A friendly place to chat.
No politics please. Don't be a dick.
Anyone fancy a moan about the Dartford crossing?
Woke up this morning to a £35 penalty for forgetting to pay the toll charge.
I swear they make it as easy as possible to forget...
I almost preferred when you had to toss coins into a hopper...
End whinging.
Seeing as it was supposed to become free to cross 20 years ago…
Yup. Someone should be locked up for it, it's actually just daylight robbery at this point as far as I am concerned.
Utterly useless, a complete shit show from start to finish. Whatever is doing their it needs to be sacked for sheer incompetence.
I was not informed in advance that their systems would be down. I had a balance of £4 on my account on Saturday, and as I was due to make 4 crossings over the weekend, I tried to top up, but was unable to even log in. Tried for a couple of days, and even when I did get logged in, the payment screen wouldn't load. Finally managed to top up Tuesday. Made another crossing on Thursday, but here we are Friday afternoon and none of the crossings this week have shown up. I swear if they send me a penalty I'll tell them to go fuck themselves. Complete incompetence.
Whoever* Fucking autocorrect.
I remember forgetting to pay once with a work vehicle. I was ready to pay the £35 fine but when I went online to pay, the system told me that as this was a first offence for that vehicle, they'll let me off with the cost of the crossing charge.
Right now, I had to wait 3 hours to get into the site to log a dispute. I paid for two crossings back in July but I mistyped my reg number. They don't know that and have issued me with two fines.
As long as you were using the crossing to escape Thurrock / Essex, I'd call it a win.
We've had that when taking a Google map shortcut somewhere up north near Newcastle way, can't even remember where. Wasn't even particularly clear where to pay for the toll so in our naivety assumed we'd missed it because we'd been expecting the buckets to toss coins into...
There's one little sign when you come out the tyne tunnel i think. Very easy to miss. Catches locals out as well who are casual users
I think the Mersey bridge is a similar system? I've got an account for that but crossed in a new car that I forgot to register. Didn't realise until it was too late.
That was 2 weeks ago and nothing yet...
Why not sign up for the automated payment option?
I was in a hire car
I forgot to pay the Heathrow one, I'd gone to pick up my wife and daughter after they had been visiting family for 6 months and I just forgot. That was in June, and yesterday I got a letter saying I need to pay £40!
My bad!
That's another moneygrab that irritates me.
American here. How do you pay for the tolls if there's no automated transponder and I assume no actual toll both workers?
Cameras photograph your number plate and start the clock. You have 24 hours to pay online or on app for the crossing.
You can create an account that auto tops up from your bank and auto charges.
Also, fuck Gordon Brown for selling the fucking bridge it should be free now. We have paid for it.
Got it, that sounds pretty convenient though maybe 24 hours is a bit tight. Do you have to create an account per toll or does one account cover a whole region?
You don't have to make an account to pay this one but you can do to setup autopay: https://www.gov.uk/pay-dartford-crossing-charge.
We don't have many tolls at all in the UK. For motorways there's this one and the M6 toll (more of an alternative route which can be avoided easily) which has toll booths (automated machines on exit). Others are usually bridges or tunnels and one account is unlikely to cover many but you're unlikely to cross more than one toll regularly. https://www.gov.uk/uk-toll-roads
The new slightly similar annoyance is airports. They used to be free for drop off but now charge around £6, and you have to go online and pay within 24 hours similar to this one. They offer free parking at long stay to tick a box but you have to get the bus to the terminal and they make it as inconvenient as possible so is not used much. Absolute rip off merchants and only helps the non-UK based private owners make money...
You have to pay online within 48 hours and they ANPR you.