Delayed fees could boost SunPass bills

Welcome back from your Fourth of July holiday trip. Now pay your tolls.

After a monthlong freeze, SunPass resumed posting charges this week. That means drivers can expect higher-than-normal bills as charges from June are added to the toll-collection system’s 6.5 million accounts.

Customers won’t be hit with all of the backlogged tolls at once, and the charges — starting with the oldest ones — will gradually be added to user accounts in coming weeks, said Kim Poulton, a spokeswoman with the Florida Department of Transportation.

The SunPass system shut down for an extensive overhaul on June 5. The service upgrade was supposed to take a week, but instead, it took about a month to complete the upgrade.

Some customers are not happy. Drivers have turned to social media to express their frustration with not being able to review their charges and file expense reports.

Peter Liakos, a Coral

Springs resident, says he has called customer service five times in recent weeks to inquire about the billing system — only to be put on hold or given vague and confusing answers.

“You can’t get through,” he said. “If you get through, they make promises that don’t happen. They give dates that don’t materialize. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

He says he’s worried that customers could be unknowingly “clobbered” with a high bill.

SunPass officials say users won’t be hit with late fees or penalties “until the system is operating fully and providing the benefits and ease of access that SunPass customers deserve and expect.”

The Florida Department of Transportation wrote in an update it is working to hold its vendor, Conduent, “accountable for the delay and inconvenience.”

Sean Collins, a Conduent spokesman, referred questions about the delays to FDOT.

About 90 million tolls were unprocessed as of June 28, according to FDOT. Four million transactions were posted on Tuesday.