WSDOT sets record straight on toll reimbursements

When Jason Rantz started training for a 5K, he bought some running shoes on Nike.com. When the sneakers didn’t fit, he returned them and found a full reimbursement in his bank account two days later.

That’s why, when initial reports said that it would take the Washington State Department of Transportation between six and 12 months to reimburse drivers who were double charged on the I-405 toll lanes, Rantz was incredulous, calling it “disgusting.”

“Why on earth would it take between six and 12 months to refund money from WSDOT?” Rantz asked. “It takes six to 12 months? That cannot be right.”

Turns out, it wasn’t.

KIRO TV originally reported that 88 people had been double billed and that the reimbursement process would take between 6 and 12 months.

Related: Why Canadians don’t have to pay for tolls on I-405

Patty Rubstello, WSDOT’s toll division’s director of operations, set the record straight while talking to Rantz on Tuesday, saying that 139 toll bills were sent out with duplicate transactions and more than 3,000 automatically went to customers’ Good-to-Go accounts. She said all reimbursements should be made within the next week and a half.

“We’re in the process of fixing those now, but when customers actually get the bill, they are gonna see that there are two transaction on there. So it’s good if they give us a call and we’ll clarify which transaction they are paying for. They can submit their payment for just that one transaction,” she said.

Rubstello said the new lane system was calculating trips incorrectly.

“It is reading the vehicle at each of the toll points and if it misses a read, it may end up reading the license plate. So it assumes part of the trip was done with your Good-to-Go pass, the other part of the trip was done with the license plate,” she said. “So we’ve been refining our filters in our systems to be able to identify those and not create two transactions.”

Rubstello said WSDOT has made changes to the system to better isolate the duplicate transactions, and to take care of them before they appear on a customer’s account or a toll bill, but that duplications are still happening.

“We’ve already implemented a fix and now what we need to do is monitor that and see how well that’s done,” she said. “I‘d like to make sure that everybody understands that the toll systems are not going to be 100 percent accurate, so it is important that customers are paying attention to their Good-to-Go account.”

Rantz said he understands that glitches will happen anytime something new is implemented, but asked if WSDOT went live too early with this system.

“I think there’s just so much testing you can do and then you actually have to go operational and see what happens,” Rubstello said. “So far I think the testing has been very good and we are catching some things now, but we are actively pursuing those, making those corrections and fixing them.”