> (Tribune Media Services) -- Look out for cancellation penalties.
> Beware of energy surcharges. And watch for facilities fees!

> No, not on your airline ticket. Not on your hotel folio. You may find
> these new extras on your next car rental bill.

> Beleaguered auto rental firms are quietly adding new surcharges
> designed to lift revenues in a recessionary economy.

> To get an idea of how absurd it's becoming meet Jim Swofford. He found
> a mysterious $5 fee on his Hertz bill recently, which a representative
> described as a cancellation fee. Car rental companies typically don't
> charge their customers for cancellations, so Swofford, who frequently
> rents from Hertz, said he didn't want another car he'd reserved for
> later.

> "That'll be $25," the agent told him.

> "So I jokingly said I would not cancel but just be a no-show," he
> remembers. "She said that would result in a $50 fee."

> Or talk to Eric Hegwer, a photographer from Austin, Texas, who spotted
> a $1 "energy surcharge" on his Hertz car rental bill recently. "My
> previous rentals didn't have one," he says.

> I asked Hertz about the two new surcharges. Company spokeswoman Paula
> Rivera told me the cancellation fee, which was added in December,
> applied only to prepaid reservations and is meant to "reimburse Hertz
> for the paperwork and billing involved with a prepaid reservation."

> The fee also covers part of the company's cost of holding vehicles for
> prepaid reservations. The energy surcharge, which was added in
> October, bills all rentals in most states an additional $1 a day "to
> offset the increasing costs of utilities, bus fuel, oil and grease,"
> she said.

> It's easy to see why car rental companies are taking these steps. The
> industry is hemorrhaging money faster than oil leaking from a cracked
> gasket. Hertz lost $73 million in the fourth quarter, and competitor
> Avis lost $121 million in the same period. They fared much better than
> Advantage Rent A Car, which filed for bankruptcy protection in
> December and whose assets were sold to Hertz for a reported $33
> million.

> Every penny counts for the car rental companies. Then again, in this
> dreadful economy, who isn't counting every cent?

> Shocking anecdotes aside, there's a pattern here, and you don't have
> to be an investigative reporter or a conspiracy theory-obsessed
> columnist to see it. Just read the annual reports issued by one of the
> publicly traded car rental companies. (Look for the form 10-K and then
> scroll down to "Legal Proceedings" for an enlightening read.) They're
> littered with lawsuits over fees, surcharges and add-ons that
> motorists say broadsided them when they rented a car.

> A representative of the American Car Rental Association, a trade group
> for the car rental business, says these fees are essential to the
> industry's survival. But that doesn't give companies a license to
> surprise their customers.

> "The car rental company has an obligation to clearly and concisely
> explain all fees and charges at the time of rental, " says Robert
> Barton, the association's president and chief operating officer for U-
> Save Car & Truck Rental.

> How to stay ahead of these extras? Knowing is half the battle. Here
> are five of the newer charges that could sideswipe you on your next
> trip.

> A fee for something you've already paid for

> This is one of the more creative new ways of separating you from your
> money: charging you twice for the same thing. "Three times now, with
> three different companies, they have tried to charge me for gas when
> I've returned the car with a full tank and claimed it was an honest
> mistake," says Sid Savara, a software engineer in Oahu, Hawaii. "It
> leads me to suspect they are just tacking the fee on and most people
> aren't noticing or complaining about it."

> Boston-based author John DiPietro brought his own E-ZPass toll
> transponder when he rented a car in Massachusetts recently, but Budget
> billed him for the toll roads anyway. "We're still trying to resolve
> it," he told me.

> Now more than ever, it's important to be on the lookout for duplicate
> charges on your rental bill.

> A fee for something that should come with the car

> Such as tires. Enterprise recently charged one of Edgar Dworsky's
> readers a $2 "tire fee." He edits a Web site called Consumer World,
> and like me, he hears a lot of horror stories from travelers. What's a
> tire fee? Enterprise told Dworsky it was required by the state of
> Florida. "I guess the consumer advice is to order a car without tires
> next time," he joked.

> But other fees can't be blamed on the state, including surcharges that
> cover the cost of oil and grease. It might be interesting to show up
> at a car rental counter with four tires and a can of Pennzoil, and ask
> to have those fees waived. You think they would do it? Yeah, neither
> do I.

> Surcharge on surcharges

> Scott Lerman found a "privilege fee" on his last car rental in
> Florida, which applied to rentals picked up within 48 hours of flight
> arrival. "Never seen anything like it," says the Livingston, New
> Jersey-based freelance publicist. (The fee covers the costs of
> operating an off-airport location.)

> Other renters have reported seeing a similar surcharge combined with
> what's often called a concession recovery fee, which amounts to a
> surcharge on top of a surcharge. At best, car rental companies are
> coming up with new and confusing names for their fees. At worst,
> they're charging us a fee on top of another fee. Next thing you know,
> there'll be a surcharge on a surcharge on top of a surcharge. Don't
> laugh -- I'm sure they've already thought of it.

> The stadium tax

> Fees for new stadiums and concert halls are technically not new, and
> technically they're not even controlled by car rental companies.
> Except that municipalities keep coming up with new ones and car rental
> companies don't lobby hard enough to have the fees removed. So rental
> firms are not completely blameless.

> Seth Mendelsohn, the president of a food store in Boulder, Colorado,
> found a $4 "downtown arena" fee on his bill when he visited Kansas
> City recently. "Apparently the city is trying to pay for part of the
> Sprint Center through car rental fees," he told me.

> There are dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of these so-called stadium
> taxes across the country. And new ones keep popping up. One of the
> latest is a car rental tax in Gwinnett County, Georgia, to build a
> stadium for the Atlanta Braves. And just last week, legislators
> proposed a $2 tax to fund commuter rail service in South Florida.

> Extra driver fees

> These aren't brand new, but the way in which they're being enforced
> has changed recently.

> When Carol Stevenson and her sister rented a car from Payless in
> Phoenix, they were asked to pay $9 a day more if Stevenson's sister
> wanted to drive. "And that didn't include their insurance waiver," she
> remembers.

> Why charge for an extra driver? The simple answer: because they can.

> In the past, car rental agents looked the other way when two drivers
> showed up to rent the same car.

> But now, with money tight, they're applying more pressure to authorize
> a second driver. If you don't fork over the money and happen to get
> into an accident, they warn, you won't be covered by their insurance.

> Of course, that assumes you buy their overpriced collision-damage
> waiver in the first place. Odds are, your credit card or car insurance
> offers comparable coverage.

> Most of these fees can be avoided by pre-paying for your car through
> one of the "opaque" travel sites such as Hotwire.com or Priceline.com,
> or by buying through an online travel agency that guarantees its
> rates.

> But car rental companies are trying to find a way to stick it to
> customers with prepaid vouchers, too. I'll have more on that in a
> future column.

> Where will it end? Something tells me we're not there yet. Not even
> close.

> (Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler
> magazine. This column originally appeared on MSNBC.com. You can read
> more travel tips on his blog, elliott.org or e-mail him at
> celli...@ngs.org).