Golden Gate Bridge Tolls Broadside Tourists Who Rent Cars

Commuters may grow weary of making the beautiful drive across the Golden Gate Bridge every workday, but for many visitors to San Francisco, crossing one of the world’s most famous bridges in a car is a must-do experience. The thrill of rolling beneath the soaring international orange towers in a rental car, however, has grown more confusing — and often more costly — with the end of toll collectors, the advent of all-electronic tolling and the signs warning drivers not to stop at the toll booths. Most Bay Area motorists have learned in the two years since the bridge laid off its toll takers that they can pay by using a FasTrak transponder, letting cameras snap their license plates and mail them a bill, or paying online, by phone or at a kiosk or store up to 30 days in advance or within two days after crossing the span. [...] few tourists know those intricacies and are often persuaded by rental car companies to use their toll services, which can end up adding a few dollars a day — plus tolls — to their bills. “Three to four weeks after people left their hearts in San Francisco, they find out they also left a good chunk of their credit,” said John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission who fields a lot of FasTrak complaints. When the Golden Gate moved to all-electronic toll collection, the bridge district said rental car companies would be responsible for paying the tolls, and it would be between them and their customers to figure out how to make that work. The result is a morass of different programs with different rental car companies that contract with different toll service providers. Dana Fehler, a bridge district spokeswoman, said the agency has worked with car rental companies to help eliminate the confusion and ensure that they let customers know they can pay their tolls directly to the district without incurring what the companies call service or convenience fees. [...] the bridge district offers a one-time payment option for those who don’t want to get a bill in the mail — or have one sent to their car rental agency. Visitor or local, in your own car or a rental, anyone who crosses the bridge without a FasTrak transponder can pay their Golden Gate Bridge toll online, over the phone or at one of 130 cash-payment kiosks spread across the Bay Area and into nearby parts of the Central Valley, Fehler said. Sharon Faulkner, executive director of the American Car Rental Association, agrees it’s confusing but said the varying plans fit the needs of companies trying to deal with a plethora of agencies that collect and process tolls on highways and bridges across the country in different ways. Lisa Martini, a spokeswoman for Enterprise Holdings, which owns Enterprise, National and Alamo, said that before it enlisted in the TollPass tolling program, a private, fee-based operation that handles tolls for car renters, the companies received a separate mailed notice or citation for each toll, requiring them to deal with each renter over each charge. Customers renting in the Bay Area are notified when they make reservations, or at the counter, that they can either pay Golden Gate tolls in advance, once they know the license plate number of their rental car, or have their credit cards automatically charged through the tolling program, with a “convenience charge” of $3.95 per day or a maximum of $19.75 for the rental period. The product is particularly convenient for rental car customers who do not live in tolling regions and are unfamiliar with an area’s toll roads,” said Anna Bootenhoff, a spokeswoman for Hertz Corp.