Don’t Panic on the Péage

We’ve advocated use of the French Autoroute system elsewhere on this Forum, (see Autoroute or RN), and we make use of these excellent roads to cover long distances on our expeditions. We reckoned we were pretty experienced after 9 years and could handle every quirky situation that Péage tollbooths could throw at us – not so!

 And so it was that on 2 April 2013, we entered Auroroute A9 at junction 22 in our motorhome, having spent the night at the municipal site at Villeneuve-les-Avignon. We then joined the A7 to travel north to Valence. We were returning from Spain and Portugal and were en route to visit Family in the Savoie.

 At Valence-Sud Peage station, the machine rejected our ticket. Cath tried several times to insert the ticket to no avail. She then became a little flustered when the remote operator started shouting her. We later realised that he was shouting “OU VENEZ VOUS - OU VENEZ VOUS?”. Without waiting for a reply, the machine then took the maximum from our debit card (a total of 25,50 Euros) for an imaginary journey from Montpellier-Sud.

  We only realised what had happened later, and it was too late to turn back. When we got around Valence, we joined the Péage towards Grenoble. We stopped at the accueil to try and get a refund, but as was pointed out, we had left the ASF area and were in the offices of a different company!

 ASF are owned by Vinci Autoroutes. We’ve tried contacting both via the internet. We’ve been asked for the ticket, the receipt, a certified true copy of our vehicle registration document, and details of our bank account including the IBAN. Having decided that this would require effort, time and expense for the sake of 12 euros or so, we half-heartedly took photos of the bits required and sent them by email. We included a photo of Cath standing in front of our ‘van with the registration visible. To date we’ve heard nothing more!

 We know about SANEF tags and all, and perhaps we should’ve got one years ago, but our commission-free debit card has been ok so far. The moral of this tale is ‘Don’t panic at the Péage!’ – but always remember which junction you started from in case this happens to you.