Complain about a product or service

Budget Rent-A-Car

James of Lake Forest Parl, WA April 14, 2007

The Budget Rental rep first tried to fast-talk us into 23 per day(!) supplemental insurance. We passed. Then she sold us on buying the tank of gas in the car from them to start for 36.39 and returning it empty (instead of returning it full as is traditional). The hook was that they were charging .20 less than she claimed the current price of gas on the street (a misrepresentation)--but the problem we discovered later is that there is no refund for any gas left in the tank. So, if you leave even 1 gallon of gas in the tank, that's approx. 2.80 lost, or the equivalent of 14 gallons of the difference between their claimed price and the price on the street. But the tank only holds 13. If we left 2 or 3 gallons in the tank, we would REALLY screw ourselves (albeit only a 6 or 10 loss, but nonetheless a total scam.)

We (I) obsessed about using up all the gas in order to avoid the consequences of the fast talking counter rep., and practically ran out of gas trying to return it on fumes. It would be MUCH easier, and cheaper, to just fill the car before returning it to Budget as has been the usual proceedure in the past.

Susie of Ancover, MN December 20, 2006

My husband picked up a car rental and was very QUICKLY given the walk around the car. The asian owner was so happy to give us his best car on the lot. We had it for 22 days and drove it 6 times. When we returned it the woman inspected the car and then went back inside to start the return process. The man then went out and started to inspect the car came inside and said there was a dent on the front hood where the car hood meets the bumper.

It was 5:30 at night and dark, but there were parking lot lights on. This dent looked like part of the cars aerodynamic style, and it was not appareent to the visble to the eye. The only way to know it was there was to feel the car. Our arguement is that they did not offer us the same level of inspection when we took the car. If they had, that dent would have been detected before we even took the car off the lot. We are honest people and if we did anything to the car we would pay for it, but we truely believe they are trying to pin something on us so that our insurance will have to pay for it and not theirs. They were smiling the whole time we were frustrated with this whole situation. This was an individually asian owned car rental place.

we will probably get stuck paying for something that was not our fault. We believe the dent may have been noticed while they were cleaning the car and wiping it down prior to our taking it, but they could not go after the previous renters because they already passed the car when they returned it. So,rather than report it to their insurance, they would catch the next person who comes along. Dumb on our part for not feeling the car when we rented it, but like I said we are honest non-suspecting people, so we never assumed this would have taken place. Lesson: don't settle for a walk around if you are not familiar with the car point out everything as minor as it may be and have them mark it or let them tell you it is part of the cars design.

Anna of Pompano Beach, FL November 20, 2006

In September 2005, I was traveling to Europe. I rented a car from Budget through the airline. When signing the rental agreement in Berlin, I asked the desk agent whether I was signing up for insurance. The rental agreement was in German and I could not make much out of it myself. The desk agent confirmed that the insurance was covered under the agreement. Moreover, she said that since I was planning to travel in the car outside of Germany the insurance was mandatory.

While I was in Poland, the car was hit on a parking lot of a local supermarket by its employee operating a forklift. The police report was filed but I did not actually receive any documentation from the police. I was told that Budget needed to contact them about it. I returned the car to Berlin and gave the rental agent information needed to retrieve the incident report from the police. I haven't heard anything from Budget afterward. This October, over a year after the incident, I received a letter from a law firm in Germany in which it was said that the police in Poland had refused cooperation and I was responsible for all the repair cost which amounted to nearly 2000 euro.

To add an insult to injury, I am also supposed to pay the costs of the lawyer who took the case. I tried to contact the lawyer but to no avail. They do not respond to e-mail and on the phone I got a person speaking German only whom I could not understand. A month after I received the first letter, another came. In this one, the lawyer curtly stated that since I did not respond to their previous correspondence I am to pay the bill by the end of November or they will contact a lawyer in the United States. I called the police in Poland and requested the report to be released to me. They were most obliging and the report is now in the mail to me. When asked, the police said that nobody ever requested the report before me. I called Budget customer service asking to whom should I file a formal complaint and heard that this is not a customer service issue. I think that when a company is disrespectful, negligent, and unprofessional it is very much a customer service problem.

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