While renting a car can seem easy to do, there’s a lot that goes into it.
For instance, understanding how payments and charges are accumulated after a rental period is over, is needed to avoid excessive spending.
One common fee in the Car rental industries, especially Enterprise, is the Admin fee.
In this article, we’ll take a comprehensive look at the enterprise admin fee, how much it cost and if there are ways to avoid it.
Overview of Enterprise Admin fee
The admin fee on Enterprise is a fee charged to cover the time and labor Enterprise car rental spent while fixing a service, violation, or damage caused by you.
While this fee mostly applies to violations, it isn’t exclusive to that.
Generally, Enterprise would always charge you an admin fee as long their service is needed to fix something needful to you, whether a normal service or a violation.
For instance, when using Enterprise’s toll service, you’re charged the toll fees alongside an admin fee. You would also get an admin fee when Enterprise helps fix your flat tires.
Read also: Here’s what happens if you don’t pay Enterprise.
So why? Well, that’s simply because their service was needed.
And this is the reason why for any violation you make on the platform, you get charged the violation fine and an extra charge tagged “admin fee.”
It’s worth mentioning that Enterprise’s Admin fee is legal since it can be found on their terms and conditions page which you must accept before proceeding to rent a car from the company.
This means that if you’ve already been charged by the company for the admin fee, there’s no legal way to revert the money back, as long as you signed the company’s terms and conditions.
In essence, you can’t run from Enterprise admin fees, unless you avoid practices that lead to them.
How Much is the Admin Fee on Enterprise?
However, it’s worth mentioning that the amount of Enterprise’s admin fee depends on the service rendered by the company to the violation. The bigger and harder the service is, the higher the amount of the Admin fee.
Enterprise’s most popular admin fee is the fixed $35 fee usually charged for parking fine and speed tickets. However, for admin fees like Extention service, Enterprise only charges $1.5.
So, generally, it depends.
Fortunately, Enterprise car rental has a fixed admin fee for most of its services that are rendered to customers. So there are no negotiations.
Common Causes of Enterprise’s Admin Fees and how to avoid
Below are the some of the common reasons that could lead to you being charged an Admin fee at Enterprise.
- Traffic Tickets
- Parking Violation
- Fuel Service
- Toll service
- Cleaning Car Service
- Loss and Damage
Traffic Tickets
This is by the far the most popular reason for being charged Enterprise’s admin fee.
If it’s discovered that you violated a particular traffic regulation such as speeding tickets, disobeying the traffic lights, driving drunk, or not following the right driving lane, you could be charged an admin fee.
However, this only happens when you’re caught and reported to the authorities, who forward the case to Enterprise.
It’s worth mentioning that alongside the admin fee, you’ll also be charged a fine for the violation which you made.
How to avoid:
If you get a speed ticket on Enterprise rental car, the best thing to do is to pay it up as fast possible before the company gets notified. This is because, when Enterprise, you’d still need to pay the ticket, but this time, with an extra charge, the admin fee.
Parking Violation
Violating parking rules are just one way to get charged admin fees.
When you park a rental car in a parking restricted area, or an authorised position, there’s every tendency you’d be charged with a parking ticket.
Note that a parking ticket doesn’t affect the driver, but rather the car.
With this in mind, the company would certainly get notified of the violation.
In an event where they get notified earlier on, the rental company would charge you for a parking vioilation as well as an admin fee of $35.
Even if they’re not able to detect the violation earlier on, anytime they discover it, you could still debited. Here’s our research on how Enterprise could charge your card even without your permission.
How to avoid:
Avoid violating parking rules at all cost. But if you get them, ensure to settle (pay) them yourself, so it doesn’t get to the Enterprise car rental.
Fuel Service
Enterprise has a fuel service option just like most car rental companies.
While renting on Enterprise, there are 2 fuel options you’re made to choose from.
- Return the rental car in the same fuel level as it is when picking the vehicle
- Sign up for Enterprise prepaid fuel service
If you fail to sign up for Enterprise prepaid fuel service, and also fail to return the rental car in the same level upon picking up the car, you’d be charged for the fuel used at Enterprise’s local rate (which is expensive), alongside an admin fee.
How to avoid:
The most affordable fuel option when renting cars generally, is to refill the rental car’s fuel tank while returning. If you can do this, you’d avoid getting charged a fuel service fee and admin fee.
Toll service
Just as we said earlier on, most car rental companies like Enterprise all have Toll services.
At Enterprise, you’re not mandated to use their toll service.
Read also: How to Rent a Specific Car from Enterprise
However, by leaving Enterprise pre-installed tranponder on the windshield rental car, you automatically sign up for their toll service, regardless of whether you still paid for tolls yourself.
When you’re signed up for these toll service, you’d be charged for tolls and an admin fee.
How to avoid:
Avoid using car rental tolls based on their extreme rates and unneccessary admin fee.
As an alternative, do well to come with your own transponder while picking up the rental car. Another option is to remove the company’s tranponder and pay your tolls locally.
Cleanining Car
Even though Enterprise claim not to charge cleaning fee, it actually does, especially when a rental car is returned in a big mess.
Enterprise would also charge you a cleaning fee when a rental car is found to smell smoked.
The point here is anytime Enterprise charges you a cleaning fee, you also get charged an admin fee.
How to avoid:
Never sm*ke or return Enterprise rental car in a messy condition
Loss and Damage
Lastly, on this list, we have Loss and Damage, as a reason why you could be charged an Admin fee.
In fact, Car rentals Loss and Damage usually account for higher admin fees, as seen in the image above. Obviously, this is because in the event of a loss or damage, the car rental company puts more effort to reverse the issue.
Final Thoughts
Enterprise admin fee is one of the list of hidden fees that the company doesn’t let renters know of before renting out cars to them.
Generally, if Enterprises you charged an admin fee, there’s nothing you can do about it as it is a legal fee. However, if you’ve read this guide to this stage, you should know how to avoid these fee the next time you rent a car from the company.
