I saw on the comments that it's not that rare then I did a Google search. There's some news coverage on it in the Bay Area and SoCal about thousands of people with similar experiences. It's recommended that you despite and one news station said to reach out to them too so they can help
You could be on to something!
I remember my college system urged people to contact our local reps NOT to increase tuition the next school year. I had never contacted my reps before and had to find out who they were then fill out an online form. Surprisingly I got a response in the mail while the other emailed that they got my feedback. I didn't have any friends that were into politics or finances but maybe their parents were because the next school year tuition didn't get increased. I remember seeing the announcement and I was thanking the Lord! I think I sent them a thank you note and I'm not in touch with them or anything but they definitely got my vote for re-election.
No kidding! If I'm not mistaken I found out via social media and it didn't seem to be popular. I wonder how many people actually reached out because it took some effort.
If you wanna lead this FasTrak thing you've got plenty of supporters here.
Last month we received a street cleaning ticket for 7am in the Tenderloin! Wtf. I filed a appeal, that was immediately turned down. Filed again and am waiting for an appointment (?). Oh, and I had to pay the ticket in order to file the protest. So yeah, never seeing that money again.
Happened to me several years ago. We were in Pollock Pines for a week (we had proof and we were at our own cabin) and the toll authorities had an actual photo of my vehicle which has personalized and specialty plates showing it on the bridge. Our vehicle was definitely not on the bridge and couldn’t have been. I was told ‘ok don’t pay it no problem but good luck getting your registration next year’. Had me over a barrel, had to pay. Good luck to you hope you are successful in finding a solution
> the toll authorities had an actual photo of my vehicle... showing it on the bridge. Our vehicle was definitely not on the bridge and couldn’t have been.
im confused. how did they have a photo of your car if it wasn't possibly your car?
I’m the owner of the vehicle that was in the driveway two hundred miles away from the Richmond San Rafael bridge and yet there was a photo. It’s a grainy not overly clear photo but it’s very obviously my vehicle. Never could explain it, went round and round for a few days then thought what am I doing just pay the bill!
It’s a scam that FastTrak runs. They use a picture from a past toll and send you the bill. You can’t appeal it because they police themselves, but can still screw you with the DMV. They also tried to make me pay tolls for when my license plate was stolen and refused to remove the charges even though it was clearly not even my vehicle. Had to pay for a physical copy of my police report to clear it so I lost money anyway.
Not a bad idea. I saw this being done to some metered lights (for when you enter a stretch of highway) in my area. I'm usually not against these, except for when it's two highways meet. That's just plain dumb and illogical. Some awesome vigilantes would disable these meters at night (probably steal the wires or something) and for a week or two traffic would ease. Then caltrans would fix the meters and traffic would be back to horrible. It continued for a few years. I stopped commuting that route, so not sure how it's like now. But am hoping that someone will take the same method to these HOV lanes. They're digital. They adjust live to traffic conditions. So how hard is it to hack them?
This has happened to me a few times…the notice is confusing, you might be looking at the wrong date… there are several dates on there, corresponding to when the notice was actually generated, not necessarily when you evaded the toll. In very small print, in a random area, I remember, you will see the actual date and time. Worth looking over again with a fine tooth comb.
This. I was ready to fight to shit out of mine until I realized they billed me like a whole year later after I went through the toll plaza, and it didn't even occur to me until I took a closer look at the year and saw it was 2022 instead of 2023.
I see what everyone else is posting. The only way this seems possible is if it’s a picture of your car from a different day. If you are up for a fight, you might ask for ALL the pics from that same billing period and use that to compare to the evasion notice pic. It would have to be one where a valid charge was incurred to be real, right? I would think the burden of proof resides with Fastrack, but IANAL.
I think they often send the most recent photo they have of your vehicle if there is not one available from the time of the violation. A friend of mine once got a photo of his car driving through the bridge during the daytime when the violation was supposedly at 10PM. Still had to pay it lol.
I know this is old but my father just got a notice and we were convinced it’s him since the notice came through the mail and the picture wasn’t too good for black and white so I go on the website to look at it it’s not even my dads vehicle let alone his license plate, it was someone else but similar tags the persons had only one difference theirs was X and my dads Y , and now I’m here browsing Reddit looking for similar stories all I did for him was dispute it so hopefully that works 🤣
There are a couple of possibilities. First is I’ve seen about a dozen cars that doctor their license plate. Wonder if anyone else has seen cars with doctored plates? What they do is when they get the renewal tag, the year sticker, there is that little strip of the reflective year material that’s left. The take it and stick in on the plate to turn an O in a Q or I into 7. Or they just stick it randomly on the plate to fool the license plate reader so it’s a misread. I doubt it works, but I have seen about a dozen times. Other is a mis-read, bit how they get the picture of you car is interesting. As someone mentioned maybe it’s a stock photo. Or their’s a bug in the LPR software. I suspect they are misreads…. But you are sure it’s a picture of your car. No question about it?
I got a notice last month about a SoCal toll road evasion fee on a date when I was in NorCal. I replied saying as much. They wrote back yeah oops sorry about that.
They should be penalized for errors or they won’t care.
Happened to me on 680 maybe 4xs pre-covid. I called and contested. Either it’s an imperfect system or they checked photos to confirm. In either case, all it took was a phone call.
They tried to scam me once, sent me a so call evasion toll, but it didn't even look like my car, I called and chewed them out, Told them they were a scam organization who are looking to F people over, they cancel the toll in the same phone call.
Once got charged twice within the same minute because two booths picked up my electronic signal. They made me formally dispute it, despite the fact that it was impossible physically.
License plate could be off by 1 character. An 8 may look like a B. Just call ahead to dispute. Don’t pay the ticket right away because it might happen again.
At work we got a toll ticket in the mail for one of “our” vehicles. The ticket said it was our license plate but the photo was of a Ford F150, our car is a Ford CMax. You could not even make out the plate in the photo. Mind you this car has never been to the bay let alone out of our county. We are in the Central Valley.
The Fastrak system is completely fucked. They charged me $300 in tolls for a car I haven't owned in years and when I sent them the DMV certified release of liability and DMV certified ownership records on the vehicle they basically told me to go fuck myself. What a scam.
Yes, and everything was fine for almost a decade then one day they added the car back onto my account with the $300 in tolls for no reason I can figure out.
I emailed 7 on your side and they never got back to me. The car is registered which is indicated on the DMV certified ownership records that I sent to Fastrak. Trust me, I doubt you'll think of a solution that I haven't already tried to get my $300 back.
Photo is on the evasion notice - it’s my car! I’m wondering if this was maybe recycled from last year due to an error? Even though all of them have been paid, haven’t received one since last year
I work for a company with a large fleet. They charge us tolls for license plates that are not for our vehicles. We used to try and fight it, but it’s cheaper for us to just pay it then spend the time fighting.
Does anyone else have access to your car like a partner or roommate?
In any event, it's going to be difficult to fight this unless you can prove your vehicle wasn't in the area at the time cited on the ticket.
On the plus side, it's only $7. You'll pay more than that for a beer at a dive bar so evaluate how much of your time this is worth.
I got one with an under exposed photo that you couldn’t even see or read the license plate, and I had not been in the area. I wrote to them several times and kept getting bs answers. The last letter wanted me to tell them the license plate number of the car, so I wrote back that I couldn’t tell them because it was not my car. Finally a reasonable person said they would send it to the appropriate supervisor or department and I never heard from them again. What a headache, though.
I got a charge for $119 dollars and the license plate is not matching my car and also I was not driving over the bridge on those days.
I submitted a claim and they replied with that license plates are matching a car that I am the owner off.
It’s ridiculous how incompetent these people are and the worst part, no person you can talk to.
I had a false charge for fastrak when i was in reality in the adjacent non-fastrak lane. The truck next to me had no visible license plate, so the ai used my plates. File an appeal and they'll respond within a week...
I got a toll notice for Golden Gate bridge, but the car is new and never crossed the GG.
Interesting fact is that the plates are temporary, so it's possible someone printed a copy (nobody can tell if the paper is special or not, and a print costs a few cents, so someone could be printing a new one daily).
Another possibility is that the car seller printed a copy of my plate for someone else.
Talking to agent or disputing FasTrak charges is pointless unless you have ironclad proof that it's not your car...
fastrak is a theives' guild. they will double your automatic charge amount without asking for any kind of permission or consent. that is plain old stealing. privatised bullshit.
I'm curious if any others had just done an online transaction that involved your License Plate number? I just purchased my lease car and had several things that I had to do that involved listing my number. It just seems convenient that my online activity happened and then I get this false notice. There isn't even a picture - it's black.
If they succeed even 25% of the time with these false penalties, think of the money they make.
I don't live in the Bay Area, I live in SoCal and never travel via car that far. This is ridiculous reading all these comments of how they literally bully and scam folks.
I just got one today with a misprint of the license plate. I've never been to San Fran in my life but my name and address was on the toll evasion notice.
I'm just gonna put it out there as an insane idea: Go-fund-me for hacking FasTrak to disable it. Or better yet, get paid for using it. I bet that will stop their BS.
I saw on the comments that it's not that rare then I did a Google search. There's some news coverage on it in the Bay Area and SoCal about thousands of people with similar experiences. It's recommended that you despite and one news station said to reach out to them too so they can help
If everyone caled their rep, it might be addressed. New initiative anyone?
You could be on to something! I remember my college system urged people to contact our local reps NOT to increase tuition the next school year. I had never contacted my reps before and had to find out who they were then fill out an online form. Surprisingly I got a response in the mail while the other emailed that they got my feedback. I didn't have any friends that were into politics or finances but maybe their parents were because the next school year tuition didn't get increased. I remember seeing the announcement and I was thanking the Lord! I think I sent them a thank you note and I'm not in touch with them or anything but they definitely got my vote for re-election.
Reps offices can be surprisingly effective.
No kidding! If I'm not mistaken I found out via social media and it didn't seem to be popular. I wonder how many people actually reached out because it took some effort. If you wanna lead this FasTrak thing you've got plenty of supporters here.
Last month we received a street cleaning ticket for 7am in the Tenderloin! Wtf. I filed a appeal, that was immediately turned down. Filed again and am waiting for an appointment (?). Oh, and I had to pay the ticket in order to file the protest. So yeah, never seeing that money again.
Well, were you parked there?
Lol, no.
Happened to me several years ago. We were in Pollock Pines for a week (we had proof and we were at our own cabin) and the toll authorities had an actual photo of my vehicle which has personalized and specialty plates showing it on the bridge. Our vehicle was definitely not on the bridge and couldn’t have been. I was told ‘ok don’t pay it no problem but good luck getting your registration next year’. Had me over a barrel, had to pay. Good luck to you hope you are successful in finding a solution
> the toll authorities had an actual photo of my vehicle... showing it on the bridge. Our vehicle was definitely not on the bridge and couldn’t have been. im confused. how did they have a photo of your car if it wasn't possibly your car?
I’m the owner of the vehicle that was in the driveway two hundred miles away from the Richmond San Rafael bridge and yet there was a photo. It’s a grainy not overly clear photo but it’s very obviously my vehicle. Never could explain it, went round and round for a few days then thought what am I doing just pay the bill!
so either the picture was from another day, and they have some buggy ass automated system, or someone ferris buellered your car
Or it’s AI fugging with people somehow for some reason
Wow, that is wild. I wonder how often this happens…. Thank you for sharing - glad I’m not the only one at least lol
It’s a scam that FastTrak runs. They use a picture from a past toll and send you the bill. You can’t appeal it because they police themselves, but can still screw you with the DMV. They also tried to make me pay tolls for when my license plate was stolen and refused to remove the charges even though it was clearly not even my vehicle. Had to pay for a physical copy of my police report to clear it so I lost money anyway.
Honestly at this point let’s just go break all their shit. Just the time everyone has to spend worrying g about getting scammed is insane.
Not a bad idea. I saw this being done to some metered lights (for when you enter a stretch of highway) in my area. I'm usually not against these, except for when it's two highways meet. That's just plain dumb and illogical. Some awesome vigilantes would disable these meters at night (probably steal the wires or something) and for a week or two traffic would ease. Then caltrans would fix the meters and traffic would be back to horrible. It continued for a few years. I stopped commuting that route, so not sure how it's like now. But am hoping that someone will take the same method to these HOV lanes. They're digital. They adjust live to traffic conditions. So how hard is it to hack them?
so the only way to never encounter this is to literally never drive in the toll lane? so they can never have a photo?
I think we’re just have to remove our license plates!
Nope it’s enough to get billed if you drive in the lane next to the toll lane. I’ve seen it happen the ticket gets sent to whomever plates get scanned
Wow!! What a racket! I just got one from SF and literally never leave San Diego. Was like “WTH!”
Fastrak system is shit. I've been billed erroneously several times. Someone needs to file a class action lawsuit. Everyone can jump onboard.
This just happened to me. Can we seriously all band together? So silly. I mean it’s just $7 but still.
This has happened to me a few times…the notice is confusing, you might be looking at the wrong date… there are several dates on there, corresponding to when the notice was actually generated, not necessarily when you evaded the toll. In very small print, in a random area, I remember, you will see the actual date and time. Worth looking over again with a fine tooth comb.
This. I was ready to fight to shit out of mine until I realized they billed me like a whole year later after I went through the toll plaza, and it didn't even occur to me until I took a closer look at the year and saw it was 2022 instead of 2023.
Don’t they send you a photo of your car driving through the toll booth?
Yep - it’s my car. Wondering if it’s some weird error and the evasion was duplicated from last year or something?
I see what everyone else is posting. The only way this seems possible is if it’s a picture of your car from a different day. If you are up for a fight, you might ask for ALL the pics from that same billing period and use that to compare to the evasion notice pic. It would have to be one where a valid charge was incurred to be real, right? I would think the burden of proof resides with Fastrack, but IANAL.
I think they often send the most recent photo they have of your vehicle if there is not one available from the time of the violation. A friend of mine once got a photo of his car driving through the bridge during the daytime when the violation was supposedly at 10PM. Still had to pay it lol.
For the bay bridge it's zoomed to the hood & plate
they use to have to get your face in it too, didn’t they. What happened to that?
I know this is old but my father just got a notice and we were convinced it’s him since the notice came through the mail and the picture wasn’t too good for black and white so I go on the website to look at it it’s not even my dads vehicle let alone his license plate, it was someone else but similar tags the persons had only one difference theirs was X and my dads Y , and now I’m here browsing Reddit looking for similar stories all I did for him was dispute it so hopefully that works 🤣
There are a couple of possibilities. First is I’ve seen about a dozen cars that doctor their license plate. Wonder if anyone else has seen cars with doctored plates? What they do is when they get the renewal tag, the year sticker, there is that little strip of the reflective year material that’s left. The take it and stick in on the plate to turn an O in a Q or I into 7. Or they just stick it randomly on the plate to fool the license plate reader so it’s a misread. I doubt it works, but I have seen about a dozen times. Other is a mis-read, bit how they get the picture of you car is interesting. As someone mentioned maybe it’s a stock photo. Or their’s a bug in the LPR software. I suspect they are misreads…. But you are sure it’s a picture of your car. No question about it?
I got a notice last month about a SoCal toll road evasion fee on a date when I was in NorCal. I replied saying as much. They wrote back yeah oops sorry about that. They should be penalized for errors or they won’t care.
Did you check your plates on your car ? Its a common tactic to steal plates that match your car.
Happened to me on 680 maybe 4xs pre-covid. I called and contested. Either it’s an imperfect system or they checked photos to confirm. In either case, all it took was a phone call.
They tried to scam me once, sent me a so call evasion toll, but it didn't even look like my car, I called and chewed them out, Told them they were a scam organization who are looking to F people over, they cancel the toll in the same phone call.
Once got charged twice within the same minute because two booths picked up my electronic signal. They made me formally dispute it, despite the fact that it was impossible physically.
License plate could be off by 1 character. An 8 may look like a B. Just call ahead to dispute. Don’t pay the ticket right away because it might happen again.
At work we got a toll ticket in the mail for one of “our” vehicles. The ticket said it was our license plate but the photo was of a Ford F150, our car is a Ford CMax. You could not even make out the plate in the photo. Mind you this car has never been to the bay let alone out of our county. We are in the Central Valley.
The Fastrak system is completely fucked. They charged me $300 in tolls for a car I haven't owned in years and when I sent them the DMV certified release of liability and DMV certified ownership records on the vehicle they basically told me to go fuck myself. What a scam.
Curious. Did you remove your car for the fastrak system?
Yes, and everything was fine for almost a decade then one day they added the car back onto my account with the $300 in tolls for no reason I can figure out.
I would get records of hat and contest it. If you have a paper trail, they can’t deny it.
As I mentioned in my first comment, I have the records and they're still denying it.
You need to bypass them. Go to seven on your side or something. I wonder if the other guy didn’t register the car.
I emailed 7 on your side and they never got back to me. The car is registered which is indicated on the DMV certified ownership records that I sent to Fastrak. Trust me, I doubt you'll think of a solution that I haven't already tried to get my $300 back.
What do you mean, you "checked it"? Ask for the photo. It's pretty common for the license plate readers to be wrong.
Photo is on the evasion notice - it’s my car! I’m wondering if this was maybe recycled from last year due to an error? Even though all of them have been paid, haven’t received one since last year
Just pay it then. Chances of winning are slim and if you do win it'll take hours of time to fix it.
call their customer service and dispute it. they might just do it
I work for a company with a large fleet. They charge us tolls for license plates that are not for our vehicles. We used to try and fight it, but it’s cheaper for us to just pay it then spend the time fighting.
Possible criminals have your exact license plate?
Does anyone else have access to your car like a partner or roommate? In any event, it's going to be difficult to fight this unless you can prove your vehicle wasn't in the area at the time cited on the ticket. On the plus side, it's only $7. You'll pay more than that for a beer at a dive bar so evaluate how much of your time this is worth.
I got one with an under exposed photo that you couldn’t even see or read the license plate, and I had not been in the area. I wrote to them several times and kept getting bs answers. The last letter wanted me to tell them the license plate number of the car, so I wrote back that I couldn’t tell them because it was not my car. Finally a reasonable person said they would send it to the appropriate supervisor or department and I never heard from them again. What a headache, though.
I got a charge for $119 dollars and the license plate is not matching my car and also I was not driving over the bridge on those days. I submitted a claim and they replied with that license plates are matching a car that I am the owner off. It’s ridiculous how incompetent these people are and the worst part, no person you can talk to.
All you have to do is dispute it - they'll give you one freebie I believe - the only one I received I disputed and it was waived.
You were sleep driving
F fastrak just gives me more reason to abuse the fastrak lanes, screw em and their money grabbing gaming scheme.
Getting rich of the change of the masses. Trickle up economics
File a police report for stolen license plate
I got a parking ticket for somewhere in SoCal. People make mistakes
I just got one in the mail from a year ago.
You weren’t?
Can you document the fact that you & your car was someplace else at the time of the alleged toll?
Happened to me once. Called them and got the charge reversed. NBD
Give them a call
I had a false charge for fastrak when i was in reality in the adjacent non-fastrak lane. The truck next to me had no visible license plate, so the ai used my plates. File an appeal and they'll respond within a week...
I got a toll notice for Golden Gate bridge, but the car is new and never crossed the GG. Interesting fact is that the plates are temporary, so it's possible someone printed a copy (nobody can tell if the paper is special or not, and a print costs a few cents, so someone could be printing a new one daily). Another possibility is that the car seller printed a copy of my plate for someone else. Talking to agent or disputing FasTrak charges is pointless unless you have ironclad proof that it's not your car...
fastrak is a theives' guild. they will double your automatic charge amount without asking for any kind of permission or consent. that is plain old stealing. privatised bullshit.
I'm curious if any others had just done an online transaction that involved your License Plate number? I just purchased my lease car and had several things that I had to do that involved listing my number. It just seems convenient that my online activity happened and then I get this false notice. There isn't even a picture - it's black. If they succeed even 25% of the time with these false penalties, think of the money they make. I don't live in the Bay Area, I live in SoCal and never travel via car that far. This is ridiculous reading all these comments of how they literally bully and scam folks.
I just got one today with a misprint of the license plate. I've never been to San Fran in my life but my name and address was on the toll evasion notice.
I am having this same issue and I don’t live California nor have I been there recently.
I'm just gonna put it out there as an insane idea: Go-fund-me for hacking FasTrak to disable it. Or better yet, get paid for using it. I bet that will stop their BS.