When you cross the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, there is no CASH toll lane anymore. This is only true for Golden Gate Bridge in Bay area. All other bridges have Cash Only and Fast Trak lanes. For someone who does not live in San Francisco (a tourist, or is used to occassionally traveling on other bridges that have CASH only lanes) this comes as a surprise. On Golden Gate, Fasttrak gives an alternative to CASH only lanes. This alternative however is seriously flawed. They use pictures and image processing to take snapshot of the number plates and then mail the toll to the address registered on the number plates. There are 3 situatuons in which this approach is susceptible to flaws:
(1) The image processing software can fail to detect the number plate properly due to a bad picture or poor quality plates. What if the plates were stolen in Sausolito by a thief? Would they let the car cross without a toll?
(2) They mail the toll instead of charing it right there. How long should the person wait to receive the mail? 7 days, a month? What if the person has to go on a vacation? What if he has to leave the country?
(3) What if the mail is lost? Fast trak uses regular mail for this. There is no signature verification of the delivery system?
In my scenario, I suffered because of lost mail and vacation. When I crossed the bridge in Oct 2014, I was expecting to receive the mail before I go to vacation in end of December. I waited for a month and did not receive any notice of toll. After that I got busy with my vacation plans and forgot about it. When I came back from vacation, I found a notice of toll violation with a fine of $25 in addition to the $7 toll fees. I was surprised by this move from Fasttrak and raised a complain on their website bayareafasttrak.org. I tried calling them, but they just put me on hold for so long. I suppose its a strategy used by Fasttrak. If a consumers time is valuable they may actually end up paying the fine and walk away instead of wasting time with them. By deploying less resources to service their customers they are benefiting twice. Once by not having to pay an employee for collecting toll on the bridge, then by issuing fines on top of a faulty toll system and lastly by not paying for any customer service representative. Pure profiteering with blessings of the state government.
Anyway I decided instead of wasting time on phone, filing online complaint may be better option. So I filed an online complain for which I received an email acknowledgement. But no action happend on it for a month. No denial of the complaint either. Instead after the expiry date of the toll violation notice, I receive one more Final notice with an even bigger fine. This was very frustrating and I decided that there is no point in wasting any more time with them and I would be better off paying them and close this now. Fasttrak uses threats of blocking future vehicle registrations with DMV.
When I decided to pay the fine on the website, Fasttrak presented an alternative option on the website. The alternative was to buy toll tags if its first time violation notice. The carrot was that the toll amount would be charged to the toll tag and you do not need to pay the fine. This is another misleading ploy. They do not tell you everything you need to know to make the decision of buying v/s paying the fine and walk away. I decided that I will buy the tags. Even though I do not use the toll bridges, I thought I may find use for them on occassions. However, after sigining up for toll tags and paying $25 for it I found that I still need to pay the full fine. Why? because the toll is more than 3 months old. They could have disclosed this information before I purchased the toll information. Better still they should have asked for my toll violation information first and then based on the violation dates etc.. given me the correct options. But no, they have designed a website with flaws that misleads people. So now I paid $25 for a toll tag I would rarely, if never, use and also paid $7 toll plus $32 fine for a total amount of $64. Thats a nice little charge for crossing Golden Gate bridge huh?
Well one could say $25 is still available for me to use for crossing Bridge in future. But wait my luck with the mail system has still not recovered when it comes to mails from Fasttrak. Before the toll tags could be delivered to me, I was notified of a mail theft in the apartment complex. Worried that someone would have stolen the toll tags and might use it, I decided to report it to Fasttrak. On their online system they give an option to report stolen tags. My intent was really to report them that I have not received their frigging tags yet. But stolen or lost is the only option there. Okay so I reported them as stolen since, I reckon that is what happened here. But d**n, who is to blame for stolen tags... its YOU Mr. Customer. We sent it to you by mail, if you did not receive it by mail then its not our problem. Its yours.. You pay for the new ones now..We have billed $20 to your account.
This exposes another nice flaw in their system.
1) Their employees can simply give the toll tags issued to Customers to their friends instead of mailing them. How do they protect against an inside fraud?
2) Mail delivery employees can steal the tags and use it. How do they protect against mail delivery fraud?
3) Criminals can use the tags before it reaches the owner, commit crimes and frame the innocent owner by crossing the bridges in a car of a similar make and model as the owner, with his number plates and tag..
I think this entire system of electronic toll collection system designed by Fasttrak is prone to error and requires serious rethinking.
I am filing this complain so that someone who has more power and resources can bring it to the right authorities.
FastTrak Reviews
When you cross the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, there is no CASH toll lane anymore. This is only true for Golden Gate Bridge in Bay area. All other bridges have Cash Only and Fast Trak lanes. For someone who does not live in San Francisco (a tourist, or is used to occassionally traveling on other bridges that have CASH only lanes) this comes as a surprise. On Golden Gate, Fasttrak gives an alternative to CASH only lanes. This alternative however is seriously flawed. They use pictures and image processing to take snapshot of the number plates and then mail the toll to the address registered on the number plates. There are 3 situatuons in which this approach is susceptible to flaws:
(1) The image processing software can fail to detect the number plate properly due to a bad picture or poor quality plates. What if the plates were stolen in Sausolito by a thief? Would they let the car cross without a toll?
(2) They mail the toll instead of charing it right there. How long should the person wait to receive the mail? 7 days, a month? What if the person has to go on a vacation? What if he has to leave the country?
(3) What if the mail is lost? Fast trak uses regular mail for this. There is no signature verification of the delivery system?
In my scenario, I suffered because of lost mail and vacation. When I crossed the bridge in Oct 2014, I was expecting to receive the mail before I go to vacation in end of December. I waited for a month and did not receive any notice of toll. After that I got busy with my vacation plans and forgot about it. When I came back from vacation, I found a notice of toll violation with a fine of $25 in addition to the $7 toll fees. I was surprised by this move from Fasttrak and raised a complain on their website bayareafasttrak.org. I tried calling them, but they just put me on hold for so long. I suppose its a strategy used by Fasttrak. If a consumers time is valuable they may actually end up paying the fine and walk away instead of wasting time with them. By deploying less resources to service their customers they are benefiting twice. Once by not having to pay an employee for collecting toll on the bridge, then by issuing fines on top of a faulty toll system and lastly by not paying for any customer service representative. Pure profiteering with blessings of the state government.
Anyway I decided instead of wasting time on phone, filing online complaint may be better option. So I filed an online complain for which I received an email acknowledgement. But no action happend on it for a month. No denial of the complaint either. Instead after the expiry date of the toll violation notice, I receive one more Final notice with an even bigger fine. This was very frustrating and I decided that there is no point in wasting any more time with them and I would be better off paying them and close this now. Fasttrak uses threats of blocking future vehicle registrations with DMV.
When I decided to pay the fine on the website, Fasttrak presented an alternative option on the website. The alternative was to buy toll tags if its first time violation notice. The carrot was that the toll amount would be charged to the toll tag and you do not need to pay the fine. This is another misleading ploy. They do not tell you everything you need to know to make the decision of buying v/s paying the fine and walk away. I decided that I will buy the tags. Even though I do not use the toll bridges, I thought I may find use for them on occassions. However, after sigining up for toll tags and paying $25 for it I found that I still need to pay the full fine. Why? because the toll is more than 3 months old. They could have disclosed this information before I purchased the toll information. Better still they should have asked for my toll violation information first and then based on the violation dates etc.. given me the correct options. But no, they have designed a website with flaws that misleads people. So now I paid $25 for a toll tag I would rarely, if never, use and also paid $7 toll plus $32 fine for a total amount of $64. Thats a nice little charge for crossing Golden Gate bridge huh?
Well one could say $25 is still available for me to use for crossing Bridge in future. But wait my luck with the mail system has still not recovered when it comes to mails from Fasttrak. Before the toll tags could be delivered to me, I was notified of a mail theft in the apartment complex. Worried that someone would have stolen the toll tags and might use it, I decided to report it to Fasttrak. On their online system they give an option to report stolen tags. My intent was really to report them that I have not received their frigging tags yet. But stolen or lost is the only option there. Okay so I reported them as stolen since, I reckon that is what happened here. But d**n, who is to blame for stolen tags... its YOU Mr. Customer. We sent it to you by mail, if you did not receive it by mail then its not our problem. Its yours.. You pay for the new ones now..We have billed $20 to your account.
This exposes another nice flaw in their system.
1) Their employees can simply give the toll tags issued to Customers to their friends instead of mailing them. How do they protect against an inside fraud?
2) Mail delivery employees can steal the tags and use it. How do they protect against mail delivery fraud?
3) Criminals can use the tags before it reaches the owner, commit crimes and frame the innocent owner by crossing the bridges in a car of a similar make and model as the owner, with his number plates and tag..
I think this entire system of electronic toll collection system designed by Fasttrak is prone to error and requires serious rethinking.
I am filing this complain so that someone who has more power and resources can bring it to the right authorities.