I skipped a toll station on the highway; which should be fine. A sign tells you that you can pay online within 7 days by searching your license plate. The next day I searched my license plate to pay what should have been $3-$4 in tolls and nothing came up. A month later I got a letter in the mail telling me that I owed the state around $100 for the tolls I "failed to pay" with nearly $90 assessed in late fees. The whole system is scummy.
Literal highway robbery.
On the online website, it says the search feature does not show the violations immediately and you should not rely on it.
"The optimal timeframe for a successful search is the second and third weeks following the missed toll. Many missed tolls will not appear until one week after they were incurred due to the need to review the images of the license plate."
Instead you should select the tolls you missed manually and then paying them. I have done this numerous time, noting the toll and time I missed and have never received a violation after I paid it online.
It's unfortunate that you had to pay a fine but you shouldn't blame the state for your errors.
And what's the technological reason behind there being a four week lag in the data being available? I can't think of a good one. I'm sure there's cell signal where the ANPR cameras are based.
If I was cynical, I'd go as far as to suggest the system is _engineered_ to encourage users to forget to check back at the correct time, even if they had attempted to pay at the first opportunity.
It's exactly the same as financial technology. Is there any technological reason why transactions shouldn't appear as soon as the authorisation takes place? No. It's poor because the incumbents can get away with it being poor.
A few years later I received a collections notice for $1,400 for ~$30 worth of tolls. (This was the first notice they'd sent me. No one could explain why.)
After spending hours on the phone with I-Pass the best they could do was reduce the fine to $300 while making the snarky offer that I could go to court if I didn't like it.
This was effectively a customer service issue (I was a valid customer in good standing), and I still wound up paying 10x the actual cost just to avoid missing work and traveling.