car hire Portugal and tolls

[mouli1]

planning to pick up a car from Lisbon airport and do a tour of central Portugal.
The toll system looks complicated , anyone experienced it and was it easy to get a transponder or similar with the hire car ?

[YorkshireT]

It is an absolute joke. At least on the Algarve.

Unless you pay for a box (I never bother they are quite expensive and the car company I use (highly rated by ex pats) and many others do not even offer one) you have to wait two days after the toll, then go to a post office to pay, but within 7 days or 14 I cannot remember. When you get there, they may demand you pay all the outstanding tolls on the car- yeah right.

I gave up. Idiotic system. Since then I have simply never bothered paying. Never heard anything further, ever. And I have been to Portugal the last 5 years.

I have come to the conclusion that rather than installing a proper toll system like other Western countries, they did it on the cheap, and coudl not even be bothered investing the money in a proper website to pay (there is a strange one I found a link to, but no toll has ever shown on there). I concluded that they thought the cost benefit analysis must have been it is more investment to do that than collect tolls from tourists.

But this is my own personal view based on my experiences, you must make your own mind up and don't complain if they did chase you up.

[Omega1]

We did a self drive tour of central and northern Portugal, from Lisbon, in 2017. All rental cars had transponders and we had to pay a small activation fee - this is essential as there is no other way to pay on toll motorways.
We toured for two weeks and had a wonderful time.
Just to add - at the end of the rental they logged in to the transponder account and we paid the actual cost there and then. No waiting for charges to come through and what we paid was the final charge - no scams.

[MinniMouse]

We’ve had the same experience as YT. We have twice hired a car through Luzcar, picked car up at Faro airport. No transponder with Luzcar. When I asked about it I was told you can pay between 2-7 days after you have passed through a toll at a post office. We did this but obviously couldn’t pay after we took the car back to the post office. It’s an impossible system for tourists. Not all car hire companies have transponders.

[tink111]

We hired through master kings and paid to have a toll transponder activated! I didn’t think it was too expensive, it’s easy and we got our money’s worth