Two weeks of pleading for Beechworth, Yackandandah and Wangaratta to be included in the "border community" has failed.
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The Service NSW map released on Monday confirmed people from the North East not within a few kilometres of the Murray River would not be eligible for cross-border resident permits.
The new permits with stricter conditions were due to be available from 2pm Monday, but as of 5pm, the website was still issuing the old permits that allowed people to cross for "daily life", which will no longer be a valid reason.
It caused confusion for people from eligible towns such as Rutherglen, Barnawartha and Granya, with no message to say why they had been rejected, or that the permit system had not been updated as scheduled.
Towong, Indigo and Wangaratta mayors met with NSW cross-border commissioner James McTavish last week to make sure their message about the need for their residents to get across the border was heard by the NSW government.
Yackandandah-based Tim Roberts had been able to get a freight permit for his mail safety business Powdersafe, but said he did not like the look of the new restrictions.
"We will just have to adapt," he said.
"There should be no cases if the hard border around Melbourne/Mitchell Shire remains effective and those in the regions with COVID-19 do the right thing, but from what has occurred in the past 10 days, that does not look to be the case."
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Indigo mayor Jenny O'Connor said the direction not to cross in NSW for shopping was worrying for many in Wahgunyah, who shopped for essentials in Corowa.
"There's still a lot of uncertainty about what this means and the directive is coming from NSW, so we're limited in what we can do other that feed it into the cross-border commissioner," she said.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews also spoke with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Sunday before it was announced the border restrictions would be tightened and backed her decision.
"I know there will be some really practical issues that people have to work through," he said.
"I will continue to speak with Gladys and (Regional Development Minister) Jac Symes will continue to work with her counterpart to try and make a difficult set of circumstances just a little easier. They won't be easy though, we know that, but I can understand why Premier Berejiklian has made the decisions she has made.
"Let's work together and make them as practical as we can, make them as common sense as we can."
