iwebslinger

Ahhhh. Frustrating. We were traveling from MCO to our condo and the road from the airport seemed different. I knew there were tolls but when we exited there was an unmanned toll. They wanted .75 cents but we had no change. We tried to toss a dollar but it would not go down. Car were backing up and honking. We finally just went. What will happen?

Rejuvenated

Never been in a situation myself where I've rented a car and failed to pay the toll. But I would imagine if there was a camera to snap the license plate of your rented vehicle and the fee/fine goes to the rental company, they'll probably foot it to the credit card you used for your rental.

BLI-Flyer

The ticket will go to the rental car company and they will (probably) tack on a collection fee and send it to you. Buried somewhere in your rental car contract is a description of this process.

majorwibi

The Orlando area allows for two of these "actions" per car per month. I had the same issue back in Sept and called the number on the unmanned booth and was told what I just mentioned. The lady I talked to also mentioned that they have listings of what are rental cars and the grant a lot more leeway in those situations.

kicknit

I've had about a handful of situations where I didn't have toll change over the last couple of years. So far, I haven't had any extra charges added to my rental or any letters from rental agencies or tollway authorities. I'm sure if I abused the system it would come back to haunt me at some point later in life

Tripodxxl

Over the years this has happened to me maybe 5-7 times, never heard ANYTHING, but I may just be lucky.

fschmidt

In Montreal two years ago:

They do not have any toll booths -- just a "EasyPass" type system -- An arch that covers each entrance and exit lane and a camera. Rental car did not have a transponder.

Two months later, Toll was $3.85 -- Canadian charge for no transponder -- $5.00 -- Hertz handling fee -- $25.00 -- all charged to my AMEX by Hertz.

So total on my expense report for Tolls was $33.85. But the company paid the charge since it went to the Corporate AMEX.

In NJ over the last two years:

I have had to run Toll Booths on the NJ Turnpike at 2am because I was out of change. Cash lanes are unattended during some night hours now due to EasyPass. It has happened several times in the last two years. Yet to get any charges from Hertz on those.

Seat 2A

I've seen tolls like this in Colorado on E-470. What happened to you also happened to me. I should imagine it happens to alot of people as not all of us have exact change all the time. In Colorado at least, there is an 800 number posted at the toll so that in the event you can't pay, you can take care of it later. In my case, I stopped at the next manned toll booth, explained my situation and was given the toll free number to call and settle up my account ($0.75). There was no penalty provided the matter was handled within a reasonable time frame.

If I were you, I would ask the next toll person you encounter about what to do. I'm sure they'll have a good answer for you. Seems silly you should be risking a heavier penalty though as a couple of earlier posters have noted, perhaps FDOT might overlook first time offenses, particularly by out of towners driving a rental car.

In a worst case scenario, your rental car company will contact you re. any tickets issued. There should be something about that in your rental agreement.

Good luck!

Mrs. Alliance

When I worked at a USA rental car place for a short while, one of my jobs was to match up the dozens red light camera tickets we received daily with the people who were renting the cars at the time of the ticket. It was actually entertaining to look at the photos in each ticket.

The company then sent a letter to the person with a copy of the ticket and I know they would just charge the original credit card if they didn't get a reply. I imagine that most companies have similar policies, although it might make sense for them to just pay the tolls if there's a low enough cost. At a certain point it would cost more money to send a letter than to just pay the toll, unless there was a fine attached.

ccordova624

I had a similar situation in Miami/FLL area where the toll fine went to AVIS and they filled out the release of liability form in the fine ticket and put all my info there and sent it back to the toll agency. A month later I received the fine for $25 in my name directly from the toll agency.

EnergyFlyer

In January, my wife was driving our rental car in the Palm Beach area, inadvertently missed the "exit" to get to the manual toll lanes, and had to drive through the high-speed EZPass lanes. There was a sign there with a phone number to call if you went through the toll lanes without a transponder (they gave us 10 days to mail in a check for the toll to avoid a fine).

FL also has a system (see www.platepass.com) that will charge the tolls back from many rental car companies to your credit card (with no penalty but with a ~$2 per day service fee for each day the rental car uses the transponder lanes). You can actually check your your rental car agreement number on the web site to see if your toll got picked up that way.

By the way, my favorite toll-taking "enhancement" is the removal of the manned toll booth coming off of I-294 into O'Hare. There is no advance warning that your only option (if you don't have an IL transponder) is to put coins in the exact change machine. Given the large number of rental cars that go through that toll interchage, I have to wonder how many folks are either having to mail in checks (or paying the fines via credit card for not paying the toll) every day due to that interchange.

slawecki

I frequently rent cars in dallas from EZ rentacar, and have a toll pass. have been told by FT'ers that that is a no-no. one blasts through the toll booths at 60 or so mph.

on a number of occasions, i have been photographed as the light did not turn green. i have never heard from the rental car company.


i once got onto the garden state parkway(nj) broke down, and was towed off. the authority sent me a letter, and wanted to know where I put the car.

swag

What's wrong with a tolltag in a rental car? If you log on, you can even set the license plate for the tag for the period you have the rental, so if the transponder doesn't read it, your account will still be correctly debited and the rental car company will not head from NTTA for sure.

But I wonder how NTTA deals with rental cars in general. For the last several months, the southmost toll plaza has been switched to "zipcash", a cash-free system where if you don;t have a tag, they just mail you a bill when the tolls pass a certain threshhold. There is no way to pay with cash. And they have now said that they will soon switch the entire DFW NTTA road system over to this all-electronic cash-free system.

MapleLeaf

I have driven the toll-road in Ontario, the 407, in a Hertz rental car and have never gotten a bill or had my credit card charged. When I did drive it I fully expected to have to pay but they never caught up with me, or chose not to

RingoYUL

Where was that ? There is no toll road in all the province of Québec.