In message , at 14:55:08 on Sat, 15 Dec
2018, tim... remarked:


"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 10:50:11 on Sat, 15 Dec
2018, tim... remarked:

the phone and postal services for the Dart Charge seem quaint and
indulgent compared with the toll roads in eg Sydney where it's
electronic or else - including for visitors in hire cars.

The postal service is only for pre-pay, and needs 10days notice.
I'd characterise it more as applying for a season ticket by post
(even if it's only a one-trip season being paid for).

I wonder if it's mainly for institutional vehicles, where
arrangements for reimbursing drivers small amounts of money are
either non-existent or very clumsy, and they don't want to have a
system for drivers to report each trip as it happens, and the
finance department pay the charge from central funds rapidly enough.

surely if the institutional vehicle belongs to the institution, they
can set up an online account that does all this

Many institutions are leery of online accounts, many of which appear
to them to be akin to blank cheques. I'd be surprised if a school
(even one in Essex or Kent) was happy to set up an online account for
even the Head's car, should he have some official business the other
side of the river. How would that account not end up also paying for
his leisure trips, for example? The postal payment, however, could be
ringfenced for just one trip.

you haven't thought that through, have you

If the head is already making significant leisure journeys through the
tunnel, he is going to want to set up his own account for these journey

Can you set up two accounts for the same car? Which does the charge get
levied against when the car passes through.

so the journey that he does make for the institution is going to go
through that account anyway

telling the head that he may not set up an automated account to pay his
weekly tunnel toll, because once a year he makes a journey for
institutional purposes isn't going go down too well

What also doesn't go down well is the head (or especially more junior
members of staff) being told that they'll have to pay the toll
personally because there's no such thing as a petty cash account.

BTW the automatic online accounts are pre-pay. There is no connection
to the post pay option

The postal option is pre-pay too.

(and FWIW you can have an account containing more than one reg)

The underlying issue is that many Public Sector and most Third Sector
organisations have rules that expenditure requires 'two signatures'; and
it's compulsory under the rules dictated by most grant funders.

This sometimes requires imaginative solutions and one might be to get
two signatures on a cheque and send that the Dart postal service.
--
Roland Perry