Eujeanie

Just rented in TPA. Found out in advance that there were two, and only two, cashless tolls roadways - the Selmon and the Veterans, both of which were nowhere near where I wanted to be and easily avoided. Actually, the Selmon would have convenient but I just chose surface roads instead (using the "avoid tolls" mapping option).

I also crossed the Golden Gate Bridge each way last year in a rental car. After we got to the wine country, I called the toll-free number and prepaid that toll. However, when we did cross back southbound, there was a little hut after the toll booths that said "pay your toll here", so if you had neglected to do the prepay, you could have stopped and paid it on the spot.

Cloudship

It's that little small "handling"charge. That is really what they are doing now. And that is the problem.

Automated tools are just a nice new scheme to allow states to outsource toll collection to private companies while getting rid of workers. When the cost for collections starts to grow everyone will start complaining about that. Having in person toll collectors is just part of the cost of having toll roads.

At some point there is going to be some contest to all of these. Either misread plates, or stolen cars, or misreads on transponders (and yes they do happen. Have happened to me) it is eventually going to have to change.

But for now, I think one of two things very much should happen. Either states are forced to offer up a cash pay system, or they are forced to find a better way of paying tolls. What about people traveling from out of state? Can they not use toll roads? How can the state get federal subsidies for roads that are not useable by everyone?

ssession

I moved out of Texas but kept my tolltag (the older transponder that they gave out before the sticker) for my trips back to the state. The problem is the cashless tolls defaulted to reading the license plate, not the tolltag. Adding the rental car to my account during the periods I used the toll roads did not work because the billing there is sporadically delayed. If I waited till all my tolls posted, its almost guaranteed I'd get charged for someone who used the car after me. Often their toll posted before mine! I removed the rental car from my account after I saw other's tolls being charged and then I got dinged a fee by the rental company because one posted later.

And they can be very, very delayed. I got a bill over 6 months late. I had moved across the country and sold my old vehicle so I thought they had taken my old truck back to Texas. Turns out I went through to toll while I was still living in Dallas and they just never billed my account back then. Other tolls on the same days were billed, but for some reason they waited months to charge my account for others. The system is not smart enough to sync up the time and determine the account that the car was assigned to at that time.

Something similar happened in New Jersey years ago too when I tried linking an EZ-Pass to my rental car out there. It ignored the pass and just took a picture of the plate and sent it to the rental car agency. I got a giant bill from them because I was on the turnpike every day for months. With A LOT of paperwork I managed to get some of it back but never did get it all.

fairviewroad

Yes, but I'm suggesting that the charge be capped or otherwise regulated. As far as what constitutes a "reasonable" charge, that's debatable. I do see the argument that passing those charges along to customers does involve some cost on the part of the rental agency. But they seem to be using it as an excuse to ding people way too much. Charging for days that you don't incur a toll is ludicrous, for instance. That should be illegal.

Cloudship

But they will turn around and say that there are costs for managing the accounts, costs for all of those passes, etc. The same thing as "shipping and handling". There is no way to really regulate it. And our government is more pro business than pro consumer. in an ideal world we wouldn't have to worry about that, but in an ideal world we wouldn't have to deal with automated tolls to begin with.

Eujeanie

Someone raised the question about what does someone from another state (who does not have reciprocal plate pass ability) do, since they also do not have the rental car scheme option? I think if you do some research they all must have provisions for this - similar to what I found for the Golden Gate Bridge, call in advance and prepay - just do a little research before you go. As I said when I went to TPA, I found out what the roads with cashless tolls were and just avoided them, but sometimes that is not possible. If you google "how to pay a cashless toll on a road in {name the state}" you can be prepared in advance.

Cloudship

That is if you know where you are going in advance. What if you end up having to take a detour? What if plans change?

Eujeanie

All I'm saying is that since they don't make it easy for us, we have to be preemptive and get as much information as we can, plan out alternate routes, and, if push comes to shove, pay the stupid fine. Find out from your rental car company what they charge for EACH toll you incur if you do NOT buy their every single day charge thing. It might still be cheaper in the long run than paying for many days you never use.

CMK10

We have a couple of toll roads here in the Raleigh-Durham Area that are cashless and they bill by mail, no other way to pay them. Thankfully, they're easy to avoid.

I like the Illinois system where you can go online after driving through one within a week and if you enter your license plate number, you can pay them that way. The annoying part is making sure you keep the receipt with your plate number on it.

tlhanger

Our GPS told us to get off at a certain exit that us, out of towners didn't have a sticker for exiting. When we got to our hotel I called the Florida toll roads and talked to a very nice lady. She said since she knew we were worried that it would be more, we told her where we got on and where we got off. Somehow she pulled our car. She had us send a check for the correct amount. That place is in Georgia, right where we are from. She also said in the future to get off at a toll plaza and buy the sticker. We will. It did work out for us but it was confusing.

Canarsie

Thankfully, it is fairly easy to avoid the cashless electronic toll road of highway E11 in Dubai as well.

randix

recently I did a round trip on an Alamo car rental from DCA to BOS... rented an ez-pay device from Alamo, or whatever they call it (cost me $3.50 or so for each of the 2 days)... most of the toll plaza's did NOT even display the amount of the toll... so figured I'd look to gawd to hope that somehow the accurate amount would get reported even though I did not have a clue what it should be...

A few days after the rental a charge of about $100 went thru from Alamo on the tolls... best I can tell, that actually is about right (that's crazy, but that's a whole 'nother story that has nothing to do with rental cars)...but one crazy system when you're at the mercy of the gawds to know if the tolls get reported, and if they are reported accurately...

who thunk up this system, and I pitty those on the east coast in particular, who have to dance with this patchwork system of road financing...

Xyzzy

I travel to the SF area frequently and have one of their FasTrak transponders. I like to register my transponder with my rental vehicle so I don't get a surprise if my transponder does not work. It seems that this is not possible with Hertz in CA as they pre-register every one of their vehicles and this can not be changed. Thankfully, the one time my transponder failed to work I was in a car rented from a different cmpany.

SixAlpha

It looks like they've added an option now where you can pay your toll online within 48 hours AFTER you've crossed the GG. That's good to know.

chrisl137

I drove on that toll road in a friend's car with CA plates (I'd driven the car from LA and was picking her up in Denver) a few weeks after they'd switched to the cashless system. The way it's set up is that it takes a picture and sends a bill to you in whatever state (based on DMV records), but they had very poor exception handling, which has been at least partialy fixed. When the system was new, there was no way to go online and pay- I looked pretty hard for a way to put in a plate number and date so she wouldn't have to find the bill and pay it, but they explicitly said on their web site there was no such thing. She was in the middle of moving, and hadn't updated her address with the DMV, and they apparently sent it in a "Do Not Forward" envelope to her old address, so it never caught up, and she only found out about it when they sent it to collections. The collections people were at least nice about it when she said "Sorry, I'm broke, you have a screwy system that actively made it difficult to pay, and there's no way I'm paying anything more than the base toll, so go away," and remarkably, they did.