Yesterday evening we were driving back to the city from an afternoon in the suburbs. The drive was completely uneventful until we got to the EZ Pass toll booth on the Triboro bridge. We have had our current EZ Pass for at least a decade and never had a problem with it. So I was rudely surprised when the gate did not open and the sign said “Contact EZ Pass, Low Balance.” We rapidly had a large number of honking cars behind us. We sat there for several minutes with the honking getting ever more aggressive with no sign of anyone coming to help. During that time I called EZ Pass which turns out not to have 24x7 customer support (this was a little past 6pm on a Sunday evening) and the automated system didn’t accept our tag number.

I got out of the car not once but twice trying to look for someone to help. Each time being told by one of the people collecting tolls in the other lanes to immediately get back into our car. The cars stuck behind us by that time had figured out how to back up far enough to get into a different lane. Finally a police officer shows up. He scans our tag with a handheld device and says “EZ Pass has removed your account.” Me “Come again?” Officer “Yup. Not just suspended. Removed.” And just like that he bagged our tag, made us pay $7.50 in bridge toll and handed us (after another 5 minute wait) a receipt for out tag.

There is a terrific lesson for SaaS subscription businesses in here: Don’t ever turn a customer’s access off without warning. I had used our EZ Pass as recently as the previous weekend. Absolutely no sign that anything might be wrong. No “Contact EZ Pass” with the gate still opening. No prior email or text message. Nada.

If you have a customer whose credit card has expired or who has gone over some usage limit or in some other way requires contact make sure to provide ample of warning. Ideally do so via redundant channels, such as email, directly in the product’s user experience, even in return codes from the API. Whatever you do, don’t just turn off service. It makes for a terrible user experience. If I had any choice in providers I would never go back to EZ Pass.

That brings me to another lesson here, this one for the cities and highway authorities offering EZ Pass. The system readers should have an open spec and allow multiple competing consumer tag providers. Without a doubt that would improve the user experience and probably help drive adoption much higher as well.