Tolls that have to be paid online

[Fianceechickie]

We live nearish the new Mersey bridge in Runcorn. You can't pay there and then, there are no booths and you have to remember to go online and pay when to get home. Is it me, or is that a neat way of money grabbing? Cheap for the operator who doesn't have to put in toll booths and people are bound to forget, being tired, busy, other things to do and they can just fine you then. DH been fined twice in the last few months having forgotten to pay the £2 when he gets home on evenings he's used it. On one occasion he paid for one trip that same day but forgot he'd driven across it again. You can set up an account but there's a £10 fee and £20 minimum top up. I've seen this on roads in Ireland too. I've not used it because I just know i would forget to pay!

One example. I had to help my father in law recently renew his e111 (or whatever they call it now) as you cant do it at the postoffice. He doesnt have internet is a young 70 and drives miles across the uk and europe every year. He thinks nothing of driving three hours to see the sea in the uk.

What if you're a tourist? Don't speak English?

Now try driving on the Autoroutes in France & using a similar excuse - won't wash.

As a driver it's your responsibility to manage these things - pretty sure people would be moaning if there were booths & a 5 mile queue too.

OP just create the account & keep it topped up - saves a lot of hassle in the long run.

I am not paying £35 to set up an account either.

Actually, it's a £5 fee & the other £30 is then in your account to pay for crossings.

If you use it regularly then it'd make sense, if you don't - just pay when you get home.

I didn't realise I'd gone into the congestion charge when dropping my dad at the pub one evening. It was dark, I wasn't familiar with the roads, didn't spot the signs. £80 fine! Most expensive pint ever.

Now I pay £10 per year for autopay, even though I never go into the zone, just in case. Bloody rip off.

My Mother drives and travels fair distances and she has no internet access and doesn't want any.

So that's her choice. As is using toll roads. As is driving. She is not being discriminated against, she is making in choice.

It's not the LAW that people have to have internet access.

Nor is it the law that they have to drive, or use toll roads. There is nothing stopping her from getting an internet device if her pension stretches to running a car an driving fair distances, she's just making a choice.

You might also like to point out to her that in 20 years time, functioning without Internet access will be essentially impossible. That's not the LAW, it's just a bald statement of fact.

He doesnt have internet is a young 70

So getting on the Internet would be easy for him. He chooses not to. The consequences of that are his problem, not that of the rest of society.

@CuboidalSlipshoddy you've got a bee in your bonnet this morning!

I agree there should at least be an option to pay there and then, of course there are people who drive and don't use the internet etc. My grandmother for one.

Sounds like the account would anyway have paid for itself.

Two fines £40

Two trips with the account total payment £30, £14 spent, £16 remaining.

Dartford tunnel has a warning letter scheme. I drive through a few rimes a year but forgot on one trip (there and back) and remembers several days later. A few weeks later I received a first offence letter saying if I paid within a few days I only had to pay the original charge because I’d gone through twice this didn’t apply to the second, I had paid but not in time, emailed them the receipt with a huge apology and they wrote the fines off. Might be worth contacting them to explain if you do get fined, they were really good about it.

Yes I much prefer the merseytunnels with the toll booths. I have now purchased a 'fasttag' as I do have internet access and this is much cheaper as no setup charge and minimum topup of £10.
I have avoided using the new bridge because of the hassle of the toll although I do need to do a drop off and pickup at the airport in a couple of weeks so will have to bite the bullet.
I do know several older people who drive and don't have a clue how to use the internet. They weren't brought up with computers.

Why can't people understand you don't need the internet. You can pay via phone or anyone of the 10000 pay stations in the UK. Same as the dart charge and congestion charge in London.
You have 24 hours to pay, and I know Dart charge always let you off a first offence.
You can pay in advance to so no need to forget.
If you can't read the signs then that's your tough luck. I drive regularly in Europe, and not understanding signs is not an excuse, and if you miss the signs then you probably shouldn't be on the road in the first place. The congestion charge in London is signed miles out, then on the road signs and giant 'C' symbols on the road. Hardly difficult to spot.
Get a grip people. Take responsibility for yourselves, read the signs and pick up a phone or go in a shop to pay, why should the rest of suffer queues and delays???

You can pay at any shop with a PayZone point. There are similar systems in use all over the world. Old people have lived through more change in their lifetime than probably any previous generation, I'm sure they can cope with paying in a shop for driving over a bridge.

I do know several older people who drive and don't have a clue how to use the internet. They weren't brought up with computers.

A lot of them weren't brought up with cars, either, not to mention phones or televisions. They seem to have figured it out.

Its just pure greed the bridge operator's dont need to pay for booths and they will catch out many many people with £40 fines its obscene if they had booths no one could use the bridge without paying no chance of getting lots of extra from these 40 fines (it will have been factored into profit margins).

Oh and you have to pay the fine if the website / system goes down and it has down 5 times now....

In London, there was a ludicrous parade of stupid about the withdrawal of cash payment on buses. Now no-one gives it a second thought.

Does anyone remember the crazy claims that old people would be unable to use Chip and PIN, and the obsessive pursuit of Chip and Signature cards? All completely stopped; now the same weirdos are complaining about Contactless being too hard for them, or something.

I've not heard "ooh, direct debits, you don't be wanting those" for a few years, but I'm sure if I looked hard enough it's out there. Have we stopped worrying that old people can't understand decimal coinage or pound coins yet?

It's shameless ageism. Society has changed a hell of a lot in the last 70 years, and current 70 year olds have changed with it. If they want to pull up the drawbridge and say "no more!" then fine, they're quite welcome to do it (they can go back to complaining about foreign food in supermarkets and the fact that you can't smoke in pubs) but it's a simple choice. Yes, there are problems of affordability, but if they can afford to run a car, they can afford to run a phone (and given there are no phone boxes anyway, what the hell do they plan doing when they get a puncture?)

And anyone who aged 70 that doesn't have a terminal condition needs to realise that being 80 and refusing to use the Internet in 2028 is going to be a pretty ugly way to live.

My 81yo Ddad drives but I'm not sure (in fact I know 100%) he wouldn't have a clue about tolls. Luckily he doesn't live near one.

I use the QE2 Bridge/Dartford Tunnel and have an account . I did feel really bad for all the operators of the Tolls - redundancy or relocation?
But , (brightside) its much quicker getting through them now!

*He doesnt have internet is a young 70

So getting on the Internet would be easy for him. He chooses not to. The consequences of that are his problem, not that of the rest of society.*

No it would not necessarily be easy. When he was growing up, there were no computers in personal use, no mobile phones, payments were by cheque, the only way you could draw out cash was by visiting your bank (and you had to set up a special arrangement if you wanted to draw cash from another branch), there were no debit cards, cheque cards, ATMs. There gets a point where everything is so far removed from what you grew up with that it gets difficult to take on any more.

Add to that things like stiff finger joints, which won't affect your driving, but make any sort of computer use extremely slow and subject to time-outs.

There gets a point where everything is so far removed from what you grew up with that it gets difficult to take on any more.

Right. So there are no 70 year olds on the Internet? And Facebook, say, is never used by 70 year olds? Seriously?

I wonder quite who's using Gransnet these days?

Oh, and the list of things you claim are difficult and new are all, without exception, more than twenty years old (personal computers, mobile phones), and many of them more like forty years old (ATMs, credit cards). Was he refusing to change when he was thirty or fifty, too?

My elderly uncle is fit and well and has all his marbles, he's a former barrister but refuses to get a computer as he's busy as a carer for his wife. He wouldn't have access to this system.

And anyone who aged 70 that doesn't have a terminal condition needs to realise that being 80 and refusing to use the Internet in 2028 is going to be a pretty ugly way to live. Since you've widened it to all older people, not just older drivers ... short term memory problems are a feature of old age (and don't necessarily mean the onset of dementia) and can make it all but impossible to cope with internet use. Saying "refusing to use the internet" is close to saying of a zimmer frame user "refusing to walk unaided"

I've forgotten to pay the dart charge. I usually go northbound but if traffic I go southbound and sometimes forget.

people who operate cars that they own, but do not have access to the Internet, don't exist

My NDN is a figment of my imagination then! She doesn't "do" the internet and doesn't own a computer or tablet. She has a mobile phone but I don't know if it's a smartphone. She's never had a job where she's had to use a computer (she gave up work to care for her late mother in the early 90s) and wouldn't know where to start.

She's perfectly intelligent and everything, used to be a podiatrist, she's just never had any need for or interest in using the internet.

I think that nothing should be internet only, you should be able to pay by phone if you don't use the internet.

*There gets a point where everything is so far removed from what you grew up with that it gets difficult to take on any more.

Right. So there are no 70 year olds on the Internet? And Facebook, say, is never used by 70 year olds? Seriously?*

There are 70 year olds on the internet and 70 year olds who do not use the internet. Of the 70 year olds who are on the internet, a good proportion do not use internet banking, do not do on-line bank transfers, and do not do any form of internet shopping.

Internet use by 65-75 year olds has now reached 75% - that still means 1 in 4 of this age group do not use the internet at all, and as I tried to explain above, many of those who use the internet do not feel confident or able to use it for any financial transaction.

I think that nothing should be internet only, you should be able to pay by phone if you don't use the internet.

Oh, the irony. A generation ago, there were complaints that you had to use a phone, why can't I write a letter?

So we're now focussing on people who can drive cars, use a phone, possess a credit or debit card (which apparently are also scary witchcraft the old folk can't be doing with) so that they can pay by phone, don't have access to the Internet and can't obtain same.