AVIS etoll charges? How to avoid it?
 

I see this in my Avis reservation.

Avoid express lanes in San Diego and you are fine. Same goes for Los Angeles area. Express lanes are cashless and billed electronically.

Use cash booths for bridges in the Bay Area. Prepay for Golden Gate as that bridge is cashless too.

The express lanes will only be free with Fastrak Flex which allows you to set the number of people in your car. As far as I know, Avis does not offer Fastrak Flex.

Even if you have 2+ people, you will still be charged the toll if you do not have Fastrak Flex.

There are lots of toll roads in SoCal. Some of them are cashless. Unless you know for certain your planned routes avoid all of them you might well find value in the ePass system.

I'll hijack this this thread; AVIS states
"Under the e-Toll program, once you pass through an electronic toll, you will pay a convenience fee of $3.95 for each day of the entire rental period, including any days on which e-Toll is not used, up to a maximum of $19.75 per rental month, plus incurred tolls at the maximum prevailing rates posted by the toll authority"

on the sam page further down;

"When a renter utilizes these lanes, the toll system identifies the car and charges the standard cash fee for toll roads as published by the toll authority, plus the convenience fee of $3.95 per day ($19.75 maximum per month)."

In the first section it says "up to a maximum of $19.75 per rental month" and in the second section it says "$19.75 maximum per month".
How should I intrepid this; for example, I rent a car from December 18 and return the car 6th of January; my rental period is 19 days, as I understand within a rental month but stretches over twocalendar month. Would I en up paying $19.75 or $19,75 x2?

EK

You would pay only $19.75, as your rent periode is shorter than a month (30 days).

Thanks.
[Thinking out loud]; makes more sense to opt in since it's only an overhead cost of $1 day + toll and the convenience of not have to stop and pay toll. I'll be driving in the Orlando and the Broward-Dade areas so a lot of cash only toll especially, south of Broward and along the Turnpike + express extensions.

EK

That's assuming the toll roads are used daily. If one is to only use the toll road a couple times on long rentals, the fee is quite absurd. If only the toll were only charged on the day(s) the transponder was used.

You don't have to opt-in as such - simply going through a toll that gets charged to Avis results in you being charged.

Whether it's a good deal or not depends entirely on how much you use it. For example, in the SF Bay area, a lot of tourists will rent a car for a week or more, but only use a single toll - the Golden Gate Bridge (the only non-cash toll road in the bay area), so they end up paying $8 for the toll, and ~$20 for the fee, which is obviously fairly significant.

After being sued over this more than once, Hertz have changed their pricing to only charge on the (calendar) days that you actually use a toll, but got rid of the cap. Good for the occasional toll users, less good for the long-rental-tolls-every-day renters.

Yes, this happened to me also. I think I received a violation for the offense of driving in the car pool lane without a Fastrak device or something. And in California, you cannot pay your toll online if the car is a rental. So I was once charged a big fee for a $2 toll. Cali is one big corrupt place!

But I sent the rental company an email saying I had 4 people in the car and I never heard from them again. Maybe I have a warrant out for my arrest in Cali for an unpaid ticket. I never could get closure on the issue.

In terms of paying the toll online in California, it really depends. On some of the ones in SoCal (261/241/73), if you go online with the plate info and had the rental Fastrak closed, you might be able to pay the right amount without surcharge within 48 hours and before it hits the rental agency. It is YMMV.

The good news is except for the bridges in NoCal, you should be able to avoid almost all toll roads in California so far because there are free lines right next to them. This is not true in some places of Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, etc.

Also, I found a few states do allow you to skip the rental car agency's toll system. This worked very well in New York.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/rent...vice-fees.html

Rasheed

Thx. I'll be driving a lot in Orlando and the Broward-Dade area as well on the Turnpike so I will add on my share part of tolls, but as you said it all depends on the number of tolls passages (or days of toll passages).
You are right adopt the "opt-in" the leveler on the transponder is default ON if I recall correctly from my last rental in Florida back in 2017.

EK

In Virgina we have "EZ-Pass." EZ Pass allows one to register multiple vehicles per account. When renting, I simply add the rental vehicle info to the list of vehicles in my EZPass account and then use the transponder as normal. When the rental is over I am sure to take my transponder but I leave the rental vehicle in my list of vehicles for about 60 days after the end of the rental. That way, if any charges do come in I can dispute them. Took only one $3 toll with I think it was a $13 service charge from Enterprise to learn this lesson.