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panachocala writes:

I just returned from a trip to Boston. While there I rented a car from a major agency. I've rented cars plenty of times over the years and it is usually a mildly annoying experience: you wait in line for 30 minutes, you get 10 minutes of upselling at the counter, you get FUDed about having "secondary insurance", you have to inspect the car with the representative - if you miss a dent then you're responsible, etc. This is the normal level of annoyance I am used to.

This time, I encountered another annoyance: cashless toll roads and bridges of which there are apparently many on the East Coast of the US. The toll fees are a couple of dollars if you pay cash but very often there is no cash option and you just see a sign telling you you will be billed by mail. Uh oh... you know that is going to hurt. True enough, if you happen to cross one of these cashless tolls you will get billed by the rental agency for $14.95/day of your rental plus the $1.75 actual toll charge. This is a bridge too far and I am looking for alternatives.

With Uber eating into the taxi business, I started wondering about peer-to-peer car rentals. A little duckduckgo-ing turned up a wikipedia article with a couple of companies looking promising, e.g. getaround and hubber. Has anyone used these? Are there hidden fees and annoyances? Dare I ask... what about tolls? ;)