Tourist Blogger Hates Dallas Tollways
Some fellow in Northern California has a blog about personal finance called Lazy Man and Money. He recently took a trip to Dallas (and Fort Worth, and Longview.) Among his predictable recommendations (the Sixth Floor Museum, the Stockyards, Dublin Dr Pepper) and stranger picks ( Gator’s Croc and Roc?) comes a complaint about our system of tollways. But it sounds like some rental car company is trying to scam poor out-of-towners:
When picked up our car rental, the place tried to see us a $32 package of pre-paid tolls. We declined saying that we don’t know what tolls we’ll use, but we’ll pay them as we come across them. The rental place pointed out that there are several highways that no longer take cash. You rack up fines if you don’t have a transponder with the appropriate money in it… and you rack them up fast as each checkpoint is a $25 fine. I can’t understand two things. 1) Why not have one cash lane or people from out of town, technophobes, or just people with malfunctioning equipment? 2) Why have a pre-payment for something that you might not use? It wasn’t clear if we were going to get refunded this money if we didn’t use it. I tried to ask that and the car rental place didn’t seem to understand that we didn’t want to give them money for a service that we didn’t intend to use, but we would pay for services that we actually use. Unfortunately that wasn’t presented as an option.
As it turned out we found two restaurants that we wanted to go to, but couldn’t because of Dallas’ silly toll system. We tried to plan around back roads, but our GPS and Google Maps just gave us a response of “You can’t avoid that leg of your trip.”
The car rental place that Dallas was going in this direction with all it’s toll roads. Note to Dallas: You’ll be sinking tourists who don’t have reasonable access to your transponder system.
Is there a highway in the area that’s going to fine you for not having a Toll Tag?
Awards | Archives | Reprints | Custom Publishing | Jobs | Advertiser's Index
Actually yes, the George Bush Turnpike and the 121 Toll both use only “zip cash” which reads your License plate and send you a bill, or toll tag. No cash lanes.
However, if you or your GPS can’t avoid those 2 roads, that’s operator error as there are plenty of alternitive roads around them.
NTTA certainly has the technology to give the rental agencies prepaid toll tags. But something tells me that some sort of gun could have a program created that matches the amount used from Toll tag account and the auto used, and then billed ts consumer upon return to rental agency. Sorta of like a Red Box for movies at the Hertz office.
I had a rental car over one year ago and on the way back from a funeral in Denton my friend wanted to go to Grapevine Mills Mall to exchange something. I exited 35 onto I believe 121 to get to the mall. There was a toll booth at the entry with no cash option and I did not have a toll tag in the car. The stretch of toll road could not have been more than one mile. They had license plate cameras at the booth which became evident several months later when my credit card was charged $25.75 by the car rental company. When I called, they said that they were billed $.75 for the toll and they charged $25.00 handling fee to pay it.
Tag teamed by NTTA and the car rental company – I forgot which one. Also, the entry downtown did not have a cash option for quite awhile while they finished construction.
Exactly: The NTTA isn’t fining you for not having a toll tag, which is the impression the Lazy blogger was given. It’s the rental car company that wants to charge a ridiculous fee for the tolls.
Whataburger? Really?
A car rental company ripping off its customers? And that is news?
No one HAS to use a toll road. There are always alternatives. Of course, those alternatives may not be as speedy, or as convenient, or as direct, but isn’t that why the toll road option exists? To allow a driver to drive faster, or more conveniently, or more directly? And if you choose to use the toll road option, you pay for that choice with your toll. That more preferable choice is not free (like most things in life, you must pay for it).
You can avoid toll roads (and most highways)- live in East Dallas.
i’ve rented a couple of times recently, and they had a swivel-out “plate pass” that you could opt to use. it was something like 2-3 dollars per day plus actual toll charges.
I know National offers a TollTag option where a box containing a transponder is attached to the windshield and tied to the credit card used for the rental reservation so you only pay for the tolls you use.
But they’re also horrible about toll charges. I had taken my NTTA tag to Houston and it didn’t pick up on a couple of tolls. I received a $61 bill from National – $1 for the combined tolls, $30 in fees from Harris County and an additional $30 in fees from National.
It would be in the best interest of the NTTA and the rental agencies if all rental cars had toll tags. It would reduce the fees assciated with zip cash billings and the time associated with processing the billings against the rental agreeements.
NTTA could charge a monthly flat fee for each rental car in service in the DFW market and that charge could be passed down to the renter.
But that makes sense, so it would never be worked out.
Someone from Northern California came to *Dallas* for vacation. Really????
Thanks for mentioning my article. Here are some thoughts on the comments:
- I’m not the first person bewildered by this. Read: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/21/2110.asp – “Three trips on the Dallas North Tollway in a rented car, worth a total of $2.25 in tolls, turned into a bill for $197.25 for Adriana Martinez-Holtz.” –
- The car rental company was Dollar/Thrifty. (See the link above about their $25 processing fee). The processing fee by the rental company is their “handling fee” for collecting the violation from you. You still have to pay the violation to NTTA. It seems like Dubious Brother did well to only get charged $0.75 by NTTA.
- Bob said, “No one HAS to use a toll road. There are always alternatives.” We were going from Dealey Plaza to the Addison Texas de Brazil (the only TdB that has lunch service during the week.)
We tried Google Maps and GPS and neither of them could get us there. There’s obviously some way we could get there (even if you drive 200 miles around the toll road), but it wasn’t clear to us out-of-towners how to do it effectively.
Bob also said, “And if you choose to use the toll road option, you pay for that choice with your toll.”
We would have been more than happy to pay our fair toll. We just didn’t want to pre-pay $32 worth of tolls (with no guarantee of getting the money back) at the time of rental when we weren’t planning to use any toll roads. It’s not fair that rental car customers have to pay $32 to go on a toll road once and regular car owners pay a dollar or two.
- My wife thought that Gator Croc and Roc sounded like fun (rooftop bar and all that) and we needed a place that was going to be open late. I’m Lazy and thought that it sounded as good as any other, especially since we were just getting off the plane.
- A reader suggested that Whataburger something worth checking out. Considering that we tell people to check out In N Out Burger in California, it seemed to make sense. Plus, not every meal can be a nice sit-down dinner. Sometimes you just want lunch on the run.
Lazy: Don’t worry, Whataburger wasn’t a bad choice for someone not familiar with the wilds of North Texas.
As for your presentation of the toll system, I think you’ve still got it a little wrong. Some of our toll roads (like the Dallas North Tollway that you could have taken from Dealey Plaza to Addison) still take cash. They are phasing that out, but the toll collectors are still there.
Some of the toll roads, especially the new ones, have no toll booths. Either you have a Toll Tag, or you pay “ZipCash.” You just drive on through and they take a picture of the license plate. The NTTA doesn’t fine you for not having a Toll Tag on these roads. They charge more to ZipCash customers than they do to Toll Tag users, but when they send you a bill it should be just for the tolls, not a fine. In the case of a rental car, they’d send that bill to the agency. Are the agencies then not paying the bills promptly, racking up fines, and then charging the customer for all of that?
Hey Lazy,
Sounds like u’d fit right in round here. Lots of us hate the NTTA too. In fact…I wouldn’t be surprised to find out if they are somehow in cahoots with the rental car companies (wink wink). Maybe they’ve been getting business advice from our disgraced former Dallas City Council member Don Hill.
But I digress……Look at the bright side. You missed out on getting to witness/experience Dallas’s latest & hottest new sport…..wrong way driving on the tollway. All the cool kids (ie…drunk asses) are doing it.
Maybe we should have included that in our failed Olympic bid. I am sure that would have pushed us right to the top of the list. Right?
Tthe car rental guy misinformed us about the Dallas North Tollway then. It could have been an honest mistake. Either way, we couldn’t risk it, because it’s not like you can turn around if they don’t take cash.
From the link here it looks like there are fines: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/21/2110.asp
“After the North Texas Tollway Authority sent Advantage Rent-A-Car a $77.25 bill for the $2.25 in unpaid tolls, the rental car agency added its own fee of $120 to “process” the collection notice. The latter fee was disclosed in the fine print of the contract that Martinez-Holtz signed.”
That sounds like a $75 fine that NTTA is assessing to me. The article is nearly 2 years old – it seems that NTTA has dropped fines and just gone with the “ZipCash” solution. I like that as long as rental car companies don’t tack on their $25 per picture taken (which is what they told us).
Brad, I am kind of glad that I missed that wrong way driving. That ranks a notch or two below missing visiting Fort Hood and going with the NAS JRB Fort Worth.
@Jason–the rental car companies are paying the tolls and not paying a fine. They are charging their customers a fee for that ’service’. It is just another revenue stream for the rental car company, like charging $5 for a gallon of gas if it isn’t full when you return the car. I’m betting the rental car companies were all for the zipcash implementation since there is no way for their customers to opt to pay cash on parts of the toll road, leaving all customers with 2 options: either opt for the $32 ‘all you can rack up’ toll feature (without knowing if you are going to even drive on a toll road) or risk being dinged by the car company for $25 if they happen to enter a toll road.
I think I’m going to get into the rental car business.
Why even charged the customer. I’ve taken two business trips recently one to Maryland and one to Wisconsin and both cases Hertz had a little box mounted on the dash or windshield that contained transponder. the box was metal and the transponder worked only if the drawer holding it was pulled out. when pulled while going through a tollbooth the toll is charged to your credit card
finally don’t rely solely on your GPS, stop at a gas station and pick up a Mark Zero GPS ie a map
@Lazy: Glad you enjoyed our fair city. WRT Whataburger, most people I know only hit it post-bar. It just seemed a random, and therefore humorous, entry in your trip report. But a guy’s gotta eat.
To the topic at hand, I’m still on the tollroad boycott since the rates went up because usage went down.
I have a 1966 Mustang. I recently got a toll bill for it but the car pictured is a 2008 van-something…yes, they are really on the ball at the NTTA. I had to point out that there were no mini-vans nor SUVs in 1966. Well, the Robinsons on “Lost in Space” did have the first SUV, but that was supposed to be in 1997.
@Jason Heid
There are no longer any toll booths if you enter the DNT from Harry Hines or 35 going Northbound. I don’t believe there is a pay entrance until Mockingbird.