Question: I recently rented a car at the airport in Albany, N.Y. It came with a toll device. I did not want to use it; I wanted to pay at the booth. And I did except for one time when the device flipped open by itself. What is the consumer supposed to do? — Ahmed Rafi, Lakewood, Calif.

Answer: Take a bus or a train or use a ride-share service. Take your own transponder. Drive on back roads. Dispute the charge with your credit card company. Carry cash.

When you rent a car, you enter another dimension we’ll call the Toll Road Zone.

The zone is growing. As of January 2015, there were 5,882 miles of U.S. tollways (which include roads, bridges and tunnels), according to a report by the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association.

That’s less than 1 percent of our national highways, but it may seem as though that’s all you’re driving on in the nearly three dozen states that have such roads. Top of the list are New York, Florida, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Delaware.

In the olden days, you carried a wad of cash and coins, but today many tolls are collected electronically.

You may feel helped by rental car agencies that let you use their e-device to collect tolls, or you may feel cheated because you could be charged a convenience fee (starting at $3.95) each day you used the e-pass or, worse, for each day of your trip.

And consumers must be aware: Not every company plays by the same rules even if the rental car agencies are under the same corporate umbrella. Hertz, Dollar and Thrifty are affiliated, but their rules are different.

Hertz said in an email: “Hertz’s PlatePass serv­ice costs $4.95 for each day of the rental plus the cost of each incurred toll. There is an administrative fee cap of $24.75.

Dollar and Thrifty PlatePass is all-inclusive — the renter pays one flat daily or weekly rate, which includes the price of tolls incurred, regardless of the number of tolls incurred.

The Enterprise, National and Alamo “charge only for the days a customer incurs a toll, not to exceed $19.75 per rental period plus all incurred toll charges,” Enterprise said in an email.

Avis and Budget have similar language for their rules on their websites. Here’s Budget’s version: “If you do not pay cash for tolls, you automatically opt into our e-Toll service. … Under the e-Toll program, once you pass through an electronic toll, you will be charged a convenience fee of $3.95 a day for each day of the entire rental period, including any days on which e-Toll is not used, up to a maximum of $19.75 a month.”

Both sites also say “plus incurred tolls at the maximum prevailing rates posted by the toll authority.” This means that if tolls fluctuate depending on when you drive (rush hour more, wee hours less) you’ll be paying rush-hour rate.

You usually can opt out. But here’s the problem: There is sometimes no option to pay in cash; it’s all e-collected.