LOUISVILLE, Ky. — For months, frustrations have boiled over for many drivers of Kentuckiana's major toll bridges.
Now, RiverLink says things are getting back on the right track.
RiverLink spokesperson Mindy Peterson told WHAS11 on Friday that they've doubled their number of customers service call takers in the last couple weeks, with about 70 now assisting. That's thanks to more than $3 million in extra funding from transportation and finance leaders from Indiana and Kentucky.
"[We can bring on] up to 50 extra customer service representatives answering phones," Peterson said.
Peterson says it'll take more months to get customer service call times back to where they were, prior to switching toll service providers last year. But she told WHAS11, the system is "seeing a lot of improvements and continuing to trend in the right direction."
RiverLink says it received more than 100,000 calls in January alone, more than twice what they get on a typical month. It came after a seven-month period when bills were put on hold to ease the transition to a new provider.
It left some customers with handfuls of invoices coming in all at once when billing started back up, some telling WHAS11 they've seen charges rack up into the hundreds of dollars. They also reported customer service wait times of two to three hours, both in person and over the phone.
Peterson says the worst waits were about an hour.
"That is not where we want to be. That's not acceptable to the states," she said. "Now, it may be 30 minutes before a call is answered."
When asked what an "acceptable" wait time is, Peterson said, "I'll have to see what the contractual requirements are, but I think it's about a minute and a half."
In a statement sent later Friday, Peterson wrote, "We’re working to get the average speed to answer back to a minute or less. It will take time to do that, but the states are committed to improvements."
WHAS11 also asked if RiverLink is aware of any situations of people being incorrectly charged for trips or vehicles not registered to them.
"We are always monitoring the system to make sure that it's working correctly, that images are read correctly," Peterson said. "So, if we see room for improvement, we are making those improvements."
She continued, "The fact of the matter is, if anyone received an invoice or a new monthly bill for activity for a car that does not belong to them -- they don't owe that money."
According to Riverlink, as of mid-January, there are around 8,500 accounts that owe more than $500. They say that's less than 1% of the total number of accounts that owe money. Peterson adds that less than 3% of the total number of accounts owe anywhere from $100-$500.
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