My Frustrating Experience at Kaniyur Toll Plaza
We pay toll fees on Indian National Highways for a very simple reason. In exchange for our hard-earned money, we expect a smooth, fast, and hassle-free journey. But if you drive frequently anywhere across India, you know the reality is completely different. Last Friday, I had an experience at the Kaniyur Toll Plaza near Coimbatore that made me feel completely cheated, and it perfectly highlights how these toll operators have a money-collection mindset instead of a service mindset.
Chaos in the Lanes
I was driving towards the toll plaza and lined up in Lane 2. The signal light was green, meaning the lane was open and functional, and there were just a few cars ahead of me. But right when I was about to reach the reader, with only two cars left in front of me, a toll staff member walked up to my car. He abruptly told me to take reverse and go to another lane. He didn’t offer to guide me, didn’t look back to spot for traffic, or do anything to help. I had to slowly back up blindly, and the poor guy behind me had to do the exact same thing. Then, just as I was steering into Lane 1, another staff member waved and told me to come back to Lane 2 because the issue ahead was suddenly resolved. I had to maneuver all the way back into the original lane all over again.
The “Blacklist” Lie and the Penalty Fee
When my turn finally came, the Fastag reader screen flashed a message indicating that there was no balance left on the tag. Usually, my Fastag does not scan automatically at this specific toll because of its placement. I have it fixed on the far left side of my windshield, so their scanner often misses it. Normally, when this happens, a staff member just walks over, types my vehicle registration number into the system manually, and the transaction goes through. I was patiently waiting for them to do that.
But this time, the toll operator checked his screen and flatly told me that my card was blacklisted because of a low balance and that I needed to do a ₹100 recharge right now. I explicitly told him that I have an active annual pass with plenty of limit left, but he insisted that even with an annual pass, I must maintain a minimum balance. Because my Equitas Fastag links straight to my bank savings account, a standard quick-recharge doesn’t work since I have to log into my mobile banking and transfer funds to the main account. To make things worse, my banking app PIN had expired, it wasn’t updated, and I couldn’t check my live status on the spot. By this time, cars were piling up heavily behind me, and people were waiting. I didn’t want to block the entire queue forever, so I gave up and paid over ₹160 via UPI, which is the heavy penalty rate they charge you for non-Fastag vehicles.
Finding Out the Truth
The moment I finished my highway journey, I pulled over safely and parked the car to check what went wrong. I managed to reset my banking password, opened the app, and what I saw made me absolutely furious. My tag status was active, my account balance was ₹1,800, and my annual pass had exactly 99 entries remaining. Everything was perfectly fine on my side. The problem was entirely with the toll plaza’s broken system or faulty reader. Instead of checking their own hardware or manually typing in my vehicle number like they usually do, they simply blamed me, lied about my account status, and forced me to pay the high penalty fee.
Stuck in Traffic on a Service Road
This terrible management isn’t just limited to the toll booths either. On the exact same stretch of road, they are doing some bridge repair work. Because of this, all the highway traffic is currently being rerouted onto a narrow service road. Every single day, drivers are getting stuck in bad traffic jams here for 15 to 30 minutes. And guess what? There is not a single toll employee or traffic marshal on that service road to clear the bottleneck. We are paying full toll fees just to sit in a standstill traffic jam for half an hour, while the people collecting our money do absolutely nothing to manage the chaos.
Shifting the Burden to Us
The Indian toll system might have official helpline numbers like 1033 and online grievance portals like PGPortal somewhere in the background, but the real question is why the burden is always shifted onto the customer. As citizens caught up in our busy daily routines, our time is valuable. It is not our job to spend our limited free time tracking down customer care numbers, lodging complaints, and following up on their system failures just to get our money back. The system itself should be built to willingly support and protect the consumer from the start, rather than penalizing us for their technical mistakes.
Right now, there is zero service mindset. They collect the fee instantly, but offer absolute silence and excuses when things go wrong. We pay premium highway fees, but get a broken system with zero accountability in return.