ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Imagine going through a toll booth then minutes later, you get charged for another toll hundreds of miles away. A Central Florida woman said it has happened to her for years, so she turned to News 6 to get results.
Jennifer Breitfeller is an accountant but ever since her daughter started driving her new car in 2020, keeping track of the tolls has become a second job.
“As soon as that plate started hitting the road, within a few days we started getting tolls for Miami, Fort Lauderdale area, knowing that the car was here in Orlando,” Breitfeller said.
The license plate on her daughter’s white two-seater Honda was NKDD11 but on the invoice, a black pick-up truck was seen with what appeared to be an identical tag.
“The third character on the license plate is either dented or obscured, and when the automatic plate readers read it, it’s reading as my tag and not their tag,” Breitfeller said.
According to Breitfeller, when she first called SunPass to fix the issue back in 2020, the agency only cleared half the charges even though some were from Miami.
“My statements literally show a toll being paid by Orlando International Airport and 15 minutes later, the same plate, a toll being (paid) in South Florida on the Turnpike in Miami,” Brietfeller said.
For the past three years, she said she called SunPass every month, made in-person visits and filed more than a dozen online claims, which SunPass closed. Left with no choice, she eventually went to the DMV.
“May of ‘23, I bit the bullet and got her a brand-new license plate thinking it would fix the problem and I’m still getting charged for it. When I contacted SunPass, they told me that they go off the DMV information and it’s still showing this tag registered to me even though I can supply the paperwork,” Breitfeller said.
Breitfeller told News 6 she has paid more than $400 in tolls for the pick-up truck in South Florida, and since the truck does not have a transponder, she is getting charged the toll-by-plate amount, which can sometimes double the cost.
“The fact that I’m paying somebody else’s tolls in South Florida when I have two kids, a mortgage and groceries to buy is absolutely infuriating but if I don’t pay it, I can’t renew my car registration,” Breitfeller said.
News 6 contacted Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which oversees the DMV and the Florida Department of Transportation, which oversees SunPass.
Shortly after, someone from FDOT called Breitfeller and said they cleared off some of the tolls and are working to clear more. According to Breitfeller, FDOT also called the driver of the pick-up truck and are working to put something in place to make sure this does not happen again.
In the meantime, Breitfeller has a message to other drivers: check your monthly toll statement.
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