South Bay Expressway Agreed to cancel toll then bills me $64.00 La Mesa, California
I was on my way from Palm Springs to the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility for a job interview. On Otay Mesa Blvd. my GPS tells me to turn left in 400 feet. I mistakenly turn on to the South Bay Expressway. I immediately recognized my mistake and tried to turn around. Guess what? You CANNOT turn around once you make the left turn on to the expressway even though the toll booth is approximately .5 miles from the entrance.
I pull up to the toll booth and explained to the facially pierced attendant that I made a mistake and would like to turn around. "No", she says while smacking her gum, "you have to go to the next exit to turn around". I ask her why and she tells me it's a "safety issue". So I ask what the toll is and she tells me. I don't have any cash on me (I'm unemployed and broke) and am unwilling to give this girl my credit card number. So she gives me a brochure about how to pay online. I proceed to the next exit and turn around, only to go through the same routine with another toll booth attendant when trying to exit this nightmare.
When I get home I call the number and explain to the woman that I had no intention of using the toll road and that it would be useful if their was a turn-around before having to commit to the toll road as their is on all the toll roads I ever used back East. She agreed to waive the toll and gave me a incident report number. I forget about it until today when I receive a bill for $64.00.
I understand that the County is now in control of this money pit. Well, SD, get off your collective butts and fix this monstrosity. There is absolutely no reason, other than to collect revenue, that there cannot be a turn around at the toll booth so that an errant driver like me can turn around. It is not a safety issue and you know it.
I've tried to call the company but was on hold for 30 minutes so I sent an email detailing the events. Something tells me from reading similar complaints that I'm not going to hear back from them. And governments ask why their citizenry are so routinely disappointed in them. Duh!
1 Updates & Rebuttals
South Bay Expressway
San Diego,California,
USA
South Bay Expressway Response
#2UPDATE Employee
Thu, February 02, 2012
Hello Eric,
We apologize that you received a violation in error. We are happy to make accommodations for customers who contact us who ended up on South Bay Expressway and are lost or confused. In your case, our records indicate that despite your trip being filtered from creating a violation in our system, you were sent one. This was our mistake and we do apologize. In addition, weve sent this occurrence to our IT team for research to ensure we can keep these instances to a minimum.
The customer service representative you spoke with, filtered or waived both of your trips taken that day one at 11:15 a.m. and one at 11:45 a.m. despite them not being within a few minutes of one another as you state in your report as a courtesy. While we do apologize that youve had to take extra steps to clear up this violation sent in error, were unsure how else we could have made this situation any better since we have waived both the toll and penalty for both of your trips taken that day.
We see that you sent us an email Friday 1/20/2012 just after 3:30 p.m., which we responded to the following business day, Monday 1/23/2012 just before 10:00 a.m.