IL Tollway Fines

[Kristal09]

Illinois - In 2006 I had some iPass issues. I had gotten a new car and apparently forget to change the make of the car, so it was showing my new car was a Chevy tC when in fact it was a Scion tC. Chevy was my old make. That caused some violations. I called had that taken care of, and then apparently my credit card was expired, this is what they told me when I talked to them recently, as I don't really remember exactly the issue from 9 years ago. They said that the account was negative. I stopped traveling the highway around then when I left my job, so I didn't pay much attention to my account to be honest and never received anything about my negative balance. I do remember when I did log into my account after some time I saw it was, I want to say, a few dollars negative so I reloaded it with $40.00. It was some time after all of this in which I received a collection notice for $11k. I called immediately, and said it was for my toll violations that I had on my account. I said I would gladly pay for those tolls (about $60.00 or so). They said they could only give me a $550 settlement. This happened in 2008. They said to further dispute it I would need to go to the tollway authority. I remember that horrible visit to the tollway authority, in which I had to explain everything to the cheerful, wonderful people there and filled out some forms to have my case submitted. Well, I never heard anything and was wrong not to follow up directly with them. I do remember I logged into my account and saw they deducted money for those tolls. I thought everything was taken care of since my transponder in which I just filled was negative again from them taking money for past due tolls, and I filled it yet again. Recently my transponder had gone bad and I had to get a new one. There was a toll that I missed, I called as soon as I got the violation, paid it, it was taken care of. A month later got 1 more, called right away, and now they are saying that all of these violations from 2008 need to be taken care of. I'm shocked as I had no idea this was even still a thing. They said they needed to suspend my transponder and the least they will take for a settlement is $550. They said the last notice they sent me was back in November of 2008. I have no idea if the last notice was before or after I went to the tollway office as we're talking 7 years ago and I can barely remember what I did last year. The supervisor I spoke to on the phone was asking me questions that I honestly don't know because this all happened SO long ago and I don't remember. I really would hate to have to pay over $500 for something that I should be paying $60 for and if I remember correctly, I'm pretty sure they already took that from my iPass back in 2008 when I thought this was taken care of. Should I just pay the settlement? Is there any statue of limitation? Why would they suspend my iPass after 7 years and not when this originally happened? The manager confirmed they have not sent me any kind of correspondence since 2008 regarding this situation. Is there anything at all I can do to fight this? Thanks.