If E-ZPass was to be believed, Dick Benson’s white Chevy Tahoe and Gail Benson’s black Volvo S80 had secret lives.
Did the Tahoe get to Logan airport in Boston without Dick on April 15, 2024, tracked by E-ZPass on the Mass Pike through the Ted Williams Tunnel? Did the Volvo frequently go to Long Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland without Gail?
The Volvo went on puzzling trips every month, according to the electronic highway tolling system.
The couple, retirees who live in the Hartford suburb of Berlin, eventually solved the mystery as a case of mistaken identity by E-ZPass photographic toll-by-plate readers: The Bensons were paying tolls incurred by a state legislator, Rep. Corey Paris, D-Stamford.
Identifying the problem was relatively easy.
Fixing it, not so much.
What followed was a struggle that exposes weaknesses in the automated collection of bridge and highway tolls by E-ZPass, a system that completes 4 billion transactions and collects $13.8 billion annually for dozens of tolling authorities in 17 states using transponders and photographic plate readers. Mistakes are inevitable.
But when it comes to resolving wrongful charges — or providing answers to a reporter for a story about how the company addresses such issues — little is easy about E-ZPass.
“The DMV will admit clearly that the bureaucracy of that company or that operation is horrible, just horrible,” Dick said.
No one at the Department of Motor Vehicles contradicted him. Neither did Paris, who had his own fight with E-ZPass trying to rectify what he owed once the Bensons flagged they had been unwittingly paying tolls on his behalf, perhaps as much as $800 over 14 months.
“They are the culprit in all of this,” Paris said of E-ZPass. “And it’s also a multimillion-dollar company, yet you can’t get in contact with anyone.”
It started with the license plates
The roots of the Bensons’ conflict with Paris and E-ZPass begins in late 1994, the final months of the administration of Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. It was long before Paris was a driver and two years before E-ZPass was introduced in metro New York.
Dick Benson was an aide and all-purpose troubleshooter for the governor, the same job he performed for most of Weicker’s years in the U.S. Senate.
One of his last chores before the administration handed over the keys in January 1995 to Gov. John G. Rowland — Benson recalled walking out of the Capitol on the last day with Weicker, accompanied by Rowland — was to distribute the remaining store of low-digit license plates to friends and supporters.
He was told to include himself, and he did.
Dick, an Army sergeant who lost a leg in 1970 when another soldier tripped an explosive booby trap in a dense jungle outside Saigon, has a disabled veterans tag: 3. Gail’s passenger plate is 145, the same three digits on the legislative plate assigned to Paris, a Democrat who represents the 145th District of Stamford.
The Bensons have since learned there is nothing exclusive about low-digit plates — and that legislators do not always heed admonitions about the out-of-state use of legislative plates.
Winners of General Assembly races last year got congratulatory notes from Tony Guerrera, the commissioner of motor vehicles and former legislator. He told them legislative plates with their district numbers were available for $14, a cost in addition to registration fees every motorist pays. Lawmakers must keep their permanent registrations current.
“Legislative plates should be used on vehicles traveling within Connecticut only,” Guerrera warned, in bold. “Electronic tolling systems in neighboring states may not distinguish between legislative plates and similarly numbered vehicle plates otherwise issued by the CT DMV.”
Guerrera was uncertain if the warning had been issued in previous years. He only smiled when asked to speculate if any Connecticut lawmakers bothered to remove their legislative plates before venturing north to the Mass Pike or south to New York.
Many states, Connecticut included, utilize the same numbers in different classifications of motor-vehicle plates. The DMV says there are four in Connecticut with 145: Gail Benson’s Volvo, Paris’ Kia Telluride, a motorcycle and a bus.
There are 10 vehicles other than Dick’s Tahoe bearing a Connecticut license plate with the number 3. They include a “classic” vehicle, a trailer and a fire apparatus, and a legislative plate assigned to Rep. Minnie Gonzalez, a Democrat who represents the 3rd House District of Hartford. Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, who represents the 3rd Senate District, no longer uses a legislative plate.
(Incorrect E-ZPass charges on the Tahoe were minimal, and the Bensons did not pursue what kind of vehicle was charged for the tolls on the trip to Logan. Gonzalez said it wasn’t her.)
Each of those plate types is distinctive to the human eye but not always to the photographic readers of E-ZPass. Gonzalez said her legislative plate has been correctly recognized by Mass Pike toll-by-plate readers, but Guerrera and Millie Torres Ferguson, a deputy DMV commissioner, say the system appears to default at times to an assumption a plate is on a passenger vehicle.
And that’s how Dick and Gail Benson started getting billed for the travels of Paris, a young Democrat who was elected in 2020 and got his first blue-striped legislative tag bearing his district number upon taking office in January 2021.
The Bensons did not immediately notice the mystery trips. They had an E-ZPass account that was automatically paid by a credit card, and they did not check the monthly on-line statement of E-ZPass charges.
The first sign of trouble came at the end of 2023, when West Hartford mailed Gail a delinquent violation notice demanding $45.40 for an unpaid parking ticket issued on Farmington Avenue at 12:45 p.m. on Nov. 9.
“I hadn’t been to West Hartford in a year,” she said.
When she objected, West Hartford informed her that the vehicle ticketed at a parking meter was a Kia, not her Volvo. The town excused the ticket after the DMV confirmed there was a Kia with a 145 tag — a legislative plate.
It was then the Bensons reviewed their E-ZPass statement and found the discrepancies. They were easy to spot. Trips taken by the Bensons were listed on the statement by the serial numbers on their E-ZPass transponders. Tolls incurred by photographic plate readers listed the plate, 145.
One quirk of the system: If the Bensons did not have an account, they would have been billed by mail with an invoice accompanied by a photograph of the car for which they were being charged. They would have instantly realized that the tag was a legislative plate, not Gail’s.
But so long as the E-ZPass account had sufficient funds, a charge involving a plate associated with their account would be deducted.
The Bensons began disputing charges, though they say they were told E-ZPass would only go back for a year. Beginning on Dec. 12, 2023, they began getting credits in monthly statements, $99.27 the first time. But the incorrect charges on the 145 plate continued.
They wrote to the E-ZPass customer service center in Albany on Jan. 4, 2024, informing the organization of the mix-up with Gail’s 145 plate and the one on Paris’ car. “We have been overcharged hundreds of dollars for this past year, and most likely for several years,” they wrote.
Theresa C. Bates of the CT DMV’s compliance unit followed with a letter to E-ZPass confirming Paris was the owner of the Kia with the legislative plate 145.
Based on statements reviewed by Connecticut Mirror, they eventually got credits for $451.89. They continued to push for what they felt was a full accounting from E-ZPass and from Paris.
Paris, meanwhile, had his own issues with E-ZPass. Once Paris was deemed responsible for many of the charges originally levied on the Bensons, E-ZPass tried to collect substantial late fees. Paris said he should not be assessed for late fees on charges he never got.
The Bensons appreciate his frustration with E-ZPass but do not see him as blameless. One question: Did Paris ever wonder who was paying his $8.25 toll on the Henry Hudson Parkway into the city? Or the $14.75 to cross the Hudson on the George Washington Bridge or through the Lincoln or Holland tunnels?
Paris said he had an E-ZPass account and assumed he was being billed. His transponder, he said, clearly had gone inactive, and his E-ZPass was attached to the plate on a previous car, not his recent permanent registration or legislative plate. He said he pays his bills.
“If anything is coming to my house, it is getting paid,” he said.
Based on statements shared with The Connecticut Mirror, he once again had an active E-ZPass transponder and account as of last spring. When the Bensons contacted him again in March, he referred them to Torres Ferguson, the deputy DMV commissioner whose previous duties included being the department’s legislative liaison.
“I am current with E-ZPass,” he said.
The Bensons, meanwhile, recently got another refund check from the MTA Bridge and Tunnel Authority, which had issued their E-ZPass more than a decade ago. It came as the CT Mirror was pressing the authority to answer questions about the process.
“Our MTA team was able to get a total of $242.98 refunded to the couple for tolls they did not incur at MTA B&T, PANYNJ, and NYSTA E-ZPass crossings as well as E-ZPass agencies in the states of Florida, Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island,” Laura Cala-Rauch, a media liaison for the MTA, said in an email to CT Mirror.
In a phone call, Cala-Rauch said the resolution negated the need for a story.
She eventually answered several questions posed by email, stating that photographic images can be retained for up to eight years.
Is there a process for reviewing the photographic evidence when there is a dispute over a charge by mail? Is there a written policy regarding dates by which a charge must be challenged that you can provide?
“The sooner a toll is disputed, the more options we have in resolving a customer inquiry,” she replied.
If there is a policy, it was not provided.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
