John Browne

I was coming back from Dublin Airport on Monday night and I ended up passing through the new barrier free toll on the M50. I passed through at speed but I couldn’t see the cameras so I was wondering to myself if they are really there. Anyway I went to pay the toll on line on the eflow website and of course the bloody thing didn’t work. I got a server error when I tried to pay.

Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerServerErrorException

See image below.

So I didn’t want to refresh the page because I didn’t want to run the risk of paying twice and getting the same error again. I rang the eflow call centre in Bristol (1890 50 10 50) to find out if the toll had been paid. Of course the girl in the call centre wasn’t able to tell me if the toll had been paid. the suggestions that were made were that
1) I could just wait and see if the transaction had gone through (not really an option to wait to see if I got fined)
2) I could open an account (also not really an option as the cost is prohibitive if I only use the toll 4 or 5 times a year)
3) Pay again over the phone.

3 is the option that I went with. If the transaction went through then I could get a refund apparently. I’ll just have to wait and see if it comes up on my statement.

How much is the toll backend system costing again? €25 million was it?

Update: 04/09/08

My eflow payments have appeared on my credit card statement. That’s right it went through twice. I just rang the eflow help line to request my refund that I was promised yesterday. The girl was rather confused and told me that my account was €3 in credit. When I asked about expiry of credit I was told that there was no expiry on credit. So it looks like I’ll have €3 credit against my car for a few months until I pass through the toll again. I still have to ring them though to confirm that the credit has been used. We shall see how we get on.

I don’t actually understand how they could tell me today that the balance against my car registration number was +€3 but Tuesday they couldn’t tell me whether the toll had been paid i.e. if the balance was €0 or -€3. It seems a bit fishy to me.

I wonder if it’s possible to get my credit back if I change my car in the mean time as the credit is only associated with my car registration number.

A €3 toll is such a rip off. It doesn’t pay to set up an account for the €2 toll as my frequency of usage would mean that I pay more in account maintanence fees than I would pay in tolls.

Payment options

eflow web site www.eflow.ie
Phone: 1890 50 10 50
Any Payzone outlet (shops and petrol stations)