On the way to the Central Coast earlier week I made the grave mistake of travelling on the M7 Motorway. Nothing wrong with the road, although I did object to having to pay $2.30 to use a section of the M2 right at the end that was about half a kilometre long. Charging motorists for getting OFF a tollway is a new one, but, perhaps in the state of NSW where road users are the milch cow of the government and its designated “partners”, I shouldn’t have been that surprised.
However, my real gripe is with the means of paying for using the M7. Since I rarely ever go up that way, and if I do I use other roads, I don’t have an “E-Tag” so I took note of the telephone number displayed and rang the operator to arrange a one-off payment for using the tollway. My wife, who was making the call, was told that they don’t accept telephone payments and that she would have to make the payment through the operator’s web site. Never mind, they said, you have 48 hours to do so.
So, come Tuesday morning, I sought out an Internet cafe and proceeded (or so I thought) to complete the simple process of paying for using the road. Ha, what a joke. First of all, the RTA web site is useless for telling you how to go about doing this. Finally, I closed the RTA web site and “googled” instead. OK, there is it, roam.com.au. Sure I was really likely to find it there, wasn’t I?
But that was only the beginning of the stupidity. In order to make a one-off payment, it eventually told me (in a gobbledgygook sort of way) I had to create an account with the operator. What? Create an account when I only used the road once and aren’t likely to use it again any time soon? Oh, well, press on. After completing (at agonisingly slow speed, their web server is crap) about 4 pages wherein I had to provide vast amounts of information to them that they don’t need to just be able to accept a one-off payment, I snapped, closed the web site down and left.
The next morning I thought I’d give them a break and try again. Same thing; agnonisingly slow service and intrusive questions that bore no relation to my one-off use of their road. This time I was less patient and logged off pretty quickly.
I returned to the motel room and rang the number we’d copied down from the sign. A ever-so polite operator asked me, “Do you have access to the internet, that is how you have to make your payment?” I think I was equally polite when I told him that I had attempted to do so twice and stopped as I found the service too slow and the questions too intrusive since all I wanted to do was pay them 7 bucks. “But sir, that is the way we accept payments.”
“Well, I’m unable to complete the process so can I pay over the phone with my credit card? Every other business that I deal with is able to do this, why can’t you?”
“Oh well, I guess we can do that, sir, what are your details?”
“???????????????????” So they COULD have taken my payment over the phone originally….????
2 Minutes later the job was done. “Would you like to create an account so that you don’t have to do this next time, Sir?”
“No thank you, I will not be using the M7 ever again, thanks all the same.”
So what is the story here? Well, in the cold light of day it seems clear. The idea is to make it as difficult as possible for people to make one-off payments for using the M7 and thus railroad them into paying larger amounts of money to purchase an E-Tag.
Welcome to NSW, the rip-off state.
sanoptic says
Yes i know what you mean ,we filled out a survey by some marketing mob about the M7 Motorway.
In the comments section i told them how impractical it was for people who seldom use the M7 to pay the toll.
Also told them that our family now avoid all Sydney Tollways/Tunnels at all costs because we believe that the infrastructure should have been paid for with all the taxes/regos we are forced to pay.
Seeya [not on the M7 though..LOL ]