'I was being double billed': Driver gets mysterious charges after using Chicago Tollway, until CBS 2 got involved
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A viewer reached out to CBS 2 after he thought he was getting overbilled by the privately owned Chicago Skyway.
Turns out he was right.
He discovered a glitch that led to nearly 100,000 instances of overbilling. CBS 2's Chris Tye is always investigating and got the skyway to own up to its mistake.
The Chicago Skyway may be pricey, but for Richard Carillo's family it's worth it.
"I have peace of mind that my wife not going somewhere where there's a lot of traffic or shooting that we're seeing a lot now," Carillo said.
Something else he's seeing? For I-Pass users, the $5.90 each way isn't a real number. His Illinois Tollway bill rings them up as $5.93.
"The extra three cents for what," Carillo asked.
The Illinois Tollway's website said "This $.03 surcharge reflects the cost of participation in electronic tolling within the group of E-ZPass states."
But on August 19th, entering the Skyway's eastbound gates at 2:03 p.m. and westbound gates at 4:17 p.m., each rang in at $5.96.
"I noticed I was being double billed for the surcharge for $5.96 and I said wait a minute, that's double dipping double charging. You generally cant do that," Carillo said.
He called the tollway, the tollway said to call the Chicago Skyway.
"We're playing the hot potato blame game," Carillo said.
So he asked CBS 2 to join the game, and CBS 2 took his concerns to the head of the Chicago Skyway and got some answers.
For the first time the Chicago Skyway owned up to what they call a processing error, telling CBS 2 Richard wasn't alone. The overfilling happened 96,018 times. At three cents a pop that totals overages of $2,880.54.
The Chicago Skyway said all of the overcharged were users of Illinois transponders and all accounts will be refunded.
"We trust the tollway with automated banking accounts and credit cards, but not to double charge," Carillo said.
A double charge realized through a double check of math, from a Skyway that didn't solve his problem, until he called CBS 2.
"When CBS 2 calls, they suddenly find their laptop and phones and they act. But when average regular person just calls and say there's a problem, you get dismissed," Carillo added.
A Chicago Skyway spokesperson said the error took place as transaction information was sent between the Skyway and the Illinois Tollway. All over-charges occurred during a three week window this summer.
They've been accounted for and will be refunded. Earlier this year, he Australian investment group Atlas Arteria agreed to buy a two-third stake of the toll road for $2 billion.
A statement from the company to CBS 2 reads:
Recently, we identified that some Chicago Skyway customers who use Illinois transponders were charged an excess fee of three cents on their toll transaction. The mistake resulted from a database processing error and collected total overcharges of $2,880.54.
Everyone charged the additional three cents will receive a refund. We take this error very seriously and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience. The issue has been corrected, and we are implementing new audit checks to improve our systems in the future.
The Chicago Skyway's database processing error took place as transaction information was sent between the Skyway and the Illinois Tollway. The excess fees were charged over a three week time period. As stated previously, the issue has been corrected, and we are implementing new audit checks to improve our systems in the future.