If you are a regular commuter along the Lekki Expressway who uses the electronic toll on Admiralty Way but sometime in March noticed your e-tag was no longer working, the truth is you might have racked up a negative balance with the Lekki Concession Company (LCC).
As seen in the image above, the negative balance of N14,510 was provided by the LCC office located on Admiralty Way to this writer. This happened after an enquiry was made about the e-tag no longer working.
Commuters in Lekki that have been complaining about traffic at the toll recently are likely affected by e-tag users migrating to the regular toll.
How did this happen? Back in March, Nairametrics reported a system glitch that prevented commuters’ balances from being updated in real time as they passed through the toll. Following the incident, LCC sent an email apologizing for the inconvenience and also included this ominous warning:
“Please bear in mind that the systems will be updated accordingly and affected accounts once synchronized, will be charged for the passages made previously which were not immediately debited as it should.”
Judgment day is upon us: This writer met a full house at the LCC office on Thursday, June 6th, as several commuters were greeted with some shocking negative balances. One quoted balance was as high as N44,000. Without paying off the balance, it is impssible to use the e-tag toll gate.
Is LCC reflecting the correct balances or adding “jara” on top? LCC claims to have records supported by license plate numbers that show the date and time each vehicle passed through the toll. If you want access to those records, you can request for them at the office and they will be sent within 24 hours. However, we feel that in this day and age, such reports should not take more than a few minutes to be generated and sent to commuters.
Could this have been avoided? Yes, LCC should have sent frequent reminders to commuters about the need to top up their accounts following the glitch correction. Follow-up emails should have been sent after the initial one on March 7th. Also, emails should have been supported by text messages, as some people don’t check their emails often.
Most importantly, as we reported in our last article on this matter, LCC still does not have real-time balance updates for customers. If commuters had a way to check their e-tag balances in real time, those with a negative balance would have been able to pay them off before they grew larger.
Next steps: Go online to https://www.lcc.com.ng/contactus.asp to find the LCC Customer care office closest to you. Then brace yourself in case you haven’t topped up in a long time.
I am quite shocked how the company has failed to improve their operations over the years. I can confirm a few tech companies had approached them in the past to offer some sort of improved services that will save commuters time at the toll but I think the management is still very interested in the amount of cash they can collect daily while Banks and other financial services are working to keep transactions cashless.
Banks Offer contactless cards today and all terminals can be enabled to allow people tap directly using their bank cards and save more time at the toll.
Just a line of two at the toll should be left for those willing to pay cash like its done in other country. Balances running into negative position should never happen on a stored value account. It shows some of the records need a proper audit internally.
I was charged for some day I was out of the country and I wonder if they will be able to provide evidence of my vehicle driving past the tolls on such dates.
The toll management needs to give room for innovation and improve the service they offer and save people’s time.
Time is the new Money.
It is only in a country like this such thing happens.