Several weeks ago I wrote about my unfortunate experience crossing San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.  I was hit with what I considered an inordinately large toll fee for crossing the bridge in a rental car. I lodged a complaint and recently noticed a $19.80 credit on my American Express account.

To recap: The Golden Gate Bridge is an all-electronic tolling bridge. If you cross the bridge, you pay a toll. The catch is, there’s no toll collection booth. In-the-know residents and commuters establish toll accounts. Visitors who rent cars can either opt in to their car rental agency’s toll-payment program (in my case, I inadvertently opted in to the Hertz program by not actively opting out) or set up a toll-payment account long before they ever approach the bridge — or perhaps even set foot in San Francisco.

As a result of the agreement between Hertz and PlatePass, the third-party vendor that processes the toll collection, I was charged $30.75 for crossing the bridge one time. The actual toll is $6.

I was willing to accept the toll-plus-$4.95-processing-fee for the sake of convenience. (Although, I still think it’s a ridiculously high upcharge.) I could not, however, roll over and pay the “small-print” fee of $4.95 per day (up to a max of five days) that kicked in during my one bridge crossing on day six of a six-day rental.

I called PlatePass and spoke to a representative who immediately identified the mystery toll of $30.75 as the Golden Gate Bridge toll. He initiated a complaint on my behalf and, about six weeks later, I noticed the $19.80 credit on my account, which means I ended up paying the $6 toll plus the $4.95 processing fee.

Not so much a happy ending as an acceptable resolution. Still, I can’t stop wondering:

• How many people pay this charge without ever noticing?
• Why does the City of San Francisco allow such a blatantly visitor-unfriendly  set-up?
• Does anyone at San Francisco Travel have a say as to how this — I’ll say it again, blatantly visitor-unfriendly policy — undermines its efforts to promote the city as a tourism destination?

 — Lisa Matte, editor in chief