However to demonstrate the progress that CTT are making, the page is now available in English
Unlike some of the other information I have found....The minimum (as a second Language) Spanish would have been good from the word go.
So is this the end of the saga? After all this time I home so.
Now to find something else to read and write about!!
It sounds like this is a way to simply charge your credit card every time you pass through a toll gantry in your foreign reg car. Wouldn't that be brilliant? But if that's what it is I'll eat my hat.
It's my guess (reading between the lines of the press release) that it's simply a way to buy a 3 or 5 day "pass", rather like you can do online with the CTT.
and as e-richard says, the tourists who rent cars are still not sorted.
e-richard wrote:Not for the many thousands of tourists who rent cars at the airports, its not.
And why is that? The payment is now clear and is a lot easier. All the car hire companies have to do is inform their customers on how to pay the tolls, how hard can that be?
e-richard wrote:Can you explain how a tourist in a rental car pays on his return to the airport, please? ...
No.
e-richard wrote:... I am doing exactly that trip in about 3 hours from now
Just as before this latest innovation you can ask someone still in Portugal to do it for you after you've left (ie pay or send the text and forward the reply to you for payment), or you can hope that the next renter of your car pays it for you.
First off have you asked the car rental guys. They should be the most clued up. If not sack them!
So in case you sack them I will tell you. Dispite the news about paying via “SMS” being immediately available I cannot find any where the phone number has been given out for this service. So it is back to stage one. Maybe wait until summer then have tolls dedicated from your CC.
RichardHenshall wrote:To help those driving Portuguese cars CTT (post office) are now offering a system where in response to a text message (costing 0,30€) a payment reference will be issued that can be used at MultiBanco machines or online banking. Details here.
Its usefulness to tourists driving hire cars is extremely limited since the text message cannot be sent until 48 hours after the passage through the toll gate to a Portuguese short SMS number and the tourist would need a Portuguese bank account.
However to demonstrate the progress that CTT are making, the page is now available in English.
I must now refine my last comment. Some of the page is now available in English.
If you look at the Portuguese version of the page (or even the Spanish one) the number is given - it's just not in the English version.
Para tal, basta enviar um SMS com o texto “CTTMB espaço matrícula” (ex:CTTMB AA-00-00) para o número 68989.
O cliente receberá um SMS de resposta com a informação da referência, entidade e valor a pagar, bem como a data limite para pagamento das respetivas portagens que estão a pagamento na data da receção do SMS.
Os recibos respeitantes às portagens pagas estarão disponíveis a partir das 48 horas após o pagamento acedendo ao site http://portagens.ctt.pt/Recibos.
However, as e-Richard says this is no use to a departing tourist as he'll be out of the country when the 48 hours have passed and therefore he couldn't send a text to a Portuguese short SMS code and even if he could he certainly doesn't have access to a MultiBanco machine and probably doesn't have a Portuguese bank account.
Well thank goodness I found this forum, had the pleasure of visiting Portugal last week for the first time. Travelled by hire car from Valladolid in Spain with Spanish plates and drove along the A52 and then into portugal driving down to Esposende. Didn't realise anything about electornic tolls until we drove back to Spain at 4am via the A24 when I noticed some Gantries which mentioned electronic tolls. Just drove straight through because there was no signage to state otherwise. Was back in Spain at 5am and dropped the car back to Hertz at 9am. Spoke to the guy at Hertz and he just shrugged his shoulders. Question is can I pay the tolls now or do I wait for Hertz to contact me (will they???). Cheers in advance for your replies
It still seems a bit confusing, Jubbo. I've been told that some people have had large fines for non-payment, and so if this happens then presumably Hertz will pass this on to you. But it's really hard to know what to do for someone new to the system. What happened to us is that, picking up a car from Faro to drive into Spain, we then got the ferry back to Portugal a couple of days later (to Vila Real da Santa Antonio) and paid the toll at the post office. We kept the receipt to prove to the hire company that we'd paid it, then gave them the money plus a five euro admin fee to pay the toll for our return trip.
But obviously if you don't know about that system then you wouldn't have done it. I also believe there have been some more recent changes and you can now pay at some sort of kiosk near the gantries, but I don't know how that works.
The whole thing is a mess, and each attempt to sort it out just seems to result in more chaos.
I have written a lot on a travel forum about this. I started in 2009 when they were first introduced in the North of Portugal
If a non Portuguese registered car fails to pay the tolls the cameras will pick up the details. What is suppose to happen is a Policeman further down the highway will stop you and make you pay the toll and a fine. However, in practice nothing is happening at the moment. But one day the authorities will catch on to this “loop hole” It must only be a matter of time before someone driving a non Portuguese vehicle gets a fine.
I personally have not heard of one Spanish rental company passing on any fine, but there is always a first.