7 ms·
Ough, this touches a nerve. The Fastrak system is atrocious and I have been battling it for years. Let me count the ways: - They took my CC number and just k
by FullyFunctional 5y ago
Ough, this touches a nerve. The Fastrak system is atrocious and I have been battling it for years. Let me count the ways:
- They took my CC number and just kept replenishing $25 every so often even though it had a big balance already. Thankfully my card expired so now I'm sloooowly (don't drive much anymore) working my way through the $100+ credit on my account.
- It is so hard to check and contest charges. I had to sent in my complaint with snail mail and IIRC it took a month before I got a reply back that requested information that I already wrote in the first letter doesn't apply. I gave up at this point.
- There is _NO_ way to check the transponder short of just using it and waiting a week for the event to show up on the bill. My windshield was apparently blocking radio transmissions (I know why, don't tell me) and experimenting with a different location has a crazy long cycle time due to the above. There days I guess I could do it with a car driving behind me reading what the sign say, but that only works when there isn't much traffic.
I hate Fastrak.
- benlivengood 5y agoIt was nice that the intermediate version beeped when getting pinged; the new flex version (with number of riders switch) is silent again. Maybe it's time to hack a tone into it.
- erwincoumans 5y agoThe new Flex transponder (with 1,2,3 switch) does beep for me when passing a bridge toll port (84, 92 etc), not on the highway 101 lane.
- outworlder 5y agoHow "new" is it? The new ones are not supposed to beep. https://www.bayareafastrak.org/en/support/toll-tag-basics-faq8.shtml https://www.bayareafastrak.org/en/support/toll-tag-basics-fa...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- erwincoumans 5y agoGumstick Flex from August 2019, but starts with 090 instead of 101 (one month early). Why did they remove the beep?
- FullyFunctional 5y agoAh, that's interesting. I've never heard a beep from any of my transponders, including crossing bridges. Is yours the "gumstick" one? (Thin rectangular one). A beep would be a step in the right direction (but doesn't solve my other grievances).
- classichasclass 5y agoI have a new southern California FasTrak switchable, and it does not beep (it's not supposed to, either, per the toll agency: no battery, no piezo).
- Penguinx628 5y agoI am not related to them in any way but I would recommend you to use privacy.com to control charges against your cards for situations like this. Capitol One has a service called 'Eno' and Citi has 'virtual account numbers' if you have either of those services they can also help you control charges in a much more granular way than using a regular credit card. Hope this comment helps someone like these services help me.
- MisterTea 5y agoIn the northeast we have E-ZPass which is equally evil. - They too have a stupidly weird replenishment algorithm where it takes what feels like weeks to adjust. Then out of nowhere, it will increase many times even if you only increased travel temporarily. It went from maintaining a $26 balance to $180 which will take forever to use. - "It is so hard to check and contest charges." - We used to have a business with two delivery vans with E-ZPass. We received a very high bill and it was full of "toll violation" charges which were 2 or 3 dollars that accompanied nearly every toll, some with two violations. I called them to inquire what these violation were and they flat out told me "we dont know." I forget the details but we wound up having to pay though the charges never appeared again. I feel like they robbed us using a computer glitch. - "There is _NO_ way to check the transponder" - Yup. This is really frustrating because Ive gone on trips where the vehicle was supposedly on the account but the tag wasn't registering at the NJ tolls on I95 during a road trip. So I got a bunch of unpaid toll violations I had to manually resolve through their awful web portal. I then check the account and find the vehicle was not on the account - huh? I am sure I added it. Who knows... I hate E-ZPass.
- Arainach 5y agoIt's a symptom of contracting everything out to the lowest bidder. In Washington State who has the "Good to Go" system. Its deployment has been full of quirks, my favorite of which was that if your balance ever went negative (say you had it set up to replenish at $5 but got a $10 toll) the system would refuse to charge you (even when you had a payment method on file or went to their website) and you had to call in and talk to a human to fix it.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThe best tolling experience I had was in Canada. Simply got a bill mailed to me in the US based on license plate.
- rootusrootus 5y agoDoes that not work pretty much the same everywhere? On the rare occasion that I drive across the SR520 bridge across Lake Washington, they have no problem recognizing my Oregon plate and sending me a bill. Same when I drove through the Bay Area. Took them a couple weeks.
- the_svd_doctor 5y agoDon’t transactions (should) show up in your online account pretty much instant? I thought they did for me. I also hate fastrack and the “fast lanes”. Only good thing is they send you the transponder pretty much for free :)
- classichasclass 5y agoNot always. Particularly if you're driving outside of your provider's service area, it may take as long as a week for a charge to show up. I have a long commute right now and I sometimes don't see charges for days.
- FullyFunctional 5y agoThey (the Fastrack rep) literally told me to wait for days. In my experience there's at least a 24 hour latency.
- vostrocity 5y agoI bought a new car and I couldn't figure out if my license plate has the digit '0' or the letter 'O', so I added both versions to my FasTrak to check which license plate would get charged. It took 4 days after crossing the toll to finally see the charge on my account.
- hunter2_ 5y agoI was about to say "there is no letter O, only number 0" but Wikipedia [0] mentions that California does have both. You can deduce which character it is based on position: > California currently only uses I, O, and Q in between two other letters, for example "1AQA000".[citation needed] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_license_plate_designs_and_serial_formats#Skipping_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_license_plate_de...
- throwaway09223 5y agoI had a problem with someone else having registered their car at my address. Fastrak matched the address and automatically charged their tolls to me. I used their terrible web portal to remove the other car from my account. They just added it back. I called them and told them it wasn't my car, that I did not consent to the charges. They didn't care. I ended up just cancelling Fastrak entirely and now I pay tolls only for my own vehicle manually. I can't use carpool lanes because of this. I've been considering registering a Fastrak with someone else's address, just so I can use carpool lanes again.
- FullyFunctional 5y agoThat's awful but is pretty much confirming my experience. At the revenue level they have, you'd assume they could do better, but presumably having a monopoly means they don't have to care.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> That's awful but is pretty much confirming my experience. At the revenue level they have, you'd assume they could do better, but presumably having a monopoly means they don't have to care FasTrak is a monopoly operated by a private, for-profit firm, accountable to it's owners. As long as complaints don't get to the body that oversees them and which is politically accountable to the public, they aren't going to try to do better, because that has a cost and reduces profits.
- ThunderSizzle 5y agoI assume it's a monopoly that a/the government created/enforces?
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago>I've been considering registering a Fastrak with someone else's address, just so I can use carpool lanes again. Use the address of someone in management at Fastrak if you want the problem fixed.
- tomc1985 5y agoThis reminds me, the tolling system for the SF bay bridges are even worse... for some resaon you have a narrow band of time to pay your toll and the payment options are super limited. I got Fastrak because of how big a PITA it was and I don't even live there (though it's also in use here in socal)
- racnid 5y agoAaah yes. A while back I rented a car in England, did a bunch of driving, and on my way back to the airport crossed the Dartford Bridge in the dark. For some reason you have 24 hours to pay it then it steadily becomes more and more impossible. I wasn't able to get online to pay it and flew out in the morning. Que a year of increasingly ridiculous demand letters from whoever runs that tolling system. They escalated to sending me bills in the US with short windows to pay which of course arrived after their demand window closed. So I never paid it.
- PopAlongKid 5y agoFor some bizarre reason, the Bay Bridge toll plaza does not recognize the 1-2-3 settings on the newer FasTrak tags.
- PaulHoule 5y agoWe have something like that in New York State for me it is trouble free. I used to waste time stacked up in toll plazas around Albany but with EZ Pass I drive right through and don't feel like part of the problem.
- vostrocity 5y agoFasTrak has actually been surprisingly nice for me. I love the ability to add cars by license plate to an account, and being able to specify exactly when coverage starts and ends down to minute precision. Renting a car? You can add the plate to your account for just the period you're renting so you don't pay the rental company fees.
- Melatonic 5y agoI didnt know they added that - before you could just add a car or remove. Specifying when it starts and ends sounds like a nice upgrade
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]