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Thrifty Car Rental - Orlando - Toll Violation

R

rwpeterson

Tug Review Crew
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We rented a car from Thrifty last March. We recently received a letter from them that we had a toll violation of $1.00 and with their admin fee of $25, they charged our VISA for $26.

We know we stopped and paid EVERY toll (we were joking when we were driving back to the airport about all the tolls). Has this happened to anyone else? How can we fight this charge - I'm more upset about a $25 admin fee which seems ridiculous.

TIA
 
If they have a violation in the time you had the car you are basically out of luck. I agree that the penalty of their administration is way out of line but I've never had any of the three companies that have said we had missed tolls - we have passes but they can be temperamental about sending the toll when held rather than being mounted - offer to remove or reduce the fees. They see it as more free money I guesss.
 
rwpeterson said:
We rented a car from Thrifty last March. We recently received a letter from them that we had a toll violation of $1.00 and with their admin fee of $25, they charged our VISA for $26.

We know we stopped and paid EVERY toll (we were joking when we were driving back to the airport about all the tolls). Has this happened to anyone else? How can we fight this charge - I'm more upset about a $25 admin fee which seems ridiculous.

TIA
Click to expand...

This happenned to us twice last year in Orlando with a rental car. I honestly believe we never missed paying a toll, but since we had thrown out our receipts we ended up paying the fines.
 
Expired Tags On Alamo Rental Car.

I came close to missing my plane home from Denver 1 time when the guy ahead of me at the check-in desk (in the days before check-in lanes) got into a fuss with the Alamo agent over the ticket the customer got for driving an Alamo car with expired tags.

The clerk kept insisting all tickets for violations are the responsibility of the customer.

The customer kept insisting the company is responsible for expired tags.

Fortunately another agent came out & checked me in so I could catch the rental car shuttle to the terminal in time for my flight.

I thought it was rinky-dink of Alamo to rent out a car with expired tags & bush-league of the Alamo agent to try to stick the customer with the ticket for the company's expired tags.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
There is a toll when you first come out of the airport that has an express side of the road to it. If you are not aware, you can easily miss going to the right and paying the toll. I know, because we did it. DH sent a check to the DOT with the rental car information. Never heard another word on it.
 
The same thing

happened to us once on the Garden State Pkwy. in New Jersey. We certainly paid every toll along the highway, I don't see how we could have gotten thru the booth without paying the toll. My inquiries to them went unanswered and I finally paid the .50 and the $25. as they said they were about to notify NY State Motor Vehicle Dep't. to collect for them and the fee would be increased even more. Grrrrr.
 
That happened to me last year too!

I can't remember for sure what rental company I used but I think i was Alamo.

I am fairly sure I did miss 2 tolls so I wasn't trying to dispute it. My problem was the first week of my trip, the rental car had a SunPass so we used the express. By the 2nd week I was so used to using the Express that I forgot.

I agree with the earlier poster - there are SO MANY toll booths very close together between Orlando and the Disney area that it doesn't surprise me that people miss them sometimes.
 
tolls

We recently rented from Thrifty. They asked if we wanted the sunpass due to us driving from Ft Lauderdale to Orlando (we took the FL turnpike) and then in Orlando for three days. They charged around $17.00 we didn't know if the sunpass and the Epass was the same so we stooped at the Epass and paid a few and told the booth operator that we had paid for the pass.........she said well it didn't show up. So we paid a few tolls until we got to our destination and then we called. They told us not to worry about it that they would cover it. When we returned the car we where charge over $24.00 in tolls so it must show up pretty quick...I am going to save our receipt should anything come up a year down the road.......
 
Thanks for this thread, I have never gotten receipts at the toll booths around Orlando, but looks like I should start.
 
riverdees05 said:
Thanks for this thread, I have never gotten receipts at the toll booths around Orlando, but looks like I should start.
Click to expand...

I've driven thru Orlando often over the last 30 years (we live two hours away) and never had a problem. The tolls every few miles can be quite maddening, but if you are careful, you should be okay.

I do like the Sunpass feature that come with rental cars, but you do need to slow down considerably to make sure its read.
 
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If they are going to charge an administrative fee, I think I would tell them I demand proof of their claim, like photos showing car and license plate at a toll booth, not just somebody's printout and if they refused to send proof then I would dispute it with the credit card. Make them at least work for their adminsitrative fee ripoff.

The worst toll scam I have seen however is coming in or out of the airport in Dublin. There is a toll on that short stretch of road but no toll booths. There are signs that are easy to miss telling you about the toll but nowhere on the road itself to pay it. You have to get to the internet within as I recall about 48 hours and go to their website and pay by credit card. If you miss the first time period, the toll keeps climbing, a lot, through several other periods. If you search it out, there is a place you can pay at the airport itself, but again that is not easy to find. I imagine that a lot of people probably get nabbed on these tolls for not paying by the deadlines, and then rental car companies add on other fees, too. We were lucky in that at the welcome meeting at Knocktopher Abbey (DAE exchange), they told us about this and the office helped by going on the internet and entering our rental car license plate and cc info within the first deadline. They also told us where we could pay in the airport (not easy to find) for the return trip.
 
Carolinian said:
The worst toll scam I have seen however is coming in or out of the airport in Dublin. There is a toll on that short stretch of road but no toll booths. There are signs that are easy to miss telling you about the toll but nowhere on the road itself to pay it. You have to get to the internet within as I recall about 48 hours and go to their website and pay by credit card. If you miss the first time period, the toll keeps climbing, a lot, through several other periods.
Click to expand...

Please do not give the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority any ideas about how to make driver's lives more miserable!
 
Driving between Ft Lauderdale and Miami this week, the toll booth people were handing out leaflets saying they are REMOVING the cash booths beginning 2011 - Sunpass or the toll authority will send you a invoice based on tag info. No mention of a processing fee - but I am sure there will be one.
 
vacationhopeful said:
Driving between Ft Lauderdale and Miami this week, the toll booth people were handing out leaflets saying they are REMOVING the cash booths beginning 2011 - Sunpass or the toll authority will send you a invoice based on tag info. No mention of a processing fee - but I am sure there will be one.
Click to expand...

Back before the NC Supreme Court put the state's red light cameras out of business, I remember somebody was selling a cover to put over your license plate that a policeman could see through, so you would not get a ticket, but a camera would not. It seems to me that those might become mighty popular in Florida.
 
vacationhopeful said:
Driving between Ft Lauderdale and Miami this week, the toll booth people were handing out leaflets saying they are REMOVING the cash booths beginning 2011 - Sunpass or the toll authority will send you a invoice based on tag info. No mention of a processing fee - but I am sure there will be one.
Click to expand...

That is plain stupid, not to mention inconvenient for visitors. Guess I won't be driving that stretch of road in the future!
 
Dublin

I agree with you, Carolinian! It is especially a trap for incoming jet-lagged US tourists who are acclimating to driving on the left while trying to figure out where exactly they are going!

We never did register during our week in Ireland last year. We rented thru Enterprise and, hopefully, the statue of limitations has expired because we were never tracked down to pay up. (Unlike the efficient Swiss who awarded me a speeding ticket 3 months after my caught-on-camera violation.)
 
New fee new income whats the problem?

Timeshare Von said:
That is plain stupid, not to mention inconvenient for visitors. Guess I won't be driving that stretch of road in the future!
Click to expand...

There are already a number of toll road exits in Fl - many in Orlando - that require a toll tag & have no option for cash payment of any type. If you don't have one and want to exit ood luck to you & your checkbook. As it is very expensive to man toll booths I would not be surprised if they look for ways to eliminate them. If it creates a system of violations, notices and fees so much the better to employ a few of those out of work toll takers! Plan on it.
 
Having been to Orlando so many times, we avoid all toll roads and have never had an issue with a scam like that. I can see the companies saying we hadn't paid at a toll, even if we had never taken a toll road, just to get by with charging us more. It's never happened, but I can see it happening. Word would get out pretty fast that some rental car company will scam you like that, so it would hurt that company, I would think. There are other boards like this one, and bad news travels fast.

You can set your GPS to avoid all toll roads.

Alan, I am astounded that Alamo would expect a customer to pay the fine for an expired tag. I guess that's a new thing we need to check, when we choose our rental car there. So far we have been lucky with Alamo and like choosing our own car. Alamo is so much better there in Orlando than other places we have been.
 
vacationhopeful said:
Driving between Ft Lauderdale and Miami this week, the toll booth people were handing out leaflets saying they are REMOVING the cash booths beginning 2011 - Sunpass or the toll authority will send you a invoice based on tag info. No mention of a processing fee - but I am sure there will be one.
Click to expand...
They removed the toll booths on the tollways around Denver a year or so ago. Now if you don't have a pass / transponder, a bill is mailed to the registered owner of the car based on the license plate. There is no administrative fee (the toll is the same amount as it was for stopping at the toll booths before). However, if you have a pass, there is a slight discount on the tolls.

If this is how it will be implemented in Florida, it should actually be an improvement vs. the dreaded toll booths.

Kurt
 
Get the toll package

I guess that means I'll take the toll package from the rental company next year. Last March I rented Budget, and since I was staying more than a week, and they charge for each day of the rental (most of which I would not be using toll roads), I passed on the toll package as it wasn't cost effective.

In shopping around for my rental next March I started to notice that the there are better deals out there for toll coverage. Some put a cap on the overall service charge, some only charge the fee for the days that you use it. I'm booked with Enterprise next year (they had SUV's for mid-size price when I booked), and they showed a much better deal for toll package. Just another thing to consider when shopping the best deal.
 
How does one avoid tolls in the Orlando area? From past experience you can't go from McDonalds to the Burger King across the street without encountering one or more tolls. :D
 
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