I-Team: Budget for toll fees while driving rental cars to avoid unexpected costs

by Dana Fowle
Aired April 21, 2023

ATLANTA - When you budget for summer break, you often forget to add in highway toll fees. And toll road fees are increasing, as are the number of tollways. But when we rent a car and pick it up, we too often don’t factor in this cost.

State highway budgets are padded with toll fees, but rental car companies make money off of tolls, too. Often toll booths don’t accept cash, which means vehicles must be fitted with a transponder that’s connected to a credit card. Just like you may have a Peach Pass, rental cars have these same transponders.

When you rent a vehicle and suspect you'll be hitting tolls, you will pay a daily fee for the transponder, and you are charged for the tollway fare. Watchdogs are reporting that sometimes you - the driver - are charged too much for the tolls when you’re driving a rental car. And often you don’t notice this on your rental car bill.

Here are three things you can do to defer this unexpected cost.

Map out a drive that avoids tolls. Then you don’t have to even bother with the daily transponder fee at all. But that’s not always reasonable.

Map out your trip ahead of time with sites like Toll Guru. This way the end-of-trip total won’t be a surprise.

Take your own transponder that’s already connected to your credit card. If you are traveling on the East Coast, your Peach Pass will work in most states as they use EZ Pass. But don’t forget to put the rental car on your account before you travel.

And one more thing: You do have to block the rental car’s transponder, or it will be picked up by a wireless signal and charged. If it comes in a box, close it, so the toll camera can’t detect the rental car’s system, only yours. Or you can put it in a bag that blocks the wireless signal.

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