Anger over e-toll billing errors

843 27.05.2013 E-tag tariffs toll at gantry Ihobe at Midrand M1 prices. Picture: Motshwari Mofokeng

843 27.05.2013 E-tag tariffs toll at gantry Ihobe at Midrand M1 prices. Picture: Motshwari Mofokeng

Published Dec 23, 2013

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Many motorists are complaining about problems with the e-toll system - from bills delivered to people who don’t own cars to credit card details being lost and e-tags that won’t work.

Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance chairman Wayne Duvenage said its website had been inundated with people writing in about strange happenings with their e-toll accounts.

People are also turning to social media platforms to vent their anger as well as customer service rating centres such as Hello Peter.

Heimrich Swart lives in Mokopane, Limpopo, and has not been in Gauteng since the beginning of the year. His wife does not have a car registered in her name. But last week she received SMSes from the e-toll violations processing centre informing her she was behind on her account.

Swart said he called the customer call centre to enquire about the messages but none of the four people he spoke to could help him.

After being on the phone for 21 minutes without getting any help, I put the phone down.”

Alastair Dooley registered for an e-tag the day before e-tolling started on 2 December. He travels through seven gantries to get to work.

He registered online and the South African National Roads Agency Limited confirmed his credit card details were correct by processing a R1 transaction on his account.

But a few days later, Dooley got an e-mail from Sanral saying his credit card had been declined, and then the call centre told him his credit card had expired.

HOT-LISTED

“But I was on my account and I could see the expiry date on the system was correct and the credit card hadn’t expired,” Dooley said.

He was then told that his credit card had been hot-listed and that he must go into a customer call centre and swipe the card.

“As soon as they said I had to swipe the card, I knew there was a problem with their system. I told them I believed they were lying to me and that they had a problem with their system, but they denied this,” Dooley said.

Dooley knew a woman who worked for a bank on the e-toll project and asked her if she knew anything.

“She told me there was a glitch in their system and that the credit card details of all those who had registered between 1 and 4 December could not be retrieved,” said Dooley.

There were 84 complaints against Sanral on the Hello Peter website in the past week.

One customer wrote that they had sold their vehicle in July 2013 but Sanral had put this vehicle on their account. The customer centre couldn’t help, and the customer wrote that, “to make matters worse, they confirmed the vehicle was deleted from my account but (money) still gets deducted”.

Another motorist wrote about going to a customer service centre for help. After an hour there, officials deleted two extra accounts that had mysteriously been added to the motorist’s original account.

A few days later, the same motorist got a letter saying there were discrepancies with the account, so no discount would apply, and telling them to go to a service centre to link the tag again.

Sanral spokesman Vusi Mona said he could not deal with individual customer complaints and urged motorists to call their call centre to get help. - The Star

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