I spent over half of the last month in Florida and had three different rental cars and three different toll experiences. One of those experiences was good.
In the first experience, I rented a car from Hertz. Typically I make sure that I have cash with me and drive through the cash toll lane. In this particular trip that worked for the highway closest to the airport but as soon as I drove north, I found the cash lanes had disappeared. I had to drive through the plate line. I made two trips on two different days for what should have been about $4 in tolls each way. I looked all over the CFXway and EPass web sites for a way to pay by plate. Everything came back to waiting for a letter to be sent in the mail to the owner of the license plate. I returned my rental car. A week later I got a bill for $47 for those two tolls. The the total included the tolls charged at the higher plate-pass pricing, a daily fee from Hertz, and a punitive convenience fee. It was also very difficult to find the invoice details as they do not appear as part of the normal Hertz website receipt page on my account. This was a fail for Hertz and the toll industry. The private companies, not the state are raking in the money at the literal expense of the tourists.
Before my second trip, I looked for a way to get a toll tag. I found a couple options. The most elegant option is to use Visitor Toll Pass. I have recommended this option to my friends and it’s the option I wish I had used. This really should be advertised by the rental companies. It’s really simple. You use the app to reserve a hangtag. You use it on your trip. You drop it off at the airport when you return. I saw the return bin. I never found the vending machine. You get the benefit of standard pricing and you can immediately get a report of expenses in the app. If you are coming to the airport and renting a car, this is your best option.
Unfortunately, I did not follow my own advice. I was trying to optimize my solution in a way that would include trips where I drive to Florida. On the Epass site, I found that I could get a “free” tag by paying $15 that would be mailed to me. The $15 would appear on my account as credit for future tolls. Sounds good. Only problem was that it’s a sticker. Later I found the removable transponder. It was not free but it was less than two days of Hertz service fees so I ordered it. Within a few days I received both tags and activated them on my account, or so I tried. The problem was that I could not activate them without a vehicle and I could not activate both the same license plate. Ready for first rental experience. Or so I thought.
I picked up the car. I enter the plate into the app. The app was really flakey so I ended up using the web page. Then I drive around town with the transponder stuck to my windshield. Everything is working correctly. I can see activity on my account about a day after the trip. I return the car, deactivate the transponder on my account. All seems fine. Good experience. Going to call this a win.
It just so happens that I was needing a different rental car the same day. I got in that car, activated the transponder. Updated the vehicle tag and description. Every try to figure out the year of a car you are in? I drove off, using the transponder again and prepared for another good experience. A few days later, I returned the car and repeated the process of deactivating the transponder expecting that to be the end of it. Let this be a lesson to us all.
About a week later, I get an alert on my credit card of a $10 transaction from EPass. It was followed by another and another. Every time my EPass balance got below $10, I was charged another $10. When I looked at the activity, someone was charing their trips across the state on my credit card. How could that be with the transponder disabled????
It turns out that disabling the transponder does not remove the vehicle from your account. Since I had to enter the license plate of my rental car into the app, it was that vehicle that was being charged — at the higher Platepass rate no less. It looks like I am out over $30, $70 for the learning experience. Sadly this is less expensive than if I’d let Hertz just charge me in the first place.
I called the EPass folks. They were polite but had no customer service motivation to worth with me on any kind of financial correction. Even though they are a private corporation, I’m not the customer. They have no interest in keeping me happy.
The EPass representative very politely told me that I was S.O.L. and responsible for the charges. I’m glad that I had reduced the reload threshold to $10 and had my credit card alerts turned on. The rep explained that deactivating the toll pass did not stop the charges. only removing the license plate from the account would do that. Now we are back to the part where you have to have another plate and you cannot have two tags on the same plate. The rep offered to delete the transponder completely from my account. If I wanted to use it again, I would have to call back to activate it. In the end I decided to take the reps advice but destroy the sticker tag. This way I can use my plate as the resting value for the tag. I’m fortunate to have a vehicle to do this.