Alan PT

Nice idea, shame it is so expensive to use outside France - 2.40 a day charge!

VV also works in Spain BTW, but not in France https://www.viaverde.pt/particulares...usar/traveller

Jon-Bxl

No no its per month.. As I actually use it I can confirm that.. quote

The monthly processing fees are only debited if you use the badge €1.70 per month used in France, €2.40 per month used in the Spain-Portugal zone and €2.40 per month used in Italy.
Jon

Alan PT

Ah, sorry, I misread it, thanks for the correction!

That's quite reasonable then, might get one of those as we are planning a road trip to Italy once things calm down a bit, that will make life a lot easier

Jon-Bxl

Glad to help. We really love this thing!

BTW Its possible that the 8month promo is only mentioned on the French site

https://www.mango-mobilitesbyaprr.co...pagne-portugal
Jon

flatlndr

Good tip. On the final day I could take the local roads rather than the toll road. It will only add 10-15 mins to my journey time, but it would allow me to deactivate the day before. Thanks.

flatlndr

Preliminary report:

• I missed the shipping window for having a transponder sent to me in the UK
• I ordered one and had it sent to me in PT. I paid the extra 5€ to get express shipping with tracking. Glad that I did because the first delivery attempt failed - "couldn't find the property" - but I was able to arrange a re-attempt with DPD which was successful.
• I didn't want to attach the device to my windscreen, as I will take it with me when I depart. I mounted it on the visor with elastics, and it read fine at all the tolls
• About 3 business days after going through tolls, I'm starting to see charges come through. It seems to be billing every trip. I thought billing would occur monthly. I need to double-check on that.

I'll send a further update at the end of the trip, once I've deactivated the device from the car registration and received the final bill.

flatlndr

I turned in the car and deregistered the tag on the 5th, after 3 weeks of use. Overall, it seems to have worked well. A few observations:

• There is a lag from toll to card payment, of about 2 business days
• There is a further lag of another business day or two before the toll crossing shows up in the app
  • the final toll crossings on Sat 5 Feb have shown up on my credit card, but not yet in the app/account
• I deactivated the device in the app immediately after returning the car; I haven't seen any activity registered since then.
  • It took 24 hours for the device to come off the account. If you have a concern about someone else running the hire car through a toll, then it might be worth deactivating a day earlier and taking the side roads on your final day

As long as there are no spurious charges, this has been a good experiment. I paid 11.25€ in fees (express shipping, 5€, Jan 5€, Feb 1.25€) versus what would have been nearly 41€ to rent a transponder from a hire car company (1.85€/day * 22 days).
The savings were enough to cover a dinner for two, so that was a win.

Monthly fees will only kick in the next time we activate the tag, and only at 1.25€ per calendar month, so it will be pure savings going forward. I don't think we can use the tag in hire cars which have their own tags, but it frees us up to hire from smaller (and cheaper) local firms who don't offer transponder hire as an option.

I'll do another update after the next trip ... to report whether the device still works ... or if I see any unexpected charges, in which case I'll find out how well customer service works.

Alan PT

Most rental companies will have a maximum charge of 10 days (18.5 euro), but still a worthwhile saving. The batteries in the units seem to last (at least) several years, so it should be fine for your next trip!

flatlndr

Good point, so maybe I just saved myself the cost of a few beers, and next time I'll save a bit more.

For me, the other motivator was to be able to hire from a local agency with better prices (and they don't charge for a second driver, leading to further savings). But the last time I went with them I had to go to a CTT office a few times to pay the tolls. I was looking to avoid that hassle.

Alan PT

...and the more you use it, the more you'll save. Good excuse to come to Portugal more

But for anyone else who still wants to do it "manually", I see VV now has an online checker/payer: https://www.viaverde.pt/particulares...entos-em-falta

flatlndr

After my Jan/Feb trip report, I said I'd do an update after my subsequent trip. I was in the Algarve for 3 weeks in Oct. Here are my results:

1. No spurious charges on my account after dropping off the car and deactivating the registration afterward.
2. Transponder still worked fine (battery good, etc.), but ...
3. There were two toll crossings where the device didn't beep. As we don't want to attach it to the windscreen, we attach it to the visor with elastics. Turns out the visor on this car doesn't extend as far, so the device was partially obscured. We tweaked the setup a bit, and then the beeps resumed.
4. Even though the device didn't beep, we were still fully and properly charged for our journeys. It appear the ANPR back-up worked and linked to our account.
5. There's still a lag on processing. Charges show up on my card ~3 days after toll crossings, but it takes almost a week for them to show up in my Via Verde online account. The final crossing took almost 2 weeks to show up, perhaps because it was at the end of the month and they seem to process monthly statements on the final Friday of the month.

Overall, I'm pleased with the tag. It has worked well for us. We're in Heath Robinson mode now working out temporary extender options in case our next hire car visor is poorly positioned again.

Alan PT - I looked into the online checker/payment link you posted. Unless I've read it incorrectly, unfortunately it doesn't appear to work for the A22 (motorway across the Algarve), which is where we do most of our driving.
Update: After a bit of searching, I found this ... If you don't have a tag, it looks like you can make a payment here - https://www.ctt.pt/forms/portagens-em-divida - rather than going to the CTT office.

BillBullock

Ever since they introduced the toll charges on the A22, I've been using a similar CTT site for paying my toll dues after a journey: https://www.ctt.pt/fepme/app/open/pa...e/request.jspx .

flatlndr

Thanks BillBullock . It's good to have a confirmation of successful use of that payment method.
I used the site myself to make sure there were no outstanding charges against the car I had hired, to make sure the next renter didn't accrue fees that might mistakenly get sent to me.