newjerseynewsroom.com

Customer service program paying dividends

BY ALICIA CRUZ

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Complaints about nasty toll collectors from New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway motorists are down 28 percent this year and drivers couldn't be more relieved.

At the beginning of the year, motorists say they were getting nothing but lip and attitude from toll collectors who made them wish they had an E-ZPass to avoid having to deal with the verbal and sometimes, physical abuse they encountered. Now, they're seeing change and not just in silver.

Last month Turnpike officials began a customer service presentation for Turnpike toll collectors, and they are also studying data to spotlight rude "hot spots."

"It's moving in the right direction," state Department of Transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson told The Star-Ledger.

The first six months of the year have shown a decline in complaints, from 100 at this point last year to 72. Bob Quirk, director of tolls for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Turnpike and Parkway appreciates the decline, but said, "I have a 28-percent drop, but it's still too much. One is too much."

Still, Quirk said, only an average of one in 565,000 transactions resulted in a complaint --- a rate any service industry business would be proud of.

Three of the complaints the department received led to the suspension of the collectors involved, Quirk told The Star Ledger. The status of 20 other complaints are pending.

Quirk, who claims to never had a customer complaint filed against him during his stint as a toll collector from 1978 to 1985, remains perplexed over why some toll takers are sent into a rage over pennies -- of all the complaints the department has received, a number have been about collectors flying into vulgar laced rages and sometimes tossing pennies back into the faces of motorists.

And that's mild compared to some of the complaints obtained through a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request by TheSmokingGun.com.

According to a report in The Star-Ledger, the request produced more than 550 complaints filed by drivers against toll collectors on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway in 2008 and 2009. The letters, with redacted names, were released by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority and contained horrifying behavior tollbooth clerks inflicted upon drivers.

When one motorist gave $5.25 for a $4.25 toll, the collector at Exit 9 in East Brunswick mistakenly gave her 75 cents change — then got rude and nasty when the driver asked for the correct change "because he was busy on his cell ordering a pizza with extra pepperoni."

One collector threatened to beat up a driver because a dog was sniffing out the window.

Irate over having to make change for a $20 bill on a $1.75 toll, another collector allegedly threw the change and told the driver to get on the road and die.

A motorist paying a toll with pennies or a $100 bill sent one collector at Exit 12 in Carteret off on a vituperative rage, yelling, "What kind of (expletive) comes in with a $100 bill?"

Franceline Ehret, a toll collector for 25 years and president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local No. 194, which represents Turnpike toll collectors, said the Turnpike/Garden State Parkway abuse sometimes went both ways.

"There's a lot of road rage out there. People hate to wait in line for traffic. Some toll collectors have had guns pointed at them. I've had people spit on money before handing it to me and making the roll (of coins) hot before they hand it to me, putting it on the heater," Ehret told The Star-Ledger.

Still, Ehret acknowledged that the conduct alleged on many of the complaints was "not acceptable behavior at all."