Recap: Car Rental Fees, Mint Limits & More

 

  • Reader Nate reached out to let us know that personal finance service Mint has a life time limit of adding a total of 200 accounts (total accounts, not active). Has anybody run into this issue before? Not sure why Mint needs to have such a limit in place, surely powerusers are the ones that will find the features most useful?
  • 15K Membership Rewards for cruise with Holland / Carnival / Princess / more by Frequent Miler. Might be useful for anybody who likes to cruised.

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Information Booth
Information Booth (@guest_639547)
September 6, 2018 15:58

In MI we have no tolls and the potholes to prove it!!😉

Sparky
Sparky (@guest_639531)
September 6, 2018 15:17

As far as the tolls about 13 years ago in Denver I think it was I went through a toll that was smart pass only. Rental company sent me a bill for $150 and said they already paid the toll. I called up Colorado and they said the toll was not paid and that I can settle it for $7. I paid the $7 and sent a letter back to the rental company claiming they were committing mail fraud and told them to send me $500. They sent another letter asking for $150. I told them that’s two counts of mail fraud. I never bothered to take them to small claims court as I have with some junk faxers and telemarketers.

Gerald
Gerald (@guest_639762)
September 7, 2018 00:40

I don’t think you could have taken them to small claims court because mail fraud is Federal. I’m not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV.

Elmer
Elmer (@guest_639988)
September 7, 2018 14:07

You’d make a great TV lawyer. But should probably stick to divorces.

Sparky
Sparky (@guest_639530)
September 6, 2018 15:13

I had a support ticket for about 9 months trying to clean up a profile and get more active accounts. I was down to about 115 and any new accounts added would not update.

Nate
Nate (@guest_639549)
September 6, 2018 16:03

same here. Mint support says it’s due to 200 limit.

The DJ
The DJ (@guest_639504)
September 6, 2018 14:13

Re: Mint. I don’t think that is true (unless it is # of ACTIVE accounts they are referring to). I have 300+ accounts (this number reflects both close and active accounts. This number is what is shown on my app when it is refreshing). That’s what cc and bank bonus churning will do to you! There might be some features that may have this limitation (i.e. the hide/show feature), but for now I don’t see this as a limitation for total number of accounts that are linked to your account (for me anyway).

Nate
Nate (@guest_639551)
September 6, 2018 16:04

perhaps it’s got something to do with the time when one joined? i’ve deleted many of my old accounts, and only have some 90 active accounts. any new accounts I add say “account does not exist”.

Clara
Clara (@guest_639464)
September 6, 2018 12:39

FYI on the cruise offer: its the same as earlier this year, and we happen to have cruises booked at Hollandamerica.com through a travel agency. The charges appeared on amex as “hollandamerica.com”, and did not trigger the offer. Did online chat / investigation, and still could not get the credit. Maybe you’ll need to book directly from these cruise companies, but then the price would be much higher than through the travel agency.

Dan
Dan (@guest_639413)
September 6, 2018 10:54

Mint has pretty shitty functionality even with a limited number of accounts.

David
David (@guest_639393)
September 6, 2018 10:00

RE: Mint – This is why I only use Mint to just briefly monitor my incoming and outgoing on my accounts. I don’t use it to track things financially or to look at my stats over the months or anything.

For that, I use Quicken… As ugly and shitty as Quicken is, it is the only true accounting software for properly tracking financials.

Gadget
Gadget (@guest_639427)
September 6, 2018 11:42

+1 on Mint. It’s an easy access transaction log and balance monitor.
It doesn’t classify transactions properly, so it is not a good budget tool. Even if you try to manually assign categories for purchases, often times it sees my ACH transfers as expenses, or fees.

I’d recommend, if you want to use a budget tool, don’t add your bank bonus/churn banks or hub accounts.

I haven’t hit my Mint limit yet, because I usually delete my old accounts. I imagine that if there is a 200 acct limit, it’s because they want to keep the performance at an acceptable level. It keeps any one Mint account from pulling a lot of server CPU cycles encrypting/decrypting, plus helps limit database storage and transfer.

Nate
Nate (@guest_639443)
September 6, 2018 12:10

even if you delete your old accounts, you will run into the 200 acct limit. it’s a lifetime limit, not an active account limit, as the post indicates.

Gadget
Gadget (@guest_639457)
September 6, 2018 12:26

Well, I would have hit the limit if it’s lifetime. When I go to My settings, Your accounts, All, it says 111 today. Those are the closed or open accounts I have, not lifetime. I can assure you I have deleted as least 90 more.

CSR’s are notorious for giving out bad info. I am not going to lose any sleep over this. I am not using Mint for history data, so if I have to make a new Mint account, I will.

Dan - Legal Bank Robber
Dan - Legal Bank Robber (@guest_639469)
September 6, 2018 12:44

Gonna have to agree with Gadget on this one. I have exceeded 200 lifetime accounts for sure and have not encountered any error message preventing me from adding more.

Nate
Nate (@guest_639623)
September 6, 2018 18:54

Officially from Mint Support on Twitter:

Mint does have a limit of 200 accounts. Any accounts trying to be added after this limit would not be accepted. -Stacia

Elmer
Elmer (@guest_639985)
September 7, 2018 14:05

Again, about as reliable as a random CSR.

Gadget
Gadget (@guest_682552)
November 30, 2018 15:21

Was unable to add TIAA today to Mint – error said TIAA account doesn’t exist. Submitted ticket to Mint. Answer: First, they said they released a fix. Did the steps they said, and that fix didn’t work for me. Got in chat. Had me try same steps to delete and add. Didn’t work.

Two minutes later came up with “We apologize for the inconvenience, however a user can only add a maximum of 200 accounts. You may not be able to add your bank account since your profile already exceeded the maximum number of accounts allowed.”

I did not believe it. Tried to add SO’s accounts from other banks to my Mint. Getting same error as my TIAA attempts. Error is “Hmmm. We’re having trouble finding your account. This account doesn’t seem to exist.”

So, I was wrong. There is a limit. Maybe the limit is related to 200 login credentials? If you have 5 accounts at one bank under one login, that counts as one? Otherwise I think I would have hit the limit long ago. My Mint settings page says I have 130 accounts, but per CSR, deleting old accounts does not fix the error and in my tests, that appears to be correct.

Dan - Legal Bank Robber
Dan - Legal Bank Robber (@guest_682558)
November 30, 2018 15:25

Ah multiple accounts under one login might be why. Good point, thanks for the update

Gadget
Gadget (@guest_683074)
December 1, 2018 16:42

Did some more testing. Tried deleting an existing account from Mint (Amex) that was working fine. When re-adding it, same error as TIAA. That Mint account is dead to me now.

Deleted the entire Mint account and starting fresh. Luckily I don’t care about Mint history, budgets, and all the extras, or I’d be much more pissed. I will say, the bill monitoring is nice though and would miss that.

The only one I haven’t been able to get working now is HSBC – which they broke right after the HSBC data breach by adding DOB and maybe blocking Mint?

If anyone had any suggested sites/apps to try besides Mint, I’d be all ears. I used to use Yodlee Moneycenter (https://money.yodlee.com), but a couple accounts I had didn’t work, and the lack of an Android App is annoying. I don’t want budgets and finance tools like YNAB, Personal Capital, etc – I just need single login account balance and transaction monitoring. I know some banks have account aggregation tools now (Citi, USAA, etc), but I really don’t like the idea of having all my accounts tied to one bank.

Snorlax
Snorlax (@guest_639377)
September 6, 2018 09:24

A lot of rental car companies charge fees to charge you the tolls you drive through, and these fees are becoming unavoidable with cashless tolls. It’s a cash grab, it doesn’t cost them anything for them to charge your credit card for your tolls.

Redrotors
Redrotors (@guest_639383)
September 6, 2018 09:35

I purchase a toll pass at local grocery / pharmacy.

David
David (@guest_639396)
September 6, 2018 10:04

I agree – BUT I will say that there is a way to circumvent it (in some cases). In Florida I had to go through a cashless toll… I just called the toll company, gave them the rental car license plate… They looked it up in the system, saw the toll charge and I paid it over the phone. Car rental company had no idea it occurred.

Gadget
Gadget (@guest_639470)
September 6, 2018 12:46

Interesting. I wouldn’t have thought to do this, since you are NOT the registered owner, I am surprised they even would speak to you let alone take a phone payment. Plus, seems to me doing this is risky and could be a headache if the Rental Car company billed you anyway because it showed on their records they had gotten from toll company previously. Also, the toll company CSR has to be on the ball and actually note which exact tolls are being paid for. If they screw that up and just apply it generically to the account or the wrong days, you just picked up someone else’s tab.

Alamo just got me for 3 days at $4 each day, but only $6 in actual tolls over the 3 days. Not horrible, and overall I got a good deal on the rental based on my shopping around prices so not worried. I wouldn’t have risked what you did to avoid $12 in fees. $45, maybe so.

Edit: NOT

David
David (@guest_639492)
September 6, 2018 13:45

/shrug, this was in Florida and I believe it was for the turnpike (which is auto plate tolls only) – My wife is way more familiar with the tolls stuff since she is from there and she suggested to me to call them up. The toll company on the phone didn’t seem to mind – and I *BELIEVE* (IIRC) they simply moved that toll to a separate account and allowed me to pay it – and thus the car rental company couldn’t see it.

You are right though, it might have been a risk overall.

Mike L
Mike L (@guest_639401)
September 6, 2018 10:13

Agreed $15 per day seems excessive, but there IS an administrative cost on their end to tie each toll back to each individual rental and, then charge that renter’s credit card. It seems like $1-2 on top of the toll should be sufficient though.

Debit
Debit (@guest_639403)
September 6, 2018 10:19

The surprise is the Republican pam bondi cared enough about the consumers and not just the corporations.

Ray
Ray (@guest_639404)
September 6, 2018 10:25

She must be getting paid by Enterprise and Avis to go after them.

David
David (@guest_639408)
September 6, 2018 10:39

Don’t be so judgemental on conservatives in regards to being “pro corporatism”. Remember who overwhelmingly voted to bail out the big banks – and who also failed to prosecute anyone over very corrupt acts.

Same puppets, just a different hand.

CryptoChrist
CryptoChrist (@guest_639414)
September 6, 2018 11:15

And the Democrats love their corporations too, sweetie. Even ol’ Bernie Sanders and Gillum love corporations.
I have a solid hunch you aren’t aware of the corporate influence and rather just be spoon-fed by corporations on which corporations and people you should hate. Good luck in the future with your partisan blindfold!

MickeyMouse
MickeyMouse (@guest_639463)
September 6, 2018 12:38

David – I tried that when visiting Dallas since they have tollways EVERYWHERE. I called the # gave he plate they said it takes 3-7 days for it to show up in their system so I was SOL.

I did go to the city (while visiting Dallas) and get a PlatePass for future charges and later had them add the charges to that. It was a long process and not very easy, but Hertz wanted I think $20 per day of the rental agreement just in “service fees” for tolls, even if that day no tolls were used only 1 day on the rental getting a toll incurred fees for 5 days.

Because I did have the platepass (and got it that same day) they did reverse the service fees I told them it must not have read it because I did have it (but I didn’t have it yet).

I didn’t have it because I’d never been to Dallas and didn’t know about all these tollways the rental car place didn’t even say anything about them either 🙁

Normally a Mint Fan
Normally a Mint Fan (@guest_639376)
September 6, 2018 09:16

I ran into the issue a couple weeks ago. One issue is that they may count accounts that have been deleted and then re-added as separate accounts — which is how they recommended fixing sync issues.

I deleted the account and started fresh with a new email address.

Olympia
Olympia (@guest_639375)
September 6, 2018 09:15

I have 207 accounts on mint now.