date (February 10), and this is this kind of thing that sometimes gets buried, so Curmie decided to pay it immediately.  There are manifold ways of paying: by mail, online, by scanning a QR code, in person (in Austin, about a four-hour drive) or by phone.  Curmie didn’t have any stamps handy, and he didn’t really want to have to pay for one, let alone drive to the post office.  And he really didn’t trust those bozos to process a check as soon as they got it, especially since they’d get more money if they delayed.  Having a credit card receipt seemed the way to go, so he tried online first. 

You’ve got to fill out a form that wants far more information than is necessary, but Curmie shrugged and entered it all in.  But, of course, there were problems.  The form insists on a cell number.  Curmie dutifully plugged his in.  Nope.  It was the “wrong format.”  Of course, there wasn’t a specified format, but whatever.  After you get told you did it wrong, there’s (sometimes) a pop-up that says to use only numbers with no spaces.  That’s what Curmie had done, of course.  After a couple of tries, it became clear that “only numbers with no spaces” means “parentheses around the area code and then a space, and a hyphen after the exchange.”

Then you’ve got to enter a user name and password, then to identify the letters or decide what part of the photo includes a motorcycle or whatever.  Curmie got that far, hit the “next” button and watched the spinning wheel of death for a good four minutes before finally getting the message that there was an error, and to “please try again later.”  Curmie waited a few minutes, then tried again.  But this time he got a message that the secondary email couldn’t match the primary email.  Of course, Curmie hadn’t entered a secondary email.  So he added one.  Remember, all that’s happened so far is the system rejecting Curmie’s attempt to establish an account. 

One more try to establish the account… now the message reads that the primary email is already in use, presumably meaning that although the previous message had said that there was an error, apparently the account really was established… except that it wasn’t, or at least the password Curmie had just created didn’t work.

Anyway, after some more fiddling, we finally get to the point where you can enter your credit card information.  Another interminable wait while it processes, and another message that there’s been an error; try again later.  Arrgghhh.  Went through the whole process again, with the same result: there was an error, try later.  Okay, that’s it.  The online system is obviously FUBAR.  Fine.  Let’s try scanning that QR code.  Well, it doesn’t work, either.  At least it tells you that pretty quickly. 

Ah, but there’s still the possibility of paying by phone.  The robot voice, sounding rather like a junior high girl trying to be elegant, asks for the account number.  Curmie provides it.  He is then informed that he has a credit balance of $2.71.  Not only had they charged his card while claiming the inability to do so, they’d done it twice!

So Curmie called the credit card company.  Apparently they can’t do anything while the charge is still officially “pending” (Curmie would have thought it would be easier under those conditions), but once the charges are fully posted, Curmie can call them back and they’ll claw back the money.  It’s only $2.71, which Curmie can afford, but dammit, CTRMA is not getting paid extra because they’re inept.

Curmie already knew that avoiding that toll road in the future is of paramount importance, and that customer service at Discover is really good.  He’s learned one more thing: No one who works for CTRMA should be allowed within ten paces of any device that wasn’t manufactured by Fisher-Price.