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Yesterday, I received a notice from the rental car company telling me that I didn’t pay toll on one of the toll booths in Chicago, Illinois. Didn’t pay toll? I would never skip that and I live in Southern California!
As my blood started pumping faster and I was beginning to fill with anger, I remembered one thing “Maybe it was the customer visit I had in May”. I read further and got to this line: “Citation Date: 05/08/2008″. Doh…
On the letter, it says that it’s actually the government that caught it so the letter was only to notify me that they called the citations department to change the responsibility to me and also to charge me a $15 administrative fee. I called Alamo and to my surprise, the lady was willing to waive the $15 fee (I guess they were never expecting anyone to pay).
She also told me that the government will be mailing me a letter citing the charge and asked me to wait for the letter to come. “That will take 8 weeks” she says, I say “Great………”
To this minute, I still cannot figure out why I would miss a whole toll booth. The date seems to be reasonable, but I do not remember running pass a toll booth at all. After much thought, the only thing I can think of is that I paid and didn’t wait for the green light to notify me that they received payment.
At this point, I don’t even know how much the charges will be. Those tolls are nothing more than $1, so hopefully the penalty is not that much.
What Good Came Out of This?
I did learn a few things after this incident though.
- Be patient and always wait for the green signal before leaving the toll booth
- Always call the number on the citation notice to get clarification
- Always ask for a discount (they might even waive the fee)
Now I wait. Hopefully the citation from the government will come soon and I can put all this behind me.
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Oh no! I hope everything is okay!
Interesting… sucks, but I would be interested to find out what the fee is.
I had a friend experience this recently. His fee was around $80. In Chicago it’s real easy to go around with traffic through the quick pass or whatever it’s called.
It slows down things, but you can always ask for a receipt also
Joe: I hope so too!
No Debt Plan: I will keep everyone updated!
JB: Wow $80… I certainly don’t look forward to that but I also want to get the receipt quickly and get this resolved soon.
Grrrrr! Huh? Can’t wait to hear what the charge is! Yeah that’s probably what you did, was take off before the green light came on! Make sure you let us know when ya get it. I am anixous to find out the charge.
Lesson learned!