Fast Lane – MA Turnpike Authority

I had a good moment with EZ-​PASS, since it’s more convenient than stopping to pay the toll. But everything was ruined by the fucking customer service. I called them since I thought EZPASS was overcharging me (three times in a month, $ 80 in total). The lady who I talked was the rudest, uneducated CREATURE I’ve ever encountered. She was so arrogantly yelling at me over phone saying nothing was their fault and I was using the transponder too aggressive, basically saying «you stupid customer should read our golden money charging rule».

This needs to be fixed. You can’t charge me 50 $ for a 1.50 $ toll when I have the freakin transponder in my car??? And then when I call I get the rudest uneducated lady who does nothing but tell me «You’ze needz ta reed the rulez before you’z be axin why weeZ chaaggin’ you». What a joke.

The most inefficient process I have ever dealt with short of health insurance. I had one friendly customer service rep who told me that an accidental force-​of-​habit drive through an EZ Pass lane in a rental would not be a problem. He’d add the plate temporarily to my account. Done — one phone call because I am an honest person.
I received a call the next day from the reps at EZ Pass who handle the «Residents Program» — a discount for the Harbor Tunnels for certain residents burdened by the Big Dig for decades — that they couldn’t add the plate without my stopping by with the rental agreement. IT WAS ALREADY HANDLED!!! I don’t know for sure whether they removed the rental license plate. No one can give me a straight answer. I don’t know for sure how long it takes to reconcile the photo violation plates to accounts. NO ONE CAN GIVE ME A STRAIGHT ANSWER. I am being honest and trying not to burden the rental company, and no one will help me short of forwarding me to another department that can’t help me.
I can’t honestly believe that this problem was handled Monday with one phone call and some super vigilant rep hell bent on inconveniencing people who work for a living had to step in — possibly to remove the plate. All I have heard is that it takes 1 – 3 days to process violations and up to 4 days to process those violations to a database for an invoice — all while someone raises her voice to me on the phone?
This is the state for you. If I had any other choice in the matter, I would use any toll program other than this one. I suppose I do have a choice and that’s to vote out the leaders who do absolutely nothing to improve the level of customer service for this branch of transportation.
I wanted to complain about someone in the violations department strictly for her attitude not her inability to help — which was world class, by the way — and she advised that she would take my info but that her supervisor was unlikely to call me back. Do I have to march on the state house for a little satisfaction?! I sent a comment and requested a call.
This is absolute red-​tape laden asinine business.

Fuck you EZ Pass. Threatening to block renewal of my license b/​c they haven’t gotten back to me yet about my 3 LETTERS OF APPEAL!

Crooks. $ 50 turns into $ 90. For a simple 1.25 fine. In NH it’s literally a $ 1.00 fine. Threatened to send my name to a Collections Agency. There’s the good olé Commonwealth for ya!

Zero stars! Let’s stop complaining and
DO SOMETHING!
FILE A COMPLAINT HERE NOW! ALL OF US!
WE CAN STOP THE CROOKED PRACTICES OF EZPASS!!!
DO IT!!!

Let me start with a FUCK YOU EZ PASS in case someone skims the review. A bunch of scumbags, crooks and mobsters. They can all go to hell. You heard horror stories of people waking up with thousands of dollars in fines. They are real. No one will do anything about it, not the mayor, not the governor, not the president. Every crooked official gets their cut.
Why the fuck are you going to charge someone a $ 50 fine for a $ 1.25 toll, especially if they have a transponder??? And then a $ 40 late fee a week or two later every week??? Why the hell would someone not pay a toll? No one does it intentionally. It happens by mistake, be it either because of a transponder error or a driver error. It happens.
You have those sobs collectors getting $ 20+ hourly wage, lines upon lines of traffic, constant construction and potholes. So why the hell are we paying the state $ 1.25 to drive on the shitty Pike? I got a transponder to save money but your lasers dont always detect the transponder. Next time i will stop, get out of the car and wave my ez pass so that why it will read it.
FUCK YOU!!! Flag this!!!

If they had a 0 start i would give it to them. What a HORRIBLE company called 6 months ago to have a replenishment down to 20 from 90 they told me yea sure we can do that for you 3 months later when i use up the 80 dollars then went again and replenished it to 90 and i said wow i though it was 20 tried to get a refund they said that they could not do it. So since i had all this money just sitting on the account for so long i wait until i only had 2 dollars on the account (credit card expire so they could not replenish) called yesterday since i was going to use it and the person over the phone reasure me that it will be replenish to just 20 dollars. But just like i expexted checked my card and guess what they did it again i am soooo over this will drive the 1 and half on a saturday to return transponders what a waste of time

Horrible customer service — and that is me being nice… customer service rep just hung up on me when asking her a simple question… good thing you’re a monopoly and don’t have to care about treating your customers with any level of respect.

What a horrible and corrupt organization this is! I have an out of state tag and my credit card information on my account with New Jersey, not MA, but New Jersey was not up to date. So I go through a toll booth 6 times over the course of a day, get the contact EZ Pass message and figure it’s not a big deal because I have seen this before. I contacted them, it turned out to be a non issue. So I contact EZ Pass, update my credit card, and boom the account is fine, I had a negative balance but it’s gone now. A week or so later I get 6 $ 50 fines in the mail! The appeals process is horrible and all in writing. If you try to call and talk to a person the system hangs up on you (I’m fairly certain there is no person to be reached). I understand the appeals process can’t be done over the phone but you can’t even contact someone for guidance. Even more ridiculous is the $ 5 fee for appealing but whatever, I digress. I am going to end up paying these $ 50 fines because I get paperless billing from NJ and the bill does not include the information it is required to include for the appeal to be considered. I don’t understand why EZ Pass NJ and EZ Pass MA are not a consistent experience. I have spoken to EZ Pass NJ multiple times for guidance and they have done their best to help me. Unfortunately EZ Pass MA is a corrupt and horrible organization trying to squeeze every last dime out of its customers. I will no longer be using my tag when driving in MA. I am going to have to pay these $ 50 fines as I know my appeals will be rejected for not including information that isn’t written on my EZ Pass NJ bill. I plan on pursuing this issue further but first I have to make sure I don’t get strapped with their secondary fines. Do not sign up for this service. If you do sign up, make sure to keep your credit card information up to date because even if you fix it later, that is a $ 50 fine.

Talk about a giant Scam… when it works, it’s fantastic, when it doesn’t register they hit you with all kinds of fees and claim that their technology is very good! I went through multiple tolls in the same day and one did not register… I get a $ 50 charge. Try to appeal online and get no response for 6 months, only to get a second notice. Call to dispute it and have to go through 3 different numbers and automated machines to talk to someone. Finally get someone who gets rid of the fee, but charges me a $ 5 Admin fee for their troubles… r u f-​ing kidding me! Look up my account, you see I have money in it, you see it worked at all the other tolls that day… Just deduct the toll amount and be done with it… This company lacks common sense and deserve to be kicked in the teeth. Automate the system to look up the account and deduct the fee and you’d save yourselves thousands of dollars in and wasted resources on sending direct mail… buncha donkeys.

Fastlane is GREAT. Sucks so many people have gripes. I’ve had it for 10+ years with no issues, no violations and no negativity. Flawless every single time.

EZ Pass is a rip off. they take your credit card/​bank info and suddenly start charging you triple. AND NOW THE STATE WANTS TO FORCE ALL OF US TO USE THIS SERVICE. I can’t count how many times EZ PASS didn’t function and I got a fine for not having enough money on it. 3 times due to EZ PASS mistake.
They should stay with the honest human Toll Booths so we all don’t get ripped off by this scam.

here’s their scam:
They get you to sign up and then when you use it they send you erroneous violation notices. The only way you can clear up the notice is by PAYING a mandatory $ 5.00 fee. Let me get this straight… they make a mistake and then charge five bucks to fix it? Why hasn’t the MA Attorney General or the MA Dept of Transportantion (DOT) gone after the outfit that runs this (yes, DOT has contracted with an outside vendor for this work) I wonder just how much they collect each year to fix their mistakes?

Bought the car yesterday, got two toll fees today? Because of not having heard of EZ-​pass before?

Clearly a scam, you CANNOT argue this:
After updating my billing information over the phone and getting a confirmation of «You’re all set» from the woman I spoke with, I asked if I could get a confirmation number of some sort which she claimed they did not have. I continued using fast lane for the next week getting yellow lights every time. I called them back on two days later and they said No they in fact DID NOT get the updated information and I was wacked with SEVEN violations in two day period (7 x $ 50).
They say you can appeal each violation for a fee of $ 5 per. The entire stretch of the Mass Pike doesn’t even cost $ 5 so how is this fair?
Furthermore, they put a NON-​RENEW status on my drivers license forcing me bend over and take it if I wanted to continue driving.
When are we gonna say enough is enough and stick it back to the man? These tolls were supposed to be NON-​EXISTENT many years ago once the tolls had been paid for. Now they’ve been paid for a million times over and this «revenue» just feeds the machine that in turn bones us. Perhaps we should organize a rally against this tyranny, anyone?

Toll guy is a d*ck
I want to kick in his face–
Easy girl, relax.
–Haiku review

OK, So I am a stupid Country Boy. Thought I would go into the Big City (Boston) and attend the RV show $ 24 then park for $ 20 (Show was a rip-​off). Now for the easy pass part got lost loving Boston (got to love that big dig) on I-​90 heading west so was very happy to see a U TURN available but not so happy when I got into the lane only to notice it stated you need an easy pass. Country boys don’t got dem tings. This week received a $ 50 fine and threats of an additional $ 40 coupled with not being able to renew license or registration if not paid. I question why did I spend my entire life to this point In Communist MA?
r0n…:-(

Meh. FASTLANE’s main benefit is that you don’t have to stop at the tollgates in non-​peak hours, although you do have to drive slowly. But during peak hour the lines can really stretch, in some cases even more so than non-​FASTLANE booths.
I had the pleasure of visiting Sydney, Australia earlier this year and absolutely love their version of «FASTLANE» — it really is fast. There are NO tollbooths, just sensors that read your transponder as you enter the toll area so you can continue to drive at freeway speed. Significantly reduced traffic bottlenecks. And their transponders are free. Why can’t we have something like that at the Allston tolls during rush hour?

I’m not sure why there’s so much hate for Fast Lane. Sure, I don’t think it’s awesome that we have to pay tolls, but, seeing that we do, Fast Lane has been the best thing since sliced bread as far as I’m concerned.
I signed up for Fast Lane back in November, 2001, approximately one day after my office moved to Cambridge, and I knew I’d be commuting from Central Mass everyday.
Sign-​up was quick. You fill out some paperwork, they hand you the transponder. Easy. I know I could have ordered online, but I didn’t want to wait to get it. Back then, you automatically received 3 month (or was it 6?) of paper statements. After that, they stopped sending them unless you told them you wanted to continue receiving them. I’m sort of OCD, and wanted them, so I signed up. Like clockwork, the statements came. I never had any extraneous charges. And I checked them religiously for a long time. I had hoped that one day they’d offer the statements online, and they now do. Even better. No more extra paper, but I can still see all the transactions. I set up my online account almost immediately, and can make any necessary changes to my account there. It really couldn’t be easier.
Back then, I had to pay for my transponder. Now, I think they’re free. Even so, I still think it’s great. I still have my original transponder, almost 9 years later. I’m a little afraid that writing that is going to jinx it and it’s going to die, but it’s been good to me for a lot of years. I’ve never had any issues with the transponder or the system. Oh, and getting to cruise past the lines of folks waiting to pay cash? Priceless.