HCTRA EZ Tag Harris County Toll Road Authority Royally Screwed Houston Texas

 I do Agree that This Toll Company And More Make up Their own Laws, Set their Own prices . An Have no Customer Service. As well The Local And State Government Backs them Up . There Is so Much "Grift " Involved From the County Commissioners city managers And other City And State Government Employees. It is a total rip off.   The Only Issue i have with your Statements is that I find it hard to believe that the Whole time you were running up that Big Bill. You didn't receive One Statement, Phone Call , or Lack of Charge to your credit  card to let you know something was A miss . They Are Definite CROOKs- In my case I disregarded the Notices until 4 tolls Became $125. a year later. 

 I had an ez tag and had forgotten to switch my cc info. I used the tolls daily, and when finally notified, I had ran $112.00 in tolls, but with the fees it totalled much more. After failing to reach and agreement in fees, their law firm filed a judement. I tried calling the firm multiple times, but they would never return my calls. Now I owe $1900.00 for those tolls. I recently sold my vehicle. The new owner called me, weeks after the sale to tell me he could not register the car and they are trying to GET HIM to pay them. That is ridiculous. I am interested in a class action as well.

 I am interested in suit

Hi there, I was hoping anybody could provide further insight on this issue. I'm just now finding out that I am in a very similar situation to the ones previously described. It turns out that I owe them up to $1,600 in fines. Long story short, I did not have a credit card linked to my account because they require you to have up to $40 dollars in it at all times. Because I hardly use the toll, that seemed like an excessive amount of money to have on this account (I am a student so every penny counts for me). Everytime I would use the tollway I would make small payments of $20, $15, etc. However, sometimes my account would go below by $1, or $2, at which time I would log on to their onlne system and make an online payment. But everytime I went through one of the EZ tag checkpoints and I was under a negative balance a violation was commited.

According to the HCTRA agency, they mailed all violations to my old address, and they also (supposedly) tried to contact me via email. I went through my inbox and spam folder only to find nothing. Therefore, months went by without me even knowing that I had commited such violations, therefore the violation rates incresed and I continued using the EZ tag by making small payments. 

I understand that violations were commited. However, I feel as if the agency made no real effort to contact me in order to prevent further violations or to try to collect their money. Instead, they let months pass by so they could be able to send such debts to a third party "Lineberger Law Firm" I still cannot understand why I didn't  revceive ONE single letter notifying me of the violations to my MAILING address. What is the purpose of having a mailing address if they won't mail me documents of such importance? 

I spent hours on the phone trying to make them understand that these charges were unfair and that I would gladly try to work out a deal with them if only they would provide me with a reasonable amount. All of my efforts were to no avail. They only solution they provided was for me to make a payment plan were I would give them a 20% downpayment and then the rest of the money over a period of 5 months. 

Do you guys believe seeking legal counsel would benefit me?

I am also in a similar circumstance.  I had two instances in the past where my credit card had expired and HCTRA started sending me invoices for toll violations.  I called the number on the invoice and was appalled that my total due was over $400 each time.  To my surprise they simply asked that I pay the toll fee and they would waive my violation fees. 

Most recently, I had another issue with my credit card and I started receiving letters in the mail.  After the first letter I tried to call them and was met with a recording saying that my wait time was 30 minutes.  I did not have time to wait on the phone for 30 minutes so I hung up the phone.  I waited another week and tried to call again and once again I received a message saying that my wait time was over 25 minutes.  So I hung up and waited another week.  Based on my prior experience, I thought that it was no big deal because they waived the fees in the past with no problems.  The following week I decided to painfully wait the 25 minutes for my call to be answered.  To my surprise, I had over $1,500 due to them.  I assumed they would waive the fines and let me bring my account current, but to my surprise the answer was no.  They sent me to the enforcement division where I waited another 30 minutes for my call to be answered.  Again, I was told that my fees could not be waived. 

This is very frustrating because if I could have got in touch with them three weeks ago I would not have near the balance due.  Additionally, they do not put a total amount due on their invoices so you have no idea how big the fine really is.  This organization is structured very badly.  Please let me know if there is a class action lawsuit in process, I would be glad to join.

Hello,

Your message was very insightful. Please read the article written February 2014. My experience with HCTRA has been much like Mr. Mosqueda's: