Investigation uncovers more SunPass problems

By: Mike Deeson

Tampa, Florida - It brings in $44 million a month, but there appears to be a recurring problem with the SunPass system overcharging customers.

Joe Pothier checked his and his wife's bill after our first story and found overcharges on both. He showed us a bill that had the same day, same hour, same minute, same second  and they charged $1.50 and then $12.

When he called SunPass to complain, Pothier  says the agency told him it was his fault.

"She read off my vehicles listed online and she said, 'You have a ten-axle vehicle,'" Pothier recalls. "And I said, 'Ma'am, you just read off my three vehicles. I have a van, a Honda CRV and a Cavalier. You can't even make 10 axles out of those vehicles."

Christine Bennett is another SunPass customer who is having problems. Even though Bennett has a SunPass which has its account replenished by a credit card, the agency had her driver's license suspended for non payment.

She didn't know about it until she applied for a job and they did a background check.

According to SunPass, Bennett has 30 tickets for going through the lanes without paying, including one involving a Jeep in Broward County.

"I've never been to Broward County," Bennett says. "I've never owned a Jeep, rented a Jeep or had anything to do with this Jeep ever."

"We are diligent in tracking down any mistake we can find, because every customer is valuable to us," says SunPass spokesperson Joanne Hurley.

While Hurley says the agency is service-oriented and catches most mistakes before customers do, don't tell that to Eric Rosengren, who says, "Apparently  it is not true in my case."

Rosengren has had a SunPass for two years that replenishes itself whenever the balance is low. He received a ticket for failure to pay a toll. The agency didn't record his Sunpass when he went through the Skyway toll booth.

"They want me to pay a $25 fine, because this has gone through the court system now, because I didn't pay within 30 days."

But Rosengren has a canceled check for one dollar which is dated less than three weeks after the agency didn't record his SunPass. SunPass can't even get the date of the ticket straight, first saying it was issued on April 28 and then sending a notification it was issued April 26.

The most complaints we've received and the biggest problems appear to be overcharges because of equipment failures.

"We have a Sun Watch program that is state of the art that can monitor any equipment failure, that can detect problems with any equipment and remotely fix those problems," Hurley says.

While those who run the SunPass system admit there are sometimes discrepancies between the amount of cars the computers count going through the toll booths and the sensors called treadles count, they say when that happens they just send out a service person to look at the treadles.

The agency says it has never generated a report to see how often that is happening until we made our public records request.

"Any time we detect a machine failure, we go back and make corrections. We don't have to wait for the customer to contact us," Hurley explains.

But that doesn't appear to be the case for the scores of people who have contacted us to say they have massive problems with SunPass that the agency -- which is supposed up travel -- is slow to respond to.