Yup, they got me!

In October I went out to western Kansas to do some hunting with my son. As I live in Michigan and there is no practical way of avoiding it, I had to drive through the great state of Illinois. Furthermore I showed poor judgement by taking my chances and driving through the greater Chicago area.

And I am now paying the price for doing so. I got a letter yesterday indicating that on October 26th I committed the dreaded act of 'Tollbooth Violation'! I'm charged with beating them out of 30 cents and now have to get my checkbook out.

That's right.... .30 cents. I have no idea where/how I supposedly committed this act as I don't recall turning off my lights and blowing through any toll booths. Nor did I save any receipts. But they apparently got me dead to rights.

I've been trying to contact the Illinois authorities to report I recall dropping a dollar bill and the wind blew it off near one of their toll booths. Judging from the reaction 30 cents will get they will probably assemble two crews and a supervisor to go hunt for that dollar bill!

Hope the residents of the great state of Illinois are proud of this model of bureaucracy they have created.

gotta remember who runs that state....

Toll highway poachers are all the same.....

....you guy's always complain when caught.

Since Blago got convicted/ sentenced, somebody's got to pay for the loss of income from Obama's senate seat...

This only scratches the surface of the ass-hattery that goes on in this state. A $.44 stamp both ways for a $.30 fine.

Get a "I- pass" By far the best way to travel thru that nasty state.

Put it on your credit card so they get less of the money OR send them pennies!!!!!!!

Reminds me of the $0.50 bills, several of them, I got from Uncle Sam, mailed to me all the way to Dubai!

Governments and beaurocrats, we just cannot help loving the way they show how stupid they are.

Just happened to me this summer, but in Mass.

Me and my associate somehow got on the tollway going east out of Boston and needed to go north instead. Got off on the 1st exit and did a u-turn. There was an unmanned toll booth at the exit and neither of us had any change (rare).
At that point you're kind of screwed. There's no good place to turn around, it's unmanned so you can't get change, and there's traffic coming behind you. We decided to just blow through it.

2 months later, i get a bill from National rental car. It's a bill from the Mass. tollpike authority. What was once a $.50 toll was now a $21.50!!!!! National didn't add anything. This was the actual bill from the tollpike authority. Fee for the toll, admin. fees, etc.

Gotta say i learned my lesson on that one.

quote:

Originally posted by Matt Norman:
I'm charged with beating them out of 30 cents and now have to get my checkbook out.

Checkbook HELL, this is a great chance to screw with them. I'd send them a roll of pennies and I'd send it with a signature required delivery confirmation. Then 2 days after they get it, I'd be on the phone demanding they give me back my change. Since you would have a signature of whoever accepted it, you could play the game until they cough up the 20 cents.

After all, it's Illinois and since they played the joke on the country by giving us the Boy Wonder, they are fair game for getting screwed with right back.

quote:

Originally posted by Flags:

quote:

Originally posted by Matt Norman:
I'm charged with beating them out of 30 cents and now have to get my checkbook out.

Checkbook HELL, this is a great chance to screw with them. I'd send them a roll of pennies and I'd send it with a signature required delivery confirmation. Then 2 days after they get it, I'd be on the phone demanding they give me back my change. Since you would have a signature of whoever accepted it, you could play the game until they cough up the 20 cents.

Make sure you make a video of putting the roll of pennies in the box. A few years back the IRS complained that I hadn't sent my payment. I sent them a photocopy of the return receipt with their guy's signature. They sent another letter saying that they had no idea what might have been in the envelope, hadn't been paid yet, and I'd better pay up quick before they sent the goons. I made what I figured was the wise choice and sent another check after cancelling the first one. They wouldn't credit or pay the bank's cancelled check fee, either.

This on top of an incident in the mid-1980s that they lost my whole 1040 return in their Ogden facility, another time that I had a return receipt to no avail.

Be careful when tweaking the system, the smallest weasels have the sharpest teeth...

TomP, you are absoulutely correct (about weasels and sharp teeth). I know a thing or two about that.

I will pay them their 30 cents. Maybe even some 'administrative fees'. Yes 'cuz Im a law-biding citizen and I'z gonna pay da gubmint'. And maybe they run out of millionaires to tax in Illinois so they are coming after the rest of us, 30 cents at a time.

And it's good to know that Illinois now has a handle on the corruption problem, wholesale welfare fraud, and other mis-management issues to the point where they can now turn their attention to 30 cent things like this.

But certainly I can wring as much entertainment value out of this as I can. These career politicians and bureaucrats couldn't run a kool-aid stand but we have put them in charge. Like Saeed said, 'we just cannot help loving the way they show how stupid they are'.

You gotta wonder how many people have jobs with the Illinois Tollway making $60K+ a year. It takes a lot of 'executive assistants' to handle the multiple management layers necessary for a series of tollboths. And these positions have to be appointed of course, friends and family, that sort of thing.

You can't make this stuff up!

It would almost be worth it to get 30 different money orders and write each one for a single penny and stuff them all in the same envelope each one seperated by a blank sheet of paper.

Make the idiots work for their 30 cents.

I have spent an enormous amount of time in Illinois. I have come to the conclusion after 25 years that they should spin off Cook and Will Counties (Chicagoland) and let them be their own state. I think they have more prisons than universities and more police than private citizens. It's a state of great industry, wonderful restaurants and lousy traffic, high taxes and crooked politicians. Driving through Chicago is an intimidating experience for the uninitiated. The fact they went to all the trouble to track you down scares me. I hope they don't start reviewing tapes of my blowing through toll booths over 25 years. I would be a cell mate of Governor Ryan or Governor Blagovich. As my wife tells me, "you may not be guilty, but you're not innocent".

good thing you didn't get pulled over with any meat from another state.....IL is a boned-out state

I travel to Chicago for business all the time; I got an I-Pass that I keep in my briefcase. When I rent a car I ask for one with the I-Pass. Then I take theirs off and put mine on.

Works in New Jersey and other states in the NE as well.

I got a I pass also travel though the area a few times a year. The I pass makes it a lot faster cheaper and less worry.

Technology is great....when it works. I checked out this I-Pass thing and they (Illinois Tollway) are apparently having some issues with their software (see link).

Them having access to my credit card accounts is not giving me a warm-fuzzy.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/t...or-i-pass-users.html

First things first! I love Texas.
But here in little ole Louisianna, we ain't got nun of them there toll booths, so carrying change in a vehicle is not a necessity.
So I've been tracked down by the Houston Toll Booth Police just the same as Matt because I didn't have any change & the booth was unmanned.
Basicly the same story, just a different state.
Sent the check, didn't want the hassle if I made the mistake of getting stopped passing through in the future.

GUNS HAVE ONLY 2 ENEMIES-RUST & POLITICIANS

quote:

Originally posted by Matt Norman:
Technology is great....when it works. I checked out this I-Pass thing and they (Illinois Tollway) are apparently having some issues with their software (see link).

Them having access to my credit card accounts is not giving me a warm-fuzzy.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/t...or-i-pass-users.html

I have never had a problem. In Ill, you pay twice the rate if you use cash, another reason to have an I-Pass.

To bad it doesn't work in Houston; I go there a lot as well.