Bill > S1415

This bill clarifies that motor vehicle rental companies can charge customers a "vehicle registration recovery fee" to cover the costs of titling, registering, inspecting, and licensing their rental vehicles, a practice now explicitly permitted under the "Consumer Protection Leasing Act." This fee must be clearly itemized in the rental agreement and calculated to reflect the proportional share of these costs attributable to each rental. If a company collects more from these fees than it actually spends on these charges in a given year, it must reduce the fee rate in the following year to account for the excess. The bill also allows rental companies to impose other separate surcharges for different business costs, such as licensing fees or airport fees, but these cannot be included within the vehicle registration recovery fee. Additionally, rental companies must disclose the existence of this recovery fee in any advertisements that mention a rental rate. The Chief Administrator of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission is empowered to issue civil penalties for violations of these provisions.