SMC Infrastructure is waiving toll fees for motorists who were inconvenienced last Thursday by a glitch from its RFID which caused monstrous traffic at its toll roads.
Business conglomerate San Miguel Corporation (SMC) said it has waived toll fees of motorists passing through its expressways who were affected by traffic jams due to a system glitch in its RFID toll collection system last Thursday (November 17).
In a statement, SMC Infrastructure expressed its “sincere apologies” to motorists using the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX), Skyway, NAIA Expressway (NAIAx) and STAR Tollway who experienced moderate to heavy traffic Thursday morning after reports of “invalid reading at ETC lanes” at toll plazas.
“Our IT teams traced the source of the downtime to a cut in our fiber optic network. We are still determining the root cause of the damage, but there are indications that a major vehicular accident may have contributed to the situation,” the toll operator explained in the statement.
Along with deploying additional personnel to affected toll plazas, SMC Infrastructure also decided to waive toll fees for the 84,000 vehicles which passed through its expressways from 6:00 in the morning to 2:00 in the afternoon on November 17.
This includes motorists whose ETC accounts were deducted upon entry; they will receive electronic refunds in their Autosweep accounts.
Barriers at toll plazas were also kept raised after the RFID system was restored at around 9:00 a.m. to enable all affected motorists to pass through for free.
“We apologize for the inconvenience, and ask for our motorists’ understanding, as we work to ensure that we deliver the same high level of efficiency and reliability they have come to expect from us, at all times,” SMC said.
Tags: #SMC, #tollways, #RFIDglitch