Judith Brown says she's been receiving the wrong toll bills for over a year. She first noticed the problem when she received an email notification that her TxTag account was depleted.
The bills showed the San Antonio woman's TxTag number, but she knew she hadn't been driving on toll roads.
"They said that was the only way that it could get out there, was if I drove through the toll road or drove on the toll road with my car. But I knew I had never been on the toll road with that car. I just bought the TxTag in case I wanted to go on a toll road," Brown said.
After some digging, Brown found that there was another license plate in Texas that was very similar to hers. Her license plate reads J BBB and the other license plate reads T J BBB. Her plate has a star and a dash on it while the other plate has the Longhorns mascot and a heart.
TxTag says that the error in charging Brown's account was actually made by the North Texas Tollway Authority. They say that the NTTA took a picture of the Longhorn license plate and then associated the plate with Brown's account.
NTTA couldn't comment specifically about Brown's situation but said that the character recognition software that they use to read license plates sometimes can have mix-ups.
As of today, Brown has gotten rid of her TxTags, but the toll bills for the Longhorn plate keep coming.
"I have to call and I have to explain to them how they are supposed to read the plate," she said.
The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles says that they can work with people who have similar plates in these situations and try to get them a new one, but Brown says that's not what she wants.
"I feel as though the DMV kind of failed me as a person who has had this license plate for 15 years-plus, because if anybody looks at the plate that they're saying is not a duplicate of mine, they would also read it as JBBB just as TxTag has been reading it," she said.
Brown has managed to get refunded for all the wrong toll bills but doesn't predict that the mix-ups will end anytime soon.