@TheCPUWizard said:@dkf said:@TheCPUWizard said:Depends (I don't know that system).... Some systems add a surcharge for any month they have to process a bill that is a fixed amount over the charges they are processing. If one pre-pays AND incurs no additional charges, the result may be paying a single surcharge (for the current month) rather than paying the surcharge for each of the two months in which the charges actually become payable.I'm not sure that really cleared things up. Are they threatening to charge people late fees for failing to pay ahead of time for some toll which they have not yet been formally billed for? That would be WTFy (and possibly subject to legal challenge too, though I wouldn't be personally keen on pursuing that approach).Not "late charges" but avoiding a service fee. Consider if each time you use the system you pay a $5 toll. Once a month you get billed if there are any charges and the bill includes a $2 service charge (regardless of the number of tolls on the bill). If you pay what is due, you will pay a service charge this months. Next month the newer items will be due and you will pay a service charge that month. If you pay all of the charges, and do not incur any more then you will not get a bill next month, so no $2 service charge.
Right. That's not what's going on here, though. If you don't buy a tolltag (for those who haven't seen them, it's just an RFID box; you set up an account and give them an email and credit card number. They ding you for $40, which gives you a $40 credit. You pay a reduced rate of somewhere between 50 and 80% of the cash price, which is deducted from your credit when you go through a toll. When your credit goes below $10, they deduct another $40. So it amounts to a discount for pre-payment.)
If you don't buy a tolltag and prepay, they take a picture of your license plate when you go through the toll, and charge you the higher rate. At some point, you get billed for all the tolls up to that point. I don't know what the batch point is; I've never gotten an invoice for under $8, or one with fewer than 4 or so line items on it. I've had bills that spanned 3 months or so; my most recent bill, that prompted this post, had, I think, one item from May and 7 or so from July. As I said, there's no explicit processing fee; it must be buried in the actual cost of the tolls.
I may call them up just to satisfy my curiosity.