ORLANDO, Fla. – The Florida Department of Transportation confirmed Monday that thousands of Toll-By-Plate invoices are yet to be sent because the agency can't guarantee the accuracy of those tolls.
Ed Seifert with the Florida Department of Transportation sent this statement sent to News 6:
“The Florida Turnpike Enterprise is continuing to work with the vendor to ensure accurate Toll-By-Plate transactions will be sent to customers. Until we are 100% confident that invoices are accurate, Toll-By-Plate invoices will not be sent to customers. There is currently an active State Inspector General investigation into this vendor and we will continue to do everything possible to hold Conduent accountable, including additional financial penalties. Customers continue not to be charged any late fees on their Toll-By-Plate accounts and will continue to have the Flex Pay option to pay their invoices.”
The question is, will Toll-By-Plate customers even receive these backlogged bills?
News 6 checked and the state contract between the Florida Department of Transportation and Conduent, the state vendor, clearly states there is a 120-day deadline in place to process these kinds of transactions.
If they're not processed before the deadline, the contract clearly states the contractor, in this case Conduent, is supposed to pay for those tolls and not bill the customer.
News 6 contacted the Florida Department of Transportation for comment on this contract stipulation, but is still waiting for a response from the agency.
In October, FDOT announced a Flex Pay process for Toll invoice customers, and stated customers would begin receiving their invoices in the mail in November, but would have until Feb. 20, 2019, to pay their total toll bill and would not face any penalties or fines.
It was back in June that News 6 first exposed that a planned maintenance upgrade to the SunPass computer systems failed.
That failure caused a massive delay in billing as the vendor and the state had to double-check millions of backlogged tolls for duplicate tolls.
This summer, News 6 heard from several SunPass customers complaining about questionable and duplicate tolls.
News 6 was able to get results in the form of refunds for many of them.
We want to hear from you if you have a SunPass-related issue, contact aiwasinski@wkmg.com.