Rental car companies who eat you up with fees for using their transponder in states with electronic tolls are facing lawsuits.
We all know more and more states have eliminated humans at toll booths and switched to an all-electronic system. But did you know the car rental companies charge you a daily fee if you go through an automated tool booth, and then they charge you a markup on each individual toll?
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You could pay $51 for a 60-cent toll!
That’s led to a couple of class-action lawsuits. Hertz settled and paid $11 million to customers. Now there’s another suit again Dollar Rent a Car, which is owned by Hertz.
Dollar charges you a markup of $15 per toll. It could be a 50 cent toll, but they still charge that $15 markup! Alamo charges a $14.75 markup per toll.
As you probably know, that’s just one of many fees the car rental companies charge you!
This is absolute highway robbery. I travel all the time and I bought a multi-state prepaid toll card that I can take with me. You can buy these things at more and more drugstores. They’re like any other prepaid card, but you use it only for tolls.
Yet a number of states don’t participate with such a prepaid system. I was in Florida recently and I didn’t have the ability to pay a toll, so I took the GPS on my phone and selected the ‘no toll roads’ option. By doing that, I was able to get all around an area that’s infamous for toll roads without paying one because I didn’t want to get hit with huge fees by the car rental company.
The last time that I went through tolls prior to that, the rental company billed me $51 for a 60-cent toll. Is that absolutely Clarkrageous or what?! I still haven’t gotten over that.
The car rental agencies are violating trust with customers, making money in the short term, and they’re only going to make the lawyers rich…which is even more Clarkrageous.
For more money-saving advice to protect your wallet, see our Cars section!
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