SunPass vendor pressured to get upgrade finished
State won’t pay it until customer service system fully operational.
The vendor responsible for the messy rollout of the state’s new SunPass customer service system won’t get paid until the system is fully operational, the Florida Department of Transportation said in a release issued Monday.
Conduent State & Local Solutions, which has an electronic tolling contract with the state worth $287 million, began what was supposed to be a weeklong upgrade of the SunPass Centralized Customer Service System June 1.
But work on the system dragged on for nearly a month, during which time customers continued to accumulate toll charges, but could not track them.
Service also was disrupted to the SunPass website and phone app, activation kiosks, account updates and replenishment, walk-in centers and the TOLLBY-PLATE website.
Florida Transportation Secretary Mike Dew called the delays
“completely unacceptable” in a statement Monday, and said he was committed to holding those responsible accountable.
The Florida Department of Transportation finally began processing toll transactions July 3, and planned to post 8 million per day until all accounts were up to date.
But the state hasn’t hit those numbers, and the backlog of unprocessed transactions remains.
As of Monday, 32 million transactions have been posted, the FDOT said. Millions more remain.
In a letter to Conduent President David Amoriell Monday, Dew said that the Florida Department of Transportation planned to suspend the remaining payments owed to the company until it “demonstrated the consistent ability to timely and accurately process current transactions, eliminate the backlog, and provide a full financial reconciliation for each day’s activity that the department can rely upon to transfer external revenues to participating and external agencies.”
Conduent, which was hired by the state in 2015 to run the customer service technology for Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise — an arm of FDOT — has a track record of mishandling customer service while updating tolling systems in at least seven other states, according to the Miami Herald.
Conduent took an average of two years to sort through unprocessed charges and get online tolling working again in other states, according to the Herald.
FDOT said Monday that as improvements to its SunPass customer service system move forward, it expects that up to 8 million transactions will be posted daily until all accounts have been reconciled.
Late fees and penalties will not be imposed until the system is fully operational.
For information, visit www.sunpass.com.