Pedemontana, paying the tool is an Odyssey

It has been defined as the “future highway”, but since 1^st November people have had to pay the toll for Pedemontana. It has created chaos. Every day we receive many complaints from people who cannot log on the website, from others who find higher debits than what they should have paid on their credit cards and others who discover that their car became a truck.

INCREASED PAYMENTS. Although the highway’s toll is not that cheap, the amount that many drivers had to pay was much higher than it should be, sometimes it was more than 150%. Our reader, Marco, told us about the most expensive episode: “My brother-in-law wrongly took the Varese highway and he had to pay the amount for the occasional transit.” However, when he decided to check the statement account of his PostePay he found out that the debit was  €2.55 instead of €1.01.

CARS BECOMES TRUCKS. The same thing happened to Simone, who paid €3.85 instead of €3.08 for having driven on the A8 and A9 (€3.08 toll). In that case, the driver was able to understand what happened: Pedemontana identified his car as a truck. Due to this change the payment system went haywire and even if he wanted to pay, he could not do it because the differences between price and detail. He also asked (in vain) for help to the client service, who simply advised him “to log in again using Firefox instead of Google Chrome.”

LOST DOCUMENTS. In the last days, the offices of Pedemontana sent many mails to those who registered their car but did not send all the documents required by the company. These letters were also sent to drivers like Tindara, who said:” I went to the Info point in Vedano to deliver all the essential documents, but I noticed that they don’t give you any receipt.” In this way, there is no proof that the society lost the documents.

“WE HAVEN’T NOTICED ANY ANOMALY”. However, in the offices of Pedemontana everything seems okay. The company informs us that they haven’t noticed any anomalies and there are no extra charges on the payment. At the same time they advise customers who have had problems to call the customer service.

The image of the company seems quite different from the one given every day by the customers but, we hope, it will improve in the future. The system used by the Pedemontana is in fact unique in Italy and no-one gives any information on how long this trial stage will last. Meanwhile, the number of mayors, who ask for the decreasing of the toll, is increasing and bipartisan but, at the moment, changes are not envisaged.