Dart charge. Arrrgh!
Discussion
Crossed the dartford bridge on Friday heading for France. My wife immediately tried to pay from the passenger seat but website stated that new system was being rolled out and we’d have 24hours to pay today 31st. need to pay today before midnight. Bit of a pain in the arse in rural France with very patchy internet and when we could get online we sat in a 3 hour queue. Eventually got to front of the queue to be given the option of paying for a future journey only for our reg. Tried to pay anyway so that we’d at least been seen to have tried. That didn’t work and we got dumped back to the back of the queue.
No useful help on their website and vague press statements now emerging utterly down playing the problem and vague talk of deadline extensions but not actually saying how long. What a s
t show. Our plans for today totally cancelled and still haven’t been able to pay.
No questions. Just fancied venting!
No useful help on their website and vague press statements now emerging utterly down playing the problem and vague talk of deadline extensions but not actually saying how long. What a s
t show. Our plans for today totally cancelled and still haven’t been able to pay. No questions. Just fancied venting!
Same problem here. I had a card registered for automatic payment but with the change of payment system on the 28th, that needs to be ‘reregistered’ apparently. Which isn’t working at all.
Yesterday I crossed the river to get to Stansted, but it hasn’t paid automatically and there doesn’t seem to be any way of actually paying it that doesn’t involve spending my holiday on hold to their crappy systems.
Yesterday I crossed the river to get to Stansted, but it hasn’t paid automatically and there doesn’t seem to be any way of actually paying it that doesn’t involve spending my holiday on hold to their crappy systems.
Well at least we're not alone! Other half managed to pay something at about 5am this morning but it only gave her the option of paying for future crossings, not the crossing we've already made. Can't be bothered to dedicate more of our holiday to this. That's going to have to do for now and we'll argue about it later if it comes to that.
What a joke though. I accept errors happen so the fact that the system is broken doesn't make me annoyed, it's the head in the sand bit afterwards vaguely apologising for 'short' delays. Just admit it's a st show, apologise properly and publish a substantial extension period to sort this out or waive the charge all together for the period that the system was down to let people get on with their life without having to deal with this crap.
What a joke though. I accept errors happen so the fact that the system is broken doesn't make me annoyed, it's the head in the sand bit afterwards vaguely apologising for 'short' delays. Just admit it's a s
t show, apologise properly and publish a substantial extension period to sort this out or waive the charge all together for the period that the system was down to let people get on with their life without having to deal with this crap. Gad-Westy said:
What a joke though. I accept errors happen so the fact that the system is broken doesn't make me annoyed, it's the head in the sand bit afterwards vaguely apologising for 'short' delays. Just admit it's a st show, apologise properly and publish a substantial extension period to sort this out or waive the charge all together for the period that the system was down to let people get on with their life without having to deal with this crap.
After the excitement of a new system launch, there's no way they'll admit the truth:t show, apologise properly and publish a substantial extension period to sort this out or waive the charge all together for the period that the system was down to let people get on with their life without having to deal with this crap. kumbaya said:
Head of road user charging, Helen Watkinson, said: "We are really excited about the changes to Dart Charge. We have worked hard to design a customer centric service with the new suppliers, really putting the customer at the heart of our design.
"Whilst there are improvements from day one, we have further exciting improvements in the pipeline to further enhance the service offer and offer customers more flexibility. We will announce further changes as they come online.
"We thank our customers for their feedback which has helped to design the new service and look forward to continuing that customer relationship to further improve the service. The changes have been made to improve the website making it easier and more accessible, according to National Highways."
She's so happy to take your money, despite FUBARing the IT. I foresee another position in another monopoly organisation for Helen, divorced from the real world."Whilst there are improvements from day one, we have further exciting improvements in the pipeline to further enhance the service offer and offer customers more flexibility. We will announce further changes as they come online.
"We thank our customers for their feedback which has helped to design the new service and look forward to continuing that customer relationship to further improve the service. The changes have been made to improve the website making it easier and more accessible, according to National Highways."
I live the other end of the country and have no intention of using this but the Merseyflow website takes payment in about a minute if your web browser fills in your info. How much money (and how big of a f*** up) do you need to design a basic payment system? What was wrong with the former system that seems to have worked seemingly faultlessly for years?
It took me all day yesterday to finally pay including a couple of false starts. Just have to persevere.
What on earth is the person in the article waffling on about though, making it a more customer centric experience.
Its a tedious task to undertake to pay for travelling across a bridge that we shouldn't need to pay for other than maintenance now (yeah right!), not a website you'd actually want to spend time on. It didn't seem any different to. Me yesterday unless they gave up and reverted to the old one?
What on earth is the person in the article waffling on about though, making it a more customer centric experience.
Its a tedious task to undertake to pay for travelling across a bridge that we shouldn't need to pay for other than maintenance now (yeah right!), not a website you'd actually want to spend time on. It didn't seem any different to. Me yesterday unless they gave up and reverted to the old one?
RazerSauber said:
...What was wrong with the former system that seems to have worked seemingly faultlessly for years?
It seems that humans simply cannot help themselves in this regard. Time and time again I have seen perfectly adequate processes and systems farked up for no apparent reason.Hereward said:
RazerSauber said:
...What was wrong with the former system that seems to have worked seemingly faultlessly for years?
It seems that humans simply cannot help themselves in this regard. Time and time again I have seen perfectly adequate processes and systems farked up for no apparent reason.Cooper7 said:
If it's the first time you've not paid and you get the letter through you usually get away with the "fine" element of it and just have to pay the £2.50 crossing charge
Yes, I had this. Letter in the post saying I had a penalty charge but when I went online, only had to pay the crossing fee. In that sense, Dart Charge is the most lenient toll operator I've come across.We got two 'penalties' through after using the crossing one new year and totally forgot about it. Our own fault on that occasion.
Went on the website and the cost was literally the price of the crossing, no charge. We paid that and that was the end of it.
I can't help thinking that having to queue on a website is utterly mental. Surely the whole idea of a website is that the transactions are done as you go along. Or am I missing something?
Went on the website and the cost was literally the price of the crossing, no charge. We paid that and that was the end of it.
I can't help thinking that having to queue on a website is utterly mental. Surely the whole idea of a website is that the transactions are done as you go along. Or am I missing something?
What I dont understand is - this is a piece of critical infrastructure (Part of the only ring motorway around London - a world class city)
And the website has been down. For days. Because of a supplier change. Which was known about for months.
Why havent heads rolled over this?
Typical British mentality.
And the website has been down. For days. Because of a supplier change. Which was known about for months.
Why havent heads rolled over this?
Typical British mentality.
KAgantua said:
What I dont understand is - this is a piece of critical infrastructure (Part of the only ring motorway around London - a world class city)
And the website has been down. For days. Because of a supplier change. Which was known about for months.
Why havent heads rolled over this?
Typical British mentality.
Timing doesn't seem brilliant either. We pay a dart charge twice a year, once on the way to Dover and once on the way back. There must be way more people like us at this time of year. Guest users rather than automatic payers. And the website has been down. For days. Because of a supplier change. Which was known about for months.
Why havent heads rolled over this?
Typical British mentality.
We seem to have fallen off the system. Our crossing isn't showing. We've added £2.50 to our account but can't actually tie it to our journey. But this has taken up enough of our time now so that's how it's going to be for the time being.
We live fairly close to the crossing and use it a few times a week so pay on account to save the headache.
Tried to log into my account yesterday and my email address or password were incorrect, OK. Did the reset a couple of times but its still wrong, are our crossings being paid for, are they not, who knows?????
Tried to log into my account yesterday and my email address or password were incorrect, OK. Did the reset a couple of times but its still wrong, are our crossings being paid for, are they not, who knows?????
When it first switched to Dart completely I forgot to pay, I got a note in the post about two weeks later with a friendly reminder that Dart is new and needs to be paid online. They seemed very lenient for customers when moving to this new system, I suspect the same will play out here.
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