What If Your Rental Car Company Overcharges You For Tolls?

Dealing with toll payments for roads and bridges/tunnels has become more complex. Many places now use toll-by-plate systems to bill drivers, or they require a transponder in the car to track toll fees. If you drive through a toll in a rental car, the toll bill goes to the rental car company and is later charged to your credit card. Rental car companies often impose additional fees for every day that you go through a toll during your rental, turning it into another source of revenue. We’ve discussed ways to avoid these charges by renting from a company with fair toll payment services. But what if the rental car company sends you a bill for tolls that you are certain you didn’t incur during your rental?

Steve, a friend and a reader of YMMV, told us about how he received a charge of $141.50 on his credit card several months after renting a car from Hertz at Philadelphia Airport. Upon seeing the charge hit his Citi credit card, he called the bank to put the charge into dispute, as he knew he hadn’t gone through tolls that would equal that amount during the rental. Citi researched the claim but responded by reinstating the charges, claiming that Hertz had proven he was the one who made the charges and that the bill was valid.

Here’s where things become complicated. How can you prove to a bank that the company that charged you is wrong? I had a similar instance with a rental car company when they insisted that I was responsible for returning a car with a full tank of gas when I only rented it with half of a tank. Steve did a smart thing and requested a copy of the itemized bill from Plate Pass, the company Hertz uses to process toll payments. He also kept a copy of his rental statement from Hertz.

Quite clearly on the rental car bill, his rental in Philadelphia started at 1:24 PM, and the first toll on the Plate Pass statement was for the George Washington Bridge at 2:03 PM. That’s a 112-mile trip in 40 minutes without going through any tolls before hitting the GWB. Anyone who’s ever driven through New Jersey in the middle of the afternoon knows it is pretty much impossible.

Steve also supposedly managed to rack up this toll bill over 4 days and still returned the car to Philadelphia with only 178 miles on the odometer.

Even with this mounting evidence in his favor, the companies could not quickly solve the problem. At first, he called Citi and they told him he’d have to resolve it with Hertz. When calling Hertz, they told him he’d have to resolve this issue with Plate Pass. Eventually, Plate Pass agreed that the toll charges on his rental didn’t add up and that they would issue him a credit. This was in November. He still didn’t receive a credit on his charge card, so he called Citi to dispute the charge again, claiming that Plate Pass agreed the charge was incorrect. It remained that way until the beginning of January when Steve finally received a check in the mail with a refund of the total charges of the tolls from the rental. No explanation was given; it was just a check in an envelope.

While this story was resolved in Steve’s favor, you can see how difficult it was to prove he was in the right. What if he had driven the car for more miles or, even worse, driven it to New York? How could he prove those weren’t the tolls he had gone through?

I shared this story to show that it’s possible to win when arguing with banks and travel companies, even if they make things difficult. It may take more time and effort than necessary to prove you’re right, but persistence pays off in the end.

A hat tip and a huge thank-you to Steve C. for sharing his story.

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