CAR RENTERS SNARED BY CASHLESS TOLL ROADS
Think of it as an invisible road hazard.
Three months after Joan Cox rented a Ford Fusion in Orlando final summer, a warn check from Thrifty Car Rental landed in her mailbox. The company longed for 50 cents for a toll defilement on the Beachline Expressway, a toll road that connects Orlando with the East Coast beaches and the Kennedy Space Center.
Oh, and a single other thing: there was a $25 “administrative fee” for processing.
Cox, an information systems dilettante from Wilmington, Del., didn’t stop floating through any tollbooths during her Florida vacation. So she did a small sleuthing.
“It appears this has happened to many visitors over the final multiform years and is unequivocally utterly an emanate — almost a scam,” she says. “This also appears to be a setup to out-of-state travelers and a moneymaker for rental automobile companies.”
Motorists have done such accusations ever given there have been toll roads. Sometimes the charges stick. Back in 2008, MSNBC.com consumer disciple Bob Sullivan reported that a company called Violation Management Services, which processes toll violations for automobile rental companies, betrothed the customers online that it could spin “a dear customer service headache in to a essential patron use solution.” The company spotless up the act after that report, stealing the damning denunciation from the website.
Such complaints are apropos more usual as all-electronic fee roads get powered up nationwide. In 2010, the North Texas Tollway stopped usurpation cash, making it the largest fee road to go cashless. Earlier this year, Florida‘s Turnpike changed to an all-electronic complement in Miami-Dade County. Anyone pushing from Miami International Airport to the Florida Keys would be expected to face an invisible toll. Several other roads in Florida are scheduled to go cashless soon, together with Miami’s Airport Expressway and Dolphin Expressway.
Here’s how it works: If you have a transponder, your comment gets charged after you pass through the tollbooth. But if you don’t, the complement takes a image of your plate and subsequently mails you — or, if you’re in a rental car, the rental group — a bill. On Florida’s Turnpike, for example, that check comes with an additional $2.50 executive fee — not $25.
“This can be such a difficult incident to insist to a customer,” says Kathleen Hernandez, a mouthpiece for Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group. The association receives “thousands” of toll, parking and trade violations any month from all the municipalities opposite the country. It afterwards has to compare the renter to the violation, which can be time-consuming. Thrifty charges $25 for a 50-cent defilement since it’s a lot of work to figure out that Cox was obliged for the fine.
Thrifty goes out of the approach to divulge the fee roads, according to the company. It hands out brochures notice of the tolls and indicating out which roads they apply to. It also offers, for a fee, an programmed use called Rent a Toll that records the assent image of the rental automobile and passes the fee charges along to the patron at the end of the rental. Some locations even assent renters to turn on the use retroactively when they lapse a automobile if they think that they’ve unsuccessful to compensate a toll.
“Ms. Cox’s disappointment is distinct — and we do take a little slam for the process, though we have overtly worked to yield options for the customer,” says Hernandez.
As to the avowal that this is a scam, the automobile rental attention insists that it’s not. “This is not a distinction core for the automobile rental companies,” says Bob Barton, boss of the American Car Rental Association. “But unfortunately, we have been forced in to a incident to yield such a complement to promote the fee collections for the state.”
That’s really something to be wakeful of the next time you lease a car. You could find yourself pushing down a fee highway where your money’s no good, or worse, get strike with a fee months after your vacation. Even with the brand brand brand brand new fee roads, let companies, citing the tall price of equipping their complete fleet, have done electronic transponders optional.
Incidentally, Cox doesn’t buy Thrifty’s explanation. She says that no a single handed her a leaflet when she rented her car, and no a single offering to let her compensate for any tolls retroactively. Even if they had, she would have incited them down, since she says she didn’t even know that she was pushing on a fee road.
I’m prone to hold the automobile let attention when it says that it’s you do all it can to divulge the highway hazards and that it has no preference though to imitate with the fee pick up system. But that’s not the problem. Car let companies could make each automobile electronic-toll ready if they longed for to. Would it price the companies more? Sure. Would it revoke the number of complaints? Absolutely.
In my opinion, vouchsafing a automobile with no operative transponder off the lot in 2011 is a lot like renting someone a automobile without chair belts or windshield wipers. It’s irresponsible.
Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler repository and the co-founder of the Consumer Travel Alliance. His mainstay runs weekly at seattletimes.com/travel. Contact him at chris@elliott.org.
car – Yahoo! News Search Results
Think of it as an invisible road hazard.
Three months after Joan Cox rented a Ford Fusion in Orlando final summer, a warn check from Thrifty Car Rental landed in her mailbox. The company longed for 50 cents for a toll defilement on the Beachline Expressway, a toll road that connects Orlando with the East Coast beaches and the Kennedy Space Center.
Oh, and a single other thing: there was a $25 “administrative fee” for processing.
Cox, an information systems dilettante from Wilmington, Del., didn’t stop floating through any tollbooths during her Florida vacation. So she did a small sleuthing.
“It appears this has happened to many visitors over the final multiform years and is unequivocally utterly an emanate — almost a scam,” she says. “This also appears to be a setup to out-of-state travelers and a moneymaker for rental automobile companies.”
Motorists have done such accusations ever given there have been toll roads. Sometimes the charges stick. Back in 2008, MSNBC.com consumer disciple Bob Sullivan reported that a company called Violation Management Services, which processes toll violations for automobile rental companies, betrothed the customers online that it could spin “a dear customer service headache in to a essential patron use solution.” The company spotless up the act after that report, stealing the damning denunciation from the website.
Such complaints are apropos more usual as all-electronic fee roads get powered up nationwide. In 2010, the North Texas Tollway stopped usurpation cash, making it the largest fee road to go cashless. Earlier this year, Florida‘s Turnpike changed to an all-electronic complement in Miami-Dade County. Anyone pushing from Miami International Airport to the Florida Keys would be expected to face an invisible toll. Several other roads in Florida are scheduled to go cashless soon, together with Miami’s Airport Expressway and Dolphin Expressway.
Here’s how it works: If you have a transponder, your comment gets charged after you pass through the tollbooth. But if you don’t, the complement takes a image of your plate and subsequently mails you — or, if you’re in a rental car, the rental group — a bill. On Florida’s Turnpike, for example, that check comes with an additional $2.50 executive fee — not $25.
“This can be such a difficult incident to insist to a customer,” says Kathleen Hernandez, a mouthpiece for Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group. The association receives “thousands” of toll, parking and trade violations any month from all the municipalities opposite the country. It afterwards has to compare the renter to the violation, which can be time-consuming. Thrifty charges $25 for a 50-cent defilement since it’s a lot of work to figure out that Cox was obliged for the fine.
Thrifty goes out of the approach to divulge the fee roads, according to the company. It hands out brochures notice of the tolls and indicating out which roads they apply to. It also offers, for a fee, an programmed use called Rent a Toll that records the assent image of the rental automobile and passes the fee charges along to the patron at the end of the rental. Some locations even assent renters to turn on the use retroactively when they lapse a automobile if they think that they’ve unsuccessful to compensate a toll.
“Ms. Cox’s disappointment is distinct — and we do take a little slam for the process, though we have overtly worked to yield options for the customer,” says Hernandez.
As to the avowal that this is a scam, the automobile rental attention insists that it’s not. “This is not a distinction core for the automobile rental companies,” says Bob Barton, boss of the American Car Rental Association. “But unfortunately, we have been forced in to a incident to yield such a complement to promote the fee collections for the state.”
That’s really something to be wakeful of the next time you lease a car. You could find yourself pushing down a fee highway where your money’s no good, or worse, get strike with a fee months after your vacation. Even with the brand brand brand brand new fee roads, let companies, citing the tall price of equipping their complete fleet, have done electronic transponders optional.
Incidentally, Cox doesn’t buy Thrifty’s explanation. She says that no a single handed her a leaflet when she rented her car, and no a single offering to let her compensate for any tolls retroactively. Even if they had, she would have incited them down, since she says she didn’t even know that she was pushing on a fee road.
I’m prone to hold the automobile let attention when it says that it’s you do all it can to divulge the highway hazards and that it has no preference though to imitate with the fee pick up system. But that’s not the problem. Car let companies could make each automobile electronic-toll ready if they longed for to. Would it price the companies more? Sure. Would it revoke the number of complaints? Absolutely.
In my opinion, vouchsafing a automobile with no operative transponder off the lot in 2011 is a lot like renting someone a automobile without chair belts or windshield wipers. It’s irresponsible.
Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler repository and the co-founder of the Consumer Travel Alliance. His mainstay runs weekly at seattletimes.com/travel. Contact him at chris@elliott.org.
car – Yahoo! News Search Results