During our recent trip we travelled on the M2 and M7 motorways in Sydney with our car in tow on the back of the motorhome. We found both motorways to be excellent and certainly took the hassle out of driving in Sydney. In both directions we only had about 8kms of suburban traffic to worry about and at night this was a breeze.

We are not regular travellers on motorways so we do not have an e-tag. The M7 is a cashless system and we had used this in the past with few hassles by phoning up the next day to pay. When we found the M2 has a cashless option we also decided to go for that as you have 48 hours to pay.

But beware - it is only 48 hours if you pay within their office hours which close a 8pm. I phoned at 10pm which was still within my 48 hours to find they were closed for the day. By 8am the next morning we would have had to pay a fine. Luckily the person on the end of the phone the next day was understanding and took my word that I had tried to pay within the time frame and did not charge the the extra fee. I gave my vehicle and my credit card details and that was the end of it, or so I thought.

A few days after we returned home we received an overdue notice for a toll not paid on our tow car. There was no mention of the fee we had paid for the motorhome nor had the fee been deducted from our credit card. It appears that the motorway camera has taken the photo from behind and only registered our tow car as the travelling vehicle and not our motorhome which was in fact the travelling vehicle and the one we had paid for.

I have written a letter, and we are still awaiting for a response from the M2 toll company as to how to properly use the motorways when you are in our situation, like may other motorhomers, with a motorhome and tow car.

I will keep you posted. If you have had a similar experience please let me know.

April 2008 - Update

We wrote to the operator of the motorway and explained our story. After a second fine notice, we finally spoke with someone who answered our queries. Whilst they were able to sort the problem and avoid the fine, the representative from the company could not give us any guarantees that this would not happen again.

The only advice I can offer is - if there is an option to use a tollbooth instead of a cashless system then take it. It avoids the potential of a mistake being made.

© 2008 Gail Bennett (motorhominglifestyle.com). If you would like to reproduce this article on your website please contact gail@motorhominglifestyle.com