Avis is creating more work for me and I’m not happy about being double-charged for highway tolls in Illinois. Is this an Avis toll scam or just sloppy work from Avis or Illinois Tollway?
Avis Toll Scam – Charged Twice For Tolls In Chicagoland
Thanks to the partnership between United Airlines and Avis, I have Avis President’s Club status and I’ve found myself using Avis more this year than Hertz or National.
I’ve made two trips to Chicago recently and both trips have involved an Avis rental and a lot of driving on I-94. Those familiar with I-94 in Illinois will know that it is a toll road.
When you rent from Avis, you can choose to turn off or on the transponder on the windshield that automatically pays tolls. I never turn it on because Avis charges $3.95/day to use it plus the cost of the tolls…no thanks.
Instead, you can register your license plate with Illinois Tollway, set the date range in which you drove the car (in the case of a rental car), and your card will automatically be charged for the tolls… without a premium from Avis. It takes five minutes to set up and saved me $20.
…or so I thought.
It takes up to three weeks for Illinois Tollway to process your tolls–that was the case for both rentals–but they did post and my card was charged:
However, more recently I received two email receipts from Avis showing my credit card was charged for tolls plus “convenience fees” for the same period:
I’ve written to Avis asking for a refund of those charges and will report back on the response.
I write this now to caution you about Avis doing the same thing to you. It was only weeks after the rental car was returned that these fees were processed and had I not been reconciling my credit card statements, I may have easily missed this.
Be prepared…
Save your receipts with Avis. In fact, provide them with a copy of the receipt from Illinois Tollway. Had many similar experiences with them with filling up my gas tank (me filling it up, Avis charging me as if I did not). Submitted the receipt, got refunded. I generally use National domestically, but do find myself using Avis internationally more (and have better experiences with Avis international versus domestic, but mileage may vary of course).
National Rental Car does this as well.
Looks like Illinois Tollway’s fault.
Avis wouldn’t charge you unless they got a bill – how else can they know that you used the road? If they’re charged, it’s fair that they pass it to you.
But Illinois Tollway charging both you and Avis – this is clearly wrong
It’s Chicago. It’s Illinois. The level of malfeasance should never be underestimated.
Utter nonsense. This has nothing to do with Chicago and everything to do with how crooked the rental car companies are. It happens anywhere that there are tolls.
Umm- =David (and partly Uri)- As much as you seem to love Chicago bashing (fits a narrative for you, I’m sure), the Illinois tollway is not owned, administered, nor affiliated with Chicago… so try again…
as for the “fault”, it’s almost certainly not the tollway. They are pretty darn accurate regarding sending tolls to the right place, including not billing when a rental car is set up in their system properly.
The most common issues- 1) not setting up the tollway account properly (We can assume Matthew got it right) 2) Avis may receive a notification regarding tolls paid by Matthew on the car and then turned it into a bill improperly, and 3) A toll misassigned to Matthew due to Avis’ system attributing another renter’s toll to him.
so, typically, this is due to incompetence on the rental car company’s part. I suspect an intentional incompetence as this will generate revenue given the number of people who won’t notice or will feel it’s not worth the fight and just pay it
Avis has added. Tremendous other charges including if you drive less than 75 miles. Our company has business with Avis for work travel Ms despite this we are being asked to use National instead.
AVIS has done this to me twice in Maine. It is a lot of work and persistence to get the $ back. It is hardly worth it, but cheating is cheating…..they can’t be allowed to cheat that way. Double tolling when you are flying through your expenses is easy to overlook, and they count on it.
@ed … +1 .
Remember when you could just pull up to the booth, pay the toll, and be on your way? Yup, that was too easy. Enter “tech” making life easier (read: enhancing corporate profits and state control).
@wac …+1 .
Umm- can you point to where I said it was? But obviously you are well aware of the cities reputation.
@David … Nope , I don’t know where you said you were . If you obtain a map , you can locate where you said you were .
I am still annoyed by the end of having to toss coins into the toll basket to get off the exit to get to ORD and drop off a car. And even if without coins, it was just a matter of paying the toll later within the specified time and knowing the time and place where the tolls had gone unpaid. Now with the pay by plate stuff layered upon the toll transponders, it’s become more of a mess and an opportunity to get fleeced when driving rental cars.
I really dislike toll roads, but I dislike them more when they limit or cut down on the ways to pay for them.
I’m curious why you’d choose Avis over National. Is it price, or is there something we’re missing. I rent cars weekly, and in my opinion, National offers the most predictable and well rounded experience in all my travel (air, hotel etc) within the United States. I’ve used Hertz and Avis and find their experience to be ‘about the same’ at best, never superior, and often inferior. Also, no points given by Hertz or Avis are anywhere near as valuable as National Free Rental Days.
I had an Avis Preferred booth person at MCO two months ago tell me that they’ve been instructed by management when prepping cars to always leave the toll tag in the “open/active” position.
I have charged tolls to my own toll account in San Francisco and Florida (and I think with the NY Thruway near BUF, but that might have been National) and never got a bill from Avis. So it is either Illinois double billed or as was suggested Avis got a notification a toll was paid and turned it into an invoice which is a very real possibility.
I’ve used Avis a lot recently because I have President’s Circle and they are the only option other than Hertz in many many smaller airports. Generally they’ve been good. However, they default add the refueling fee if you drove under 75 miles (unless you’re at one that’s an independent location – the ones that dot matrix print your invoice). I think I just got 3 refunds for that fee for the last month of rentals. Very annoying and always have to look.
I often rent a car versus Uber because it’s cheaper… I pay about $31 a day for an intermediate/full size with Avis plus whatever local tax and fees.
You’re right, this is a common scam and I’ve been victimized by it at AVIS as well. In each case, I literally had receipts showing that I paid the toll with my personal transponder but this got me nowhere. I think what they do is they purposely use defective transponder covers, such that even it they are closed, there’s something like a 25% chance that the transponder will pick up the toll. And if it does, they’ve got you. Whether you meant to use it or not isn’t important, if it paid the toll, you’re on the hook. And that is a total scam.
Not to mention the boldfaced gall of sticking to you for an extortionate extra sum and referring to it as a “convenience fee”. Basically their way of giving you the middle finger while laughing at you.
As far as I am concerned Avis is a scam. I rented a car in LA for two weeks. First car had broken door – couldn’t open it from outside. After returning to a depot I „got” another one. But it was not at specified spot. Had to return again. Next car had huge mileage, was stinking and showing request to change oil. Forth car I finally took after one day also showed request to exchange oil.
After car return I asked for a discount. Avis offered one day „free” rental. But it could only be used in US and Canada (I am European), reserved on US site (that usually is much more expensive) and not applicable on all rates. Regardless of email exchange they even couldn’t specify offer validity nor what rates would be eligible.
Total ignorance. Final result was that instead small discount I asked for I recovered full amount via card chargeback.
Had this happen in Florida. Took about three and a half hours of phone calls to get this resolved. Since then, I bought the Mega Sun Pass Florida plan which also includes E Z Pass for the Northeast. On my check list when ever I travel with a rental car.
I haven’t been back to Avis since the agency a five-minute walk from my house charged me for three days extra rental plus dropping the car off a half-hour drive from home, plus insurance I specifically waived, eighteen years ago. And I haven’t had a Citibank card since they sided with the obviously fraudulent party about it. Maybe they’ve changed.
As for Illinois, when I rent a car there, I go out of my way to avoid toll roads. I’m sorry, but license-plate recognition billing and rental cars don’t mix.
Bubba, I live around here and can assure you it’s not the Illinois Tollway. AVIS has these transponders there in the car (whether you want them or not) and they are EZPass and rarely IPass. And you find this in most AVIS cars from the eastern half of the US. I have IPass transponders in both of our cara and have for 17 years. Never had an issue. The issue is you don’t want to use the AVIS transponder so you keep the box closed; yet it triggers anyway.
Once AVIS’ contactor gets the charge on their transformer, you get clobbered with charges. It’s BS and I place all blame on the rental car company. It’s not the tollway authority.
The problem is that there are two competing systems at play.
AVIS has registered the car with a third party company called Highway Toll Administration (HTA), if HTA receives the toll before it is added to either the platepass or tolltag account, than AVIS bills the renter because HTA does not know that the car has also been added to a personal platepass or tolltag account.
This happens even if I make sure that the AVIS provided tolltag is closed (thus should not be detected) because the car’s license plate is registered to the tolltag, so it is automatically billed. Even though I have also registered the car’s license plate, the system seems to use the AVIS account first and then also my personal account.
I have a few tolltags and rent from AVIS frequently, this happens all the time, it is easy enough (though annoying) to have the tolls removed from my credit card by providing AVIS Customer Service with a copy of the receipt from my personal tolltag.
I have actually spoken with AVIS Corporate about and they know it is a pain point, but I am guessing that since that convenience fee is profitable enough that AVIS is not going to do anything about it.
I recently tried this in the SF Bay Area (twice!) with the same result as you. I registered the rental car license plate to the toll pay app (I think it’s called FasTrak?), linked my credit card, but I was still charged by the car rental company.
Same thing happened to me in Chicago when I rented a car from Thrifty in 2022. Maybe it´s a Chicago car rental thing.
I had registered at the tollway system and paid the toll of 2,80 $. Nevertheless Thrifty charged me with 15 or 20 bucks service charge. Being a German I had the problem to check in at the online tollway system from Germany because access is denied for whatever reason, so I could not present my tollway bill to Thrifty, only my credit card charge of 2,80 $. In the end I told my credit card company to cancel the charge of the service charge. I will never rent a car from Thrifty again. I think this doesn´t happen accidentally but by purpose.
It’s an error in favor of the house — the car rental agency and the rental car company — and so the rental car companies continue on making money this way from the car rental customers despite it being wrong and unfair for a driver to be hit with multiple toll related charges per each toll use and amount actually due the toll road operator.
These toll road operators, toll payment companies and rental car companies should collectively be made to pay not just compensation for errors but also punitive damages to teach them a lesson.
And don’t you have to “unregister” the plate when you’re done lest you get charged for the future users?
Yes.
And it can get extra messy when a car is turned around quickly between renters or if there are multiple accounts registered with pay by plate for a given car during an overlapping time period.
Best to avoid toll roads with rental cars if possible . The time saved driving is not worth the time and headache of having to save receipts and dispute charges with the rental car company.