Lisa Reidmiller and Matt Wald — the couple behind the travel blog Ready Jet Roam (1) — were in Hershey, Pennsylvania, visiting Reidmiller’s family for the holidays when they rented a car for 11 days that would end up costing them hundreds more than they'd anticipated.
A charge of $233.91 showed up about a week after their rental period ended, leaving Reidmiller and Wald in shock thinking, "it had to be some kind of mistake."
Unfortunately, it wasn't a mistake. The couple owed Hertz the money for racking up several days worth of $26 toll passes to which they never intended to agree to — and had turned down at the desk.
"We rent cars all the time and are both ex-corporate and traveled a lot for work, so we've rented hundreds and maybe thousands of cars between the two of us," Wald, a Hertz President's Circle member (the highest elite status tier within the Hertz Gold+ Rewards program), told Moneywise. "The pickup process is usually extremely streamlined. Our account had always declined the expensive daily 'all-inclusive' toll package by default, and we had never encountered any issue like this before."
But there's a first time for everything and, now, Reidmiller and Wald — who have traveled to nearly 100 countries (2) and counting, renting cars all over the world — take extra precautions.
How a single toll led to a charge of over $230
Wald and Reidmiller picked up their rental car at a Hertz in Harrisburg. During the trip, Reidmiller needed to drive the car to Philadelphia to pick up her new passport before an upcoming international trip. To get there, she took the Pennsylvania Turnpike, where she encountered a single toll — but their car came with an EZ Pass transponder inside a small box, so she didn't think anything of it.
"What made this confusing is that the messaging on the box essentially instructs you to open it when going through a toll," Wald explains. "Lisa opened the box because she thought she was simply authorizing payment for that one toll electronically — especially since we had already declined the expensive all-inclusive toll option tied to the rental."
But when Reidmiller physically opened the transponder box, it triggered Hertz to activate the PlatePass All-Inclusive program (3) at $25.99 per day for the duration of their rental.
"We genuinely thought we were simply authorizing payment for one toll plus some administrative fee electronically, not unknowingly enrolling in an expensive daily toll package for the entirety of the rental," Wald added.
