This is one to watch out for! Not sure what anyone could do, but here goes the story.
The rental agency was Thrifty, using ATS processing services.
So we rented a car in a city that was familiar enough to avoid tolls not long ago. But they keep changing lanes and adding foreign toll segments so the inadvertent can happen. Like this:
Wrong lane ka-ching. TWO tolls to first exit, 95 cents each for $1.90 toll.
Wrong lane to airport: One toll to get off, $1.70
Total $3.60 in tolls. Here’s the rub: EACH toll incurs $15.00 ADMIN FEE! That’s 45 bucks in admin fees, 12.5 times the cost of the tolls!!!
No objection to paying the tolls and a reasonable Admin fee, but this is an outrage! Does anybody have any idea on mitigating it?
I travel with an EZ Pass Transponder. There’s another version also but I seem to travel only in EZ Pass states. It can save a lot of hassle. Just remember to remove the rental from your account when you turn it in.
If you use a tollway, take a photo of your rental car and a close up of the license plate. Go to the tollway website and pay the tolls ASAP. That way the rental company will never get billed for the toll. This worked for me on a trip to the Chicago area where I used the tollways
Something similar happened to me on a trip to Australia. A month after we got back home we got a bill for a almost $200 for highway tolls in an Avis rental car. The tolls were just a few bucks but the penalties were time-dependent and kept racking up in the month it took for the notice to reach us.
When you go through customs in most countries they will check to see if you have any outstanding warrants or claims against you. I’ve heard that some countries have reciprocal agreements to share the information.
To avoid future problems I just paid the bill and had them send me an acknowledgement which I carried with me while traveling internationally for a few years.
I used Avis again and explained the situation to them and got a week’s free rental from them.
Yep had $40 in tolls on the Katy Freeway in Texas. I’m claiming the non administrative fee for tax purposes. I was charged a $3.95 fee daily instead of a per toll administrative fee with Alamo
It’s a $1 for $1 credit so the $3.95/day fee is annoying. It was a $1,831 trip that I otherwise get to write off completely