The State has settled with Dollar and Thrifty rental cars for not disclosing the true cost of tolls and toll violations while driving their cars. The State settled earlier with Avis and Payless; which is great, I guess. The thing is that the basic problem lives on. If you rent a car in Florida and incur a toll it will still cost you an arm and a leg. Your choices are to pay an additional $3.95 and up per day for a toll transponder for your rental car. Some agencies offer a $10.95 per day charge that includes the tolls. Or, you can go without those two options and stay off of the toll roads. End up on a toll road accidentally?

Don’t worry the rental car companies will simply add the charges to your bill. All of the charges! The daily transponder charge is added along with the tolls. That’ll boost the cost of your mistake a lot. Even worse is if they need to “find” you to collect, which shouldn’t be hard you signed a contract; they kick in a $15 per toll administrative fee.

So they rental cars got caught gouging us and had to give our money back (sort of) be sure to contact Florida to get your money back. The problem is that the rental car companies are still not doing a good job of telling you your options for transponders or the final costs to you. I rented a car in Tampa over the weekend and not a word was spoken about tolls, transponders or what was going to happen to me if I ended up on a toll road. I deliberately didn’t ask questions and no answers were volunteered. Lucky for me I have my trusty Tolltraxx transponder. Slapped it on the windshield, put the car and plate into the system and was ready to go. If you’re visiting Florida and renting a car get a Tolltraxx transponder from RentalCarTransponders.com and save some money along with the hassles.