Actually, the SunPass system here is pretty reasonable. This is pure unadulterated fraud on the part of the rental car companies.
You can get a SunPass for like 5 bucks at any gas station. Most of the toll roads in the Tampa area are pretty cheap; the priciest one I’ve ever been on in the state is the Turnpike, and even then I was on it for about 80 miles and it was only in the $5 - $10 range.
What these people are complaining about is that rental car companies don’t explain to you how anything works. Often times they will try to mislead the customer by letting them NOT get the Sun Pass with their rental (to “save money”), then encourage them to drive on the toll roads anyway. Since most toll roads are Toll-By-Plate (i.e., you just drive right on, there’s no booth, they just bill based on taking a pic of your tag), the renter just drives on the roads, probably assuming they’ll pay whatever the posted signs for the roads advertise.
Then because they didn’t get the “toll insurance” or whatever, they get some stupid giant bill from the third party.
They should crack down on this, because Florida makes a bunch of our money off of tourism sales tax, and fraud like this hurts business.
Toll roads are bad juju. Things like toll roads are gateway laws and only lead to all kinds of bad things for the folks paying taxes, fees, penalties, et al.
IIRC my first years of college in the late 70’s, the FL Turnpike toll from Live Oak to Miami was $34.