Therefore, it's unclear how this would operate, how additional fees would work, and whether Conduent would continue as the contractor for mailing bills and overseeing customer service.Ĭonduent, which was spun off from Xerox in 2017, was awarded a eight-year $325.6 million contract with the Turnpike Authority and five other tolling authorities in the state in September 2015. In May, the Turnpike Authority board adopted a 10-year capital plan that included a $900 million project to convert the conventional toll plazas into E-ZPass or toll-by-mail collection by scanning license plates and mailing bills.įeeney said the transition to cashless tolling has not yet been approved by the board or scheduled. “In response to an emergency mandate to move toward all-cashless transactions due to COVID-19, an inadvertent administrative error occurred on one day, which resulted in a small percentage, 2.5%, of motorists who traveled between late March and mid-May not receiving an initial toll-only notice," Conduent wrote in a statement.īut the inadvertent errors - whether by the company or a motorist - coupled with the challenging customer service experience to fix them could be cautionary tales of what's to come. The Turnpike Authority directed Conduent to return money to those who paid the fees in error and remove wrongful fees from driver's accounts. In Watkins' case, the fees disappeared from her account shortly after the authority was contacted by the press.ĭuring the seven-week period earlier this year when cash toll collections were suspended on Turnpike Authority highways, more than 79,000 people received incorrect toll notices and were wrongly charged $50 administrative fees, according to a report in NJ.com. The Turnpike Authority also said there are unusually long wait times for customer service "because of staffing issues related to the Covid emergency." (Customers are also encouraged to contact the Customer Service Center online by visiting and submitting a service request.) "If a customer without a valid E-ZPass account goes through an E-ZPass lane, she has committed a violation." That is how electronic tolling has worked in New Jersey since it was introduced in 1999," Turnpike Authority spokesman Tom Sweeney said in an email. "If a customer doesn’t have a valid E-ZPass account, she has to pay with cash at the toll plaza. "I just feel like I’m kind of stuck," she said, adding that she wasn't able to reach anyone with customer service to help her sort through this.Ĭonduent - the company hired to do customer service and billing for the tolls-by-mail program - and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority both said the fees were standard operating procedure. "I took the time to write on the back of all of these notices what my dispute was, sent them all in and then tried to call with a follow-up and just nothing," she said.Īlong with the dispute notices, she sent checks to the New Jersey Turnpike Authority for the tolls, which lowered her balance but the administration charges remained.
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