TollsByMail Should Play the New James Bond

Tollsbymail: Why Won't You Die?

I have never seen a bigger racket in my life, and I've seen some shady shit. This system is a predatory, bureaucratic nightmare designed to screw over anyone who doesn't have the time, resources, or sheer psychic energy to babysit their mailbox like it's a newborn. If you move, or you're out of town, or your mail gets lost in the black hole of USPS incompetence, that's it - game over. You miss the bill, the laughably short grace period evaporates, and suddenly you're slapped with a $50 or $100 fine on what was originally a $1.80 toll. A dollar eighty. Let that sink in. It's like getting a parking ticket for breathing in the wrong zip code. Meanwhile, rich people shrug this off like it's pocket lint - assistants or accountants handle it, or they just don't care about a hundred bucks. The rest of us? We're stuck.

The Soul-Crushing Toll Dance

To dodge this legalized extortion, you've got to play phone tag with the tolls department of every state your car has dared to roll through in the past month. New Jersey? Thirty minutes on hold, minimum, listening to some godawful muzak loop while you question your life choices. New York? Another thirty, if you're lucky enough to get a human who doesn't hang up mid-sentence. Connecticut? Thirty more. Massachusetts? You guessed it - another half hour of your life you'll never get back. That's two hours burned on a Tuesday afternoon, assuming you even reach someone competent, which is a coin toss. Most people don't have that kind of time, and the system knows it. Get an E-ZPass to avoid the hassle? Sure, until the reader glitches, the transponder dies, or you hit a sneaky toll you didn't see coming. Then it's back to Tollsbymail roulette. Miss that bill, and good luck - people have had cars towed in Jersey over a $5 toll that snowballed to $200, or booted in Philly for a $10 debt turned $150. What the actual fuck is wrong with the people who thought this up?

I'm Not Alone (But Why Is This Still a Thing?)

Turns out, I'm not the only one who hates this. Scroll through X or Reddit, and it's a chorus of misery - "Tollsbymail is a scam, $75 fine for a $2 toll, kill me" or "Moved states, didn't get my bill, now I owe $150 - thanks NY!" People swap horror stories like veterans of a toll war: vacations ruined by late fees, cars impounded over pocket change. So why hasn't this been sued into oblivion? Oh, they've tried. In 2018, New York drivers hit the Thruway Authority with a class action, screaming Eighth Amendment over fines 50 times the original toll. They won some scraps - fines reduced, settlements paid - but the system? Still here. Courts call these "administrative fees," not punishments, dodging the constitutional axe. And the states? They're hooked on the cash - hundreds of millions in tolls, plus 10-20% more from fines. Private contractors like Conduent, with cushy long-term deals, keep the machine humming. Politicians don't care enough to kill it - toll gripes don't swing elections when taxes or healthcare are on the table. It's been festering since cashless tolling took off in the 2000s, too entrenched to die easy.

My Billion-Dollar Fix (Or Just Burn It Down)

At this point, I'm half-tempted to get obscenely rich just to fix this steaming pile myself. Picture it: a simple app, linked to a simple bank account, tracking your license plate across every state. No late fees, ever - none of this "gotcha" bullshit. If you owe, it sits there quietly until you renew your registration or get a new car, then you settle up. Done. Clean, fair, no one's fleeced over junk mail. Or hell, go full retro - bring back toll booths. Pay humans a decent wage to collect cash, change, or swipe your card and confirm it works. Problem solved. The fact that a stupid toll bill can stalk you like a debt collector, piling on charges until you're drowning over a buck-eighty, feels like a violation of basic decency - Eighth Amendment, anyone? Excessive fines ring a bell? This isn't "convenience" or "efficiency" - it's a grift, a stubborn, profitable leech. I'd love to jam my app into Congress with a fat stack of cash and watch the toll agencies squirm. Until then, I'm just over here fantasizing about burning this whole system down - or outsmarting it with something that actually works.