anentropic
UK GOV's Dartford Crossing charge website update not going so well I think...
Last week an email saying I'll need to login to re-enter my card details after *but not before* the 28th
On the 28th: "website down for maintenance until Sun 30th"
Mon 31st: "To manage high demand, you have been placed into a queue." ...my web request has been in this queue for > 30 mins now
#dartfordcrossing #dartcharge #ukgov
Jul 31, 2023 at 11:34amWeb
Show threadanentropicJul 31, 2023

"You will be redirected to the website when your turn arrives."

...but I am doubting. If the whole thing doesn't work it would also look exactly like what I am seeing now.

Show threadanentropicJul 31, 2023
It's been like an hour. For a web request, no humans in the loop. Pretty sure this is just dead.
Show threadanentropicJul 31, 2023
I took a chance on losing my queue place and reloaded to have a look in dev tools. The polling payload looks like `{ "pending": 1, "ttw": 177, "rld": 0 , "pos": 27197}`
My `pos` has updated in 10 mins from 27964 down to 26276 so something is happening albeit very very slowly.
Show threadanentropicJul 31, 2023

I wonder how many people have a Dart Charge account? I would guess pretty much everyone in SE England incl. London who has a car?

"There are 2.6m cars registered in London" and they're all trying to revalidate their Dart Charge right now.

Probably got rate limited by the payment provider?

Show threadanentropicJul 31, 2023
(We have to revalidate today or else get stung for any auto payments which couldn't be taken over the weekend)
Show threadanentropicJul 31, 2023

It's quite nice the way dev tools console groups identical log entries together.

Turns out I didn't need to reload to inspect the requests either, since it's logging them.

And if `ttw` means "Time To Wait" estimated in minutes then I must have been near the front of the queue when I reloaded 🤦‍♂️

Show threadMeliJul 31, 2023

@anentropic I sympathise and hope you get it sorted in time.

I have a pre-pay balance in place, and 2 trips in the last week, the first went though pre-upgrade, the one from Friday still hasn't gone through, added a payment method on Sunday just in case.

As usual, "public service" IT systems a complete shambles.
#DartCharge #DartfordCrossing

Show threadanentropicAug 1, 2023

@meli_n I ended up missing my place when my request got to the front of the queue as I was busy having lunch

But after that I reloaded and it went straight through and worked fine