![\"Bambozzled-](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/CC4INZ7I5JEPTC5L2VLEG3VEMM.jpg\")
Alan Lieberman with his car in his driveway in Cranford, New Jersey on Thursday, October 8, 2026.<\/p>\nBack in June 2025, Alan Lieberman and his wife drove into New York City for an off-Broadway play. <\/p>\n
They returned to the city two weeks later, this time to see a one-man comedy show. <\/p>\n
Nearly a full year later, Lieberman saw some unexpected charges on his May 2026 E-ZPass statement. <\/p>\n
There were three Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ) toll fees, commonly called \u201ccongestion pricing,\u201d a controversial charge levied on those who drive south of 60th Street. <\/p>\n
Controversial, at least, to Jersey drivers. <\/p>\n
Two separate fees dated June 25, 2025, and one for July 8, 2025, caught his eye. <\/p>\n
\u201cI knew that something was wrong with the system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He went back to his statements from last year, and saw he was charged \u2014 and had paid \u2014 the $9 fee for both dates. <\/p>\n
And, he knew, the two charges on the same day were wrong. The fee can only be charged once per day.<\/p>\n
He called New Jersey E-ZPass \u2014 his tag is based in Jersey \u2014 and it removed one of the duplicate charges. But the agency only processes the fees sent to it by New York, so it couldn\u2019t remove the other charges, he was told. <\/p>\n
So wrote to New York E-ZPass on June 1 with a dispute declaration and copies of the statements to prove he had already paid the fees. He received no response, so he wrote again on July 27. Again, no response. <\/p>\n
\u201cAfter my first two letters, I received only another violation notice, with a larger penalty, about a month later,\u201d he said. \u201cI sent my third letter by Certified Mail and received a reply, but they ignored my proof of payment and explanation and sent the violations to a collection agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now he owed $40.50 in fees and $150 in penalties, according to the Sept. 3 violation notice from the MTA and the subsequent letter he received from the collection agency. <\/p>\n
Calls to New Jersey E-ZPass didn\u2019t clear things up, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe customer service representative I spoke with was sympathetic but said they couldn\u2019t do anything and that New York E-ZPass ignores explanations of their errors,\u201d Lieberman said.<\/p>\n
Concerned about the outstanding violations, which could lead to a vehicle registration suspension and damaged credit, he paid the $190.50 bill. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have done nothing wrong and am paying the price for an MTA error that they refuse to correct. I hope to recover my unnecessary payment of $190.50,\u201d Lieberman said, and he asked Bamboozled for help. <\/p>\n
We reviewed copies of Lieberman\u2019s unanswered letters to MTA and his E-ZPass account statements, which confirmed he paid those fees a year ago.<\/p>\n
Then we shared the letters and statements with MTA and asked it to review Lieberman\u2019s account. We also requested it return Lieberman\u2019s money and call off the collections dogs. <\/p>\n
The next day, we had an answer. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe MTA team looked into this customer\u2019s case and we are in the process of rectifying the issue via Mr. Lieberman\u2019s NY Tolls by Mail Account and NJ E-ZPass with a full credit back to the credit card used for the payment,\u201d a spokesman said. \u201cThe customer will also be contacted directly to inform him of the review.\u201d<\/p>\n
We were glad to hear Lieberman is getting his money back, but we had a larger question. <\/p>\n
Why did it happen? And importantly, is there some kind of larger, systemic issue that affected other drivers?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cause is under review,\u201d a spokeswoman said.<\/p>\n
Not exactly a satisfying answer, but we hope the case has indeed spurred MTA to take a closer look at what happened here to make sure other drivers were not wrongly charged. <\/p>\n
Lieberman said didn\u2019t receive a call, but there\u2019s already a $190.50 refund on his credit card. <\/p>\n
While he\u2019s glad to get the money back, it never should have happened, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am frustrated that the MTA ignored my three written replies to their violation notices,\u201d he said. \u201cI knew that the MTA made a processing error when I received the initial violation notice.\u201d<\/p>\n
If we ever find out what went wrong here, we will let you know, dear readers. <\/p>\n
In the meantime, take Lieberman\u2019s experience as another reminder to read all of your bills closely. <\/p>\n
Alan Lieberman with his car in his driveway in Cranford, New Jersey on Thursday, October 8, 2026.<\/p>\n
Chris Pedota | For NJ.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in June 2025, Alan Lieberman and his wife drove into New York City for an off-Broadway play.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-377337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}