Rented from Enterprise for a four day trip from Boston to Connecticut and New York, ending here in…read moreHartford. The experience was a good mini road trip, with no hassles or complexity from our rental.
One-way car rentals are always quite a bit more expensive than a round trip, so was pleasantly surprised when finding a luxury car (Audi A4) rental from Enterprise being cheaper than an intermediate rental from competitors. It was for 4 days, with return happening at this location early morning before our flight. The Hartford airport has a modern rental car center, connected to the main terminal via an indoor land bridge. Returning was as simple as following the sign for Enterprise car return, leading us to Level 3 of the big parking garage. The attendant directed us where to park, actually scanned us in, and gave us a receipt right then and there. It was then an easy 5 minute walk to the terminal, taking a long skywalk to departures. The process maybe added 10 minutes to what it would have been if we had just been dropped off at the terminal.
Addendum: There are a lot of tollways in Massachusetts, and I should have done a better job of figuring it out before we went...would have saved us time.
Growing up in Illinois, I'm old enough to remember the workings of manual toll roads: planning out your route, determining how much cash you would need, and then either getting your loose change or changeable bills ready. During most times of the day, there would be lines so determining what queue was the quickest would add yet another driving decision to your trip. Then bulky transponders came out, allowing you to take the bypass (skipping all the cars in line) if you had a working one. After college, living in Wisconsin meant no tolls since the state has proudly never had them on any of their roads. Thus I didn't really keep track of tolling technology much except for the visits to Illinois for family, or the rare car rental in a toll-heavy state.
My experience with rental cars and tolls is what really turned me off using a provided transponder. The concept of rental car agencies providing these were new, so wasn't much regulated then The rental car agencies used the same tact as they do for gas fill-up and collision insurance (liability insurance is already included as part of your rental): push it real hard to unsuspecting customers for convenience, but at very high (and profitable) prices. They would include a transponder in your car, and then offer unlimited tolls, for a daily charge often higher than the daily base rate of the rental itself. They would warn you if you didn't purchase it and either 1) use the transponder through a toll or 2) not pay a toll and thus have the toll agency send a bill to the rental car agency much later, they would fine you an amount much greater than what what you would have originally paid. This wasn't as big a deal when there were still manual toll booths to pay as you go...but with the disappearance of them (Massachusetts no longer has any manual booths...everything is electronic), it became a lot trickier. Thus we've chosen to just skip toll road altogether, but we found that this was a huge time suck...a lot more than anticipated. We were still able to do so on this trip, but added a lot of wasted time and stress.
For our next car rental in heavy toll road areas, we will consider this (if renting from Enterprise...guessing its similar for other agencies as well...there just wasn't much documentation on-line before...it seems a lot better now):
1. Get a EZ-Pass transponder from a state that doesn't charge a rental fee (like VA or IL). Once we get the rental, tie the license plate to it, turn off the rental transponder. OR
2. Rent a transponder. Every day that it is used, there is a $3.95 fee, maximum of $19.75 per period i.e. 5 days max), plus the toll itself. OR
3. Some states (like Massachusetts) will just bill to the license plate without penalty. Enterprise will not charge a penalty, but instead just act as if you had used their rented transponder (i.e. $3.95 fee daily plus toll).
#3 is the case for a lot of other states as well (CO, FL, TX, NC, GA, WA). Previously, I had conscientiously checked the state site to pay for the toll by license plate before they billed the car owner (rental agency) triggering that massive fine. Good to know that rental agencies have gotten rid of that tactic, either because it was better for the consumer or more likely because they were forced to by the individual states.
