If you rent a car in Florida, it may take an unexpected “toll” on your wallet

Driving a rental car in Florida? Beware of "phantom toll booths," which don't permit cash payments but take a photo of your car license plate and bill the owner -- the rental car company -- for the toll unless you have a SunPass, Florida's equivalent of the EZ Pass transponder in use in 15 other states, including Ohio.

This saves the state of Florida the cost of manning the toll booths. But somebody has to pay for the toll. 

The problem is that the rental car company then bills you a $25 "administrative" fee for EACH toll plus the toll. You drive past two automated toll booths, that's $50 plus the cost of the two tolls.

How can you avoid this money-making quagmire for the car rental companies, which charge the lucrative "administrative" fee that way more than offsets their cost for having a SunPass?

You can pay the rental car firm's "toll insurance," which varies from company to company and the number of days or weeks you rent the car. 

Or you can bypass enriching the rental car company by setting up a toll-by-plate prepaid account online at www.tollbyplate.com or by calling 1-888-TAG-TOLL (888-824-8655) from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday. Put the account on your credit card. You must provide the license plate number of the rental car, and the start and end dates of the rental period, every time you rent a car in Florida. 

It's simple if you have an EZ Pass from Ohio or another state. You can drive through Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and West Virginia and the tolls get deducted automatically from your EZ Pass account, and your credit card is billed for replenishment when your EZ Pass account gets low. 

But NOT in Florida, which loves to pass on costs to the tourists, who can't vote in their elections.