This should come as absolutely no surprise. The fee-happy car rental industry has apparently figured out a way of profiting from customers who blow through an electronic tool booth without paying.
That’s the conclusion of a recent blog post by my MSNBC colleague Bob Sullivan.
Advantage Rent A Car customers who accidentally drive through electronic toll booths on roads like the new Texas Highway 121, which has no human toll collectors, without the proper equipment can expect to eventually receive a bill stating that they owe the state 60 cents – and $5 to a company named Violation Management Services. At Avis, drivers who do the same can be billed $25 for each transgression, in addition to the toll charge.
Sullivan says an increase in unpaid tolls is adding to the already complicated problem of citation and violation collections for rental car firms. Many are turning to third-party firms for help. Those firms, in turn, also tack on sometimes hefty fees.
Violations Management Services, a third-party firm that helps rental car companies track down toll evaders and other violators, suggest violation collections can be profitable. The company indicates on its Web site that it can turn “a costly customer service headache into a profitable customer service solution.”
A check of the company’s Web site this morning suggests that wording has been changed. It now reads:
At VMS we are dedicated to providing the highest quality service available, allowing us to turn your cost center into a self-sustaining component of your business.
Oh, boy. Looks like they saw this one coming.
How to avoid these fees? Sullivan suggests paying a toll violation immediately after it happens in order to avoid a hefty collection fee. But he overlooks one obvious recommendation: don’t use a toll road unless you have the means to pay.
It’s disingenuous of car rental companies to invest in toll collections systems without also offering customers a way to pay for a toll road. Seems to me that needs to be fixed.
Until then, avoid a toll road in your rental car.
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I got a toll violation going across the Golden Gate Bridge in a rental as I did not have cash. Offered to pay by credit card, but they don’t take it. They gave a toll violation warning stating that a violation would be issued by mail and that I had to wait.
Given it was a rental car company, I knew that would be a problem. FasTrak would not let me pay it without a citation number, which they could not give me. And Fox Rent a Car could not help us either.
A few weeks later I got a Notice from VMS staing they had charged $40.00 to my credit card and that I was under obligation to pay FasTrak the $6.00 toll and $25.00 fine.
In anticipation of this, I had my credit card cancel the card and issue me a new number. So VMS has not been able to charge me even though they state they have.
Received a notice of an unpaid toll ($.80) from 2 years ago (2007) of which we had no prior notification. We are in Calif. the toll was in Ill.. They now want $55.00 for a problem we knew nothing about. I tried to send an e-mail to HTA, but were told the date of the notification (10/12/2009) was invalid. Any suggestions? Thanks
Today I woke up to find that racketeering has been legalized on the toll roads across this fine country of ours. E-Toll sounds like a convenient way to get through the antiquated system at toll booths. In my particular case I paid for tolls with cash each time I went though a gate a someow still managed to get charged for toll a second time through the E-Toll network. I can only speculate but my concern is I will now spend considerably more time and money chasing my $14.75 than is actually worth it. Congratulations to these individuals who have figured a brand new and exciting different way to screw me out of a few extra dollars………. just when I thought every other method had already been tried.
We have posted on Class Advocate a class action investigation relating to these toll fees. Here is the link:
http://www.classadvocate.com//classaction.php?id=1558
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