The unpaid toll and Dart Charge text scam

Escudo guide · Updated July 2026

What the message looks like

It reads like a short official notice and it leans on worry rather than reward. Common versions run close to this.

"Dart Charge: our records show an unpaid crossing charge of £2.50. Pay now to avoid a £70 penalty:" followed by a link. Others drop the Dart Charge name and just say "unpaid toll", "road fee" or "crossing fine", with a deadline of 24 or 48 hours and a threat of a much bigger charge if you ignore it.

The trick is the gap between the small amount and the large threat. A £2.50 charge feels too trivial to argue with, and the £70 penalty feels too big to risk, so you pay the small one to make the big one go away. The page you land on looks like an official payment portal. It takes your card, and often a bit more, and the "toll" was never real.

Why this one is spreading fast

Toll texts have surged across the UK because the crews behind them, the same industrial gangs sending the parcel and bank scams, found that drivers hesitate. Unlike a parcel you can picture, most people genuinely cannot remember every crossing or road they used last month. The Dartford Crossing is a perfect cover because it really does bill you after you cross, with no barrier and a short window to pay, and its own system has a reputation for muddle and wrongly issued fines. So a message saying you missed a payment feels entirely plausible. The scammers borrow that plausibility. There is nothing personal in it. They send millions of these and the ones who drove recently do the rest.

How to tell it is fake in ten seconds

1. Check where the link really goes. The genuine Dart Charge and every real government payment live on gov.uk. A scam link will be something like dart-charge-pay.xyz or crossing-fine.co. If the address is not gov.uk, it is not the crossing.
2. Real charges are not chased by text link. If you owe a genuine Dart Charge, a penalty notice comes by post to your registered keeper address, not a text pushing you to pay in the next hour. The channel is the tell.
3. The rush is the whole scam. "Pay within 24 hours or face £70." That squeeze is designed to stop you checking. A real fine gives you weeks, and even offers a reduced amount for paying early.
4. Never pay a charge from a text you did not expect. If you think you might genuinely owe a crossing charge, go to gov.uk yourself and type the address in by hand. Never pay through a link someone sent you.

What to do if you only tapped the link

Tapping alone rarely does harm. On an up to date iPhone, opening the page and closing it usually does nothing by itself. What matters is whether you typed anything. If you opened it, had a look, and closed it without entering your card or details, your risk is low. Close the tab, delete the text and move on. For the full picture, see our guide on what to do after you tap a scam link.

What to do if you paid or entered your details

1. Call your bank now, using the number on the back of your card or inside your official banking app, never a number from the text. Say you paid a scam page and gave your card.
2. Ask them to freeze the card and watch for further charges. The £2.50 is bait. What they want is a card they can reuse or sell, so the small payment is rarely the end of it.
3. Expect a follow up call. Days later someone very calm may ring, claim to be your bank's fraud team, and tell you to move your money to a "safe account" to protect it. No bank ever asks this. The safe account is theirs. Hang up and ring your bank yourself on a number you looked up.
4. Change any password you entered on the page, and anywhere else you used the same one.

Report it

• Forward the scam text to 7726, free of charge. It spells SPAM on the keypad and helps your network block the sender.
• Report to Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk or on 0300 123 2040. In Scotland, report to Police Scotland on 101.
• Keep the message until you have reported it, then delete it. Do not delete it in a panic before you have the details down.

One script, many masks

The unpaid toll is the same machine as the parcel fee, the fake bank alert and the DVLA refund. Same gangs, same trick, a different official logo pasted on top. Once you have seen how it works you spot it fast. It is worth reading how these SMS scam gangs actually operate, because the toll is never really about a toll. If you get the version pretending to be your bank or HMRC, see the fake bank text. If it claims the DVLA owes you a refund, read the DVLA vehicle tax refund scam.

You are not the problem

These pages are built to catch careful people on a distracted day. The fact that you stopped to check means you caught it in time. The people most at risk are the ones who never pause, often our mums and dads, who see an official looking charge and pay it to be safe.

That is what the Escudo app is for. It helps filter known scam patterns on the iPhone and sets them aside before they are read, so there is less to tap in the first place. It does not promise to stop every scam or to judge any single message, and it cannot tell you whether one text is genuine. Nothing is deleted, it is only moved to a junk folder, and your messages never leave your phone.