A Dart Charge customer has shared his frustration after him and his wife were faced with 270+ caller queues when trying to get help with their account to avoid being fined.

Many customers trying to pay for their Dartford Crossing journeys were unable to access the site over the weekend to pay their tolls due to a maintenance period followed by long queues both online and via phone.

Dart Charge was also asking account holders, including Pay as You Go customers, to revalidate their cards to ensure their crossings are automatically paid and to avoid penalties.

People are now uncovering further issues following the maintenance including being unable to re-validate cards, account balances being wiped, journeys not being recorded, and local resident permits being removed.

Robert and Jenny Hartley faced problems with their account after they travelled from West Wickham on July 30 and experienced a 15-minute queue due to the closure of a tunnel.

They said they were aware of Dart Charge changes and did not try to access the GOV.UK site due to it being down for maintenance but they were surprised to find it still inaccessible in later in the evening.

The following day they managed to access the payment page but had to validate their card twice due to system issues.

However, there was no record of their crossings on the account and when they tried to call to sort the issues out, phone lines were engaged or not connecting.

They noticed two Dart Charge entries on their credit card, but no money had been taken.

On August 1 they continued having problems accessing the Dart Charge site, so tried to call a customer service number which was provided via an email - before giving up due to the sheer amount of people calling.

Robert said: “I rang in the morning to hear a recorded message tell me my call would be answered shortly but there were 260+ callers were ahead of me.”

On Wednesday, August 2 they had to revalidate the card and called customer service and were disconnected again.

He explained: “We tried again before 7am to access the account, had to revalidate the card, and my wife has tried the number which was given on a customer service email just after 8am.

“She was told she was in a queue with 42 people in front of her. It then cut off.

“She tried it again and the recorded message said there were now 278 in front of her.”

They are now left worrying whether their journey has been recorded, whether they have a valid account on Dart Charge, if they will be fined or what to do next.

Robert told the News Shopper: “This is absolutely ludicrous.

“There must be thousands and thousands of people trying to sort out their payments and yet it is hardly making the national news.

“It should be raised at Prime Minister Questions in the Commons.

“The government should intervene and there should be an amnesty until the systems are up and running properly.

“It cannot be expected that people are using up their own valuable time to try and get onto the site or through on the phone lines.”

Dart Charge has now announced an extended deadline date for re-validating cards and making payments.

Account holders now have until August 31 to update their card details on the Dart Charge website, while non-account holders who used the crossing between July 27 and August 14 have until August 15 to pay the charge.

A Dart Charge spokesperson said in a statement: “The websites and customer contact centres are all operating. We apologise for the service issues users have faced over the last few days and have implemented service improvements.

“While customers may still experience short delays, the average online wait time is now less than 5 minutes.

“We have further extended payment deadlines to ensure everyone has sufficient time to pay the charge.

“@DartCharge account holders have until 31 August to update their card details on the website.

“Non-account holders who use the crossing between 27 July and 14 August have until 15 August to pay the charge.”

“We apologise again for the inconvenience, which was due to essential system updates.”