Tollway users must be held responsible

A few days ago, an article ran about a woman who was surprised and shocked to receive a high fine for not being sure her transponder was full. Apparently for a year she was not paying tolls, assuming that her credit card was refilling it properly.

In this day of identify theft, anyone who doesn't check out charges on her credit card is just nuts. This tells me she hadn't looked at the list of charges on her card for a year.

She uses the tollway daily to and from work, even assuming that she paid only one toll each way, that's 4 bucks a week, or about $18 a month.. Your transponder holds only 40 usable dollars, so with one refill, she would have used about $36 in two months.

I suggest strongly that she check out the itemized portion of any credit card monthly. Next, she needs to find out why her credit card company did not refill the card. It apparently screwed up, or perhaps she didn't have enough on her line of credit to fill it. She should have then called the tollway authority and arranged to refill the transponder in a different manner.

In any case, she is responsible for her debts, and should have seen that nothing was being deducted. She sounds like she has a responsible job and is rather intelligent, but like I say, she and everyone else needs to check those charges every month.

The buck stops with the user.

Linda Kimsey

Streamwood