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!

So what do you do if you turn up somewhere that you've never been before, find that they use a different parking app? Do they all require pre-registration?

The ones I've got could be setup on the phone if you can enter payment (i.e. card) details.

You have to have a signal to be able to download the app (but then if you are paying by app they need you to have a signal too).

As far as I can recall (certainly with RingGo) you can also call a number and pay through a menu-driven service. And (nice touch) if you have paid using that phone before, it remembers your car details and last parking spot to speed things up.

I am a massive fan of doing as much online as possible, and have been for a long long time.

CuboidalSlipshoddy

I may have been you in a previous life ...

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

The toll booths on the Motorway in/around Dublin were taken away because they were causing huge queues. Should everyone be held up because a minority have goldfish memories, simply can't be arsed to be grown ups or refuse to adopt established technology or other accessible alternatives?

Sounds like there are more than enough ways to pay, including setting up an account if you don't want to have to remember to pay.

DGRossetti Thanks. If you don't have an internet account linked to your phone (ie you may use it for browsing etc but you don't use it for email or personal banking etc) you can't download the app, so I was thinking if you were using the "call a number and pay through menu driven service" option - easy enough if pre-registered, with phone no and car reg entered into the app you set up at home. I know some have options for people who aren't pre-registered, but I wondered if this was the general rule?

All unfamiliar territory to me as round here all carparks are either free or pay-and-display ticket machines.

As far as I can recall (certainly with RingGo) you can also call a number and pay through a menu-driven service. And (nice touch) if you have paid using that phone before, it remembers your car details and last parking spot to speed things up.

I think it also remembers the payment card, and just requires you to type the CV2.

"I don't trust the Internet, but I'm willing to stand in a car park giving my full credit card details including the CV2 over the phone to a number I got by a sign stuck on the wall" strikes me as an interesting balancing of risks. I'd be a lot more sympathetic to people who claim that the Internet is risky and scary for financial transactions if they showed the slightest sign of being appropriately sceptical about telephones.

I also carry a tin of loose change for the prehistoric car parks. Last time I needed it the **ing car park only accepted the old 50p coins anyway, so I was still stuffed.

One downside of paying remotely is you can't hand over an unused ticket as a good deed.

If you don't have an internet account linked to your phone (ie you may use it for browsing etc but you don't use it for email or personal banking etc) you can't download the app

Is "I have an internet connected phone but have never downloaded any applications, nor will I ever do so" a substantial use-case? Can you even set an iPhone or an Android phone up like that these days?

But anyway, you can register by phone, using your voice or the keypad, so you can do that with any phone, from the car park, if you wish. It will thereafter tie your details to your phone number. Yes, if you change your phone number, you'll have to re-register.

How can you use the phone for browsing if you don't have an "internet account"?

One downside of paying remotely is you can't hand over an unused ticket as a good deed.

There's an increasing number of cash Pay and Displays which imprint your registration onto the ticket. Having to type it in is a pain in the neck.

One carpark near me is doing some funky ANPR stuff, which I think is extremely dubious, where you drive in, park, pay at a machine (or get it free from some of the businesses in the trading estate) and then drive out. No barriers, no "your numberplate is" displays, no "thanks for paying" or "whoa! you need to pay" display.

It's all done by ANPR, but there is no feedback, so if it happens to mis-read your plate on the way out, you're stuffed. Another similar one has a barrier which raises once it's recognised your car as one that has been paid for, but this one has no feedback at all that your payment has worked correctly until, presumably, the PCN arrives and you start stalking the peppipoo forums.

I think to actually use a smartphone at all, it's compulsory to enter a gmail address or apple id as part of the set up process even if you never use it for the internet/apps (although I don't understand why you would bother with a smartphone in those circumstances - a normal one with its longer battery life would be more practical and cheaper).

I got done on thr congestion charge in London. Got in the wrong lane and got forced to turn right not left. Did a small loop to go back where I wanted to be - which was not in the zone but the one way system took me into it.

I did see the mark in the road but there was nothing I could do. When I got home late I forgot until it was too late and got fined. It was day's wages at that point.

How can you use the phone for browsing if you don't have an "internet account"?

The poster is referring to having an account registered with Apple or with the Google Store (Android Play? You know the one), which you need to do in order to download applications, even free ones. Unfortunately, in order to do that you need to tie it to a credit card, which worries some people if, for example, they are going to allow their children to play games with in-app purchases available on it.

I have some slight sympathy with that, although "buy a five quid pre-pay debit card and use that to register the account" is a (somewhat inelegant) workaround.

"How can you use the phone for browsing if you don't have an "internet account"?" I'm probably getting muddled. I don't want to use my personal email account from my phone (and don't want my devices too linked because I'm perfectly capable of losing my phone when I'm out) and I haven't got around to setting up another email account just for phone use, therefore I can't download apps directly to it when I'm out and about.

Oh, I see. But you can always go onto the web site of the operating company to pay. I have to do that with one parking app that simply doesn't work. I'm looking at you Dash

I think to actually use a smartphone at all, it's compulsory to enter a gmail address or apple id as part of the set up process even if you never use it for the internet/apps. No, it's not. I can use the internet on mine but never have entered an email address.

The problem I find is that I don't have the same urge that I used to to use new technology (I've been using the internet for social interaction for over 20 years, so was quite an early adopter), and then things creep up and you find you're playing catch-up.

In our City you can only pay to park using your mobile phone. I have come across tourists who could not do this as the automated service does not work for foreign bank cards, and a deaf women who had not realised this was how you had to pay and understandably could not use a mobile phone to pay. All 3 times I paid for them and they gave me the cash. But yes these services do disadvantage people.

That, I'm afraid mere, falls into "deliberately making life hard for yourself by imposing additional restrictions on the perfectly normal use of technology". Why is losing your phone with your email address on it any worse than without? It's locked, right?

There's a guy in a book by John O'Farrell who is, as a republican, boycotting the Jubilee line for political reasons. It makes some journeys in London harder. No-one is terribly sympathetic.

And surely I am not the only one with a mobile phone who finds myself either with no signal, no charge or no credit? But I still have cash to pay to park. Hate how those who are better off and technologically savvy are forcing certain things onto everyone else.

I suspect these are all people on contracts with lots of download data allowance. The truth is most people who are poorer are on pay as you go. Does that mean you are not allowed to have a car ffs.

I have come across tourists who could not do this as the automated service does not work for foreign bank cards

I find that incredibly hard to believe. How do you even enforce that when doing payment acceptance? It's far more likely that the tourists had cards which they hadn't properly authorised for payment outside their home country, in which case their inability to pay for parking is going to be the least of their problems.

It's not unheard of for Dutch and German tourists to come to the UK with their Geltkarte or whatever it's called, which is a system local solely to their own country (and which, aggravatingly, is sometimes the only way to pay for train tickets). It's being phased out (it's sort of like Switch or Electron, but without even a pretence of Visa compatibility). But "if travelling internationally, carry payment that is accepted in the country you're going to, not a local card for local people in your own country only" is hardly a shocking new development.

Well perhaps that is the case. I tried to help them do it with their card, but the system would not accept the cards. But why do you want to put tourists off parking in your city?

I suspect these are all people on contracts with lots of download data allowance. The truth is most people who are poorer are on pay as you go. Does that mean you are not allowed to have a car ffs

You can get contracts with data and a free phone for under £10 a month. You can get PAYG contracts with a data allowance for a similar amount or even less.

The amount of data required to pay for carparking will be tiny. The costs of owning and running a mobile phone are tiny compared with those involved in running a car so I can't see how there will be people who can afford to run cars but not afford a smartphone ffs.

I'm finding 'pay by phone for car parking' hard to get used to because it's a faff registering, but they can be a good alternative to cash payments - parking meters get robbed or vandalised, you have to have change.

How many times have you found you didn't have any change for the meter and had to find a cash machine, get notes out and then find a shop to buy something you don't want so you have change for the meter?

Pay by the internet means no-one will have to do that anymore and you can always ring up and pay by credit/debit card over the phone.

And tourists often do not have good enough English to navigate these systems anyway. I know I couldn't in many countries.

Incidentally I often go abroad for a weekend and only take the currency of that country. It costs more to use my card abroad. Cheaper to have £200 to £300 worth of currency with me and easier, I know others who do this too. So don't make out that if their card has not been authorised, they have no way to pay for things.

My DF is in Huyton...so very close and the other day he asked what Google was!!! He's 73 and never used a computer in his life

And on the other hand, my mum is 71, moved from runcorn to liverpool (so frequently visits) and has no problems whatsoever with using the internet. Not all older people are technophobes.