People trying to pay the Dartford Crossing charge have taken to social media to complain about the inability to do so, after a system changeover took longer than expected.

The contract for managing the payment process passed to Conduent over the weekend as former contract provider Emovis moves to handling only the penalty charge notices.

National Highways warned the payment site would be down over the weekend but users were met with a fault message for much of Monday (31 July) with customers being placed in a queue.

Drivers took to Twitter to complain of the problems, with one writing “how am I supposed to avoid a fine if I can’t login to my account. And where has my account credit gone?” while another complained “Who in their right mind decided the summer holidays was a great time to update a system!” and another “It’s ridiculous. I’ve sent an email, but not wasting another minute of our holiday trying to do this. Absolute joke.”

Customers are being told payment deadlines will be extended while problems persist.

(Pictures – Dart Charge website and Twitter feed)