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Hank Investigates: Incorrectly Charged for EZPass Tolls:
Cynthia's red four-door sits in her Concord driveway. Exactly where it's been for weeks.
[...] "We were following the governor's order and we were not leaving," Cynthia said.
So when Cynthia got her April EZ Pass bill she was baffled. It said her car went through tolls in New York, a COVID hot spot.
[...] She was billed for 60 different tolls with charges totaling more than 600 dollars.
"It said we were on the Bronx, Whitestone Bridge, the Throgs Neck Bridge, and the RFK Bridge in New York City.
I'd never been on those bridges," Cynthia said.
Not a chance her car was in New York. She says she spent hours on the phone with EZ Pass trying to get the errors fixed.
[...] What happened? We found Cynthia's toll trouble is because of the way Massachusetts issues license plates—and a glitch in the EZ Pass system.
The problem is Massachusetts, one of the 17 states connected in the system, uses the same numbers on different types of plates. For example, there could be Mass passenger 1234, but also commercial 1234, Cape and Island 1234, Red Sox, Purple Heart, and more.
When a special plate like that gets an electronic toll, cameras snap a photo of it, and then it’s looked up in the EZ Pass shared system so the car can be charged.
But we found those files do not provide “plate type” information! So if commercial 1234, for instance, goes through, passenger 1234 could get the bill.
How in the world did anyone thing that giving the same license plate number to multiple vehicles was a good idea?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2020, @08:12AM (1 child)
I could see the argument for allowing different plate styles to have the same number, especially back when they were enforced by actual people who would already be well aware. But for a long time in my state, people from different counties could have the same number. In addition, they used to be consecutively assigned by a lot of counties. If you had a relatively low combination, there literally could be dozens of cars out their with the same plate. Thankfully, they changed it back in the 80s when a statewide number system was adopted, so it isn't too much of a problem now. But old vanity plates can still be renewed as grandfathered under the old system, so I'm sure someone somewhere has run into that problem with automated systems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2020, @11:32AM
We have EZpass here in western NY but I don't use the local toll bridge very often. So I get bills for $2 every other month or so, when I use that bridge a couple of times. Touch wood, so far no problems (I do wish they left a cash toll lane).
But maybe this is a good reason to sign up for EZPass and their in-car transponder--would having the transponder help disambiguate me if there was a similar plate number out there?