Hertz Hidden Fees and PlatePass Toll Charges: What Renters Should Know

The rate you booked isn't the rate you pay

Hertz advertises a low daily rate to win the booking. By the time the final receipt prints, that rate has picked up a stack of add-ons: a concession recovery fee of roughly 11%, a vehicle license recovery fee of about $2.46 per day, and facility and energy surcharges. These are not taxes. They are Hertz's own operating costs, such as airport concession payments, fleet licensing, and facility overhead, broken out of the advertised price and billed back to the renter as though they were government charges.

The result is that the price used to compare Hertz against other rental companies is not a price anyone can actually pay. Regulators call this drip pricing: advertising one number and collecting a materially higher one.

PlatePass: the toll program renters didn't ask for

PlatePass is Hertz's electronic toll program, billed at roughly $28 per day, about $140 for a week's rental, on top of the tolls themselves. Renters report being enrolled automatically, and the program's activation rule reaches far: merely opening the transponder's shield box can "activate" billing for the rental, even for renters who declined the program at the counter.

A driver who passes through a single $2 toll can come home to well over $100 in program charges they never agreed to pay.

Hertz has paid to settle these claims before

This is not a new complaint. A private class action over undisclosed PlatePass auto-enrollment, Doherty v. Hertz, settled for $11 million in the District of New Jersey, with final approval in 2014. Florida's Attorney General separately reached a settlement with Hertz over inflated toll fees.

Renters keep reporting the same experience years later: surprise recovery fees on the receipt and toll-program charges appearing after the rental closed. Past settlements addressed past conduct; the pricing practices renters describe today are what this investigation is about.

What the law says

Every state has a consumer-protection statute, often called a UDAP or "mini-FTC" act, prohibiting deceptive advertised pricing and unauthorized add-on charges, and Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibits unfair and deceptive practices nationally. California goes further: its rental-car statutes set specific disclosure standards for mandatory rental fees and damage waivers.

Applied here, the questions are straightforward. Was the advertised daily rate a price a renter could actually pay? And did the renter actually agree to the toll program that billed them by the day? Depending on the state, remedies can include a refund of the unauthorized charges, statutory damages, and in some states multiplied damages plus attorney's fees.

Were you affected — and what you can recover

You may have a claim if you rented from Hertz and either paid mandatory fees that were not included in the advertised rate, or were billed PlatePass program fees you did not knowingly accept, especially if you declined the program and were charged anyway.

Keep what you have: the booking confirmation showing the quoted price, the final receipt, and any PlatePass billing statement or charge on your card. Maginnis Howard pursues these claims for renters individually, and there is no fee unless money is recovered for you. Answering the short questionnaire on this page is how we determine whether your rental qualifies.

What They Advertised* vs. What You Actually Paid*

Figures shown are illustrative examples, not records of an actual transaction; your amounts may differ.

Frequently asked questions

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