"Phil Richards" wrote in message
...
On 21 Sep 2003 11:21:29 -0700 Fat Richard
said...

I have recently become a user of the the Dartford Crossing, something
I need to do every week or so. Coming back South last night with the
family on board we suddenly realised we had made no provision for the
£1 toll. Having slowed to a crawl we eventually scraped together
enough pennies and 5p's from the kids pockets to pay.

Does anyone know what proedure the staff adopt when faced with non
payers ? I asume there must be a mixture of both intentional non
paymers, silly twits like I nearly was and continental arrivees. I
Assume they take Euros for the latter.

Do they not take debit or credit cards?

--
Phil Richards
London, N4


I'd have thought not, as they'd slow the tolls down too much, although I
could be wrong. Last time I went through (last autumn) most of the lanes
were the sort with a big hoper to throw coins into.

Thinking about it though, once chip and pin cards are introduced in this
country it could be easy to introduce an automated payment system which
would not require signatures but the entry of a pin no. Also, the card
authorisation would not necessarily need to be done at the time of the
transaction, but could be done in batches throughout the day (authorisation
is the part that tends to slow down card payments the most). The risk of
un-authorised charges would be low as the transaction values would be small,
and if linked to a cctv system which photographed car number plates and
indexed with payment transactions, it would be possible to obtain vehicle
keeper contact details from DVLA and write to those whose cards weren't
authorised.


Andrew