Budget Car Rental Arvostelua 

If I could give negative stars to Budget, I would. I've never, ever been treated so rudely, met so many people who were incompetent, didn't give a single crap about their job, or were just plain a-holes.

I booked a budget truck about a month ago. About an hour before pickup, a guy from my original location (Chapel Hill, NC) calls me and tells me that "oops, the truck broke down, and can I pick it up at this other location", which was 35 minutes away from where I was. I didn't mind getting it elsewhere, but asked him to please move the reservation closer to where I was right now. And then proceeded to give him the exact location (a dealership), road we were on, and the region of nearby city of Raleigh for good measure. Guy calls back and tries to send us to another location even further out of the way. So we tell him that the first place was preferable and that we'll get there about an hour later than the original pick up time. He says the truck will be waiting for us.

Skip to that time... We just drove the extra 35 minutes to the Northgate, Durham location, get there, and the guys there have never heard of us and don't even have that kind of truck in the inventory. I try to call the Chapel Hill guy, but he's already closed, apparently without ever checking whether the other location had the truck actually available or making sure his client would be attended to. After trying to reach him for awhile, we finally reach a dispatcher. At this point it's 4:30pm, peak traffic hour (the original reservation was for 2).

The dispatcher sends us to another location in Raleigh, J&R Auto Group, 30 minutes away, saying that we need to get there before it closes at 5... we ask them to make sure that this person is ready for us, and they say that they are waiting. We literally get to this place at 5:00. (To boot, this place is literally like 5 minutes away from where this whole journey started, so we could've avoided all this driving if only the guy from the original CH place had actually spent twenty seconds looking for a convenient pick up place). Anyway, we pull in and see that the place is already closed down and the guy is walking away to his car. He sees us pulling in and starts walking faster. I jump out of the car and run to him, at which point this a-hole, I kid you not, runs to his car, jumps in, and tries to speed away ACROSS THE GRASS to get away from the customers he has to serve. He can't pull into the road, though, because of all the traffic, so I catch up to him running and he pulls down his window. I explain how we've been sent all across town, it's been hours, and we're desperate... can't he please please help? He's been told about us and asked to wait, how could he leave now? The guy basically says "I close at 5, it's 5. I have someone to pick up. Sorry." And drives off. Who the hell does that? How can you care so little about your business?!

So at this point we're left at this dinky closed place, still with no truck. I try to call the dispatchers again, literally wait 20 MINUTES for them to pick up. I start to tell the guy that "I've had the most frustrating experience with budget today", and the dude sighs and HANGS UP! I didn't curse at him or yell at him, although I probably sounded plenty frustrated, so what gives? I mean budget, how low are your standards that you hire people who hang up on the customer to work in customer service? It's just beyond belief.

Now we're at a loss for what to do, and we decide to turn around and go back to the Northgate place, since it had the only two decent human beings working at budget. We get there and they actually now have the truck we need, but can't pull up our reservation because it's been marked as "not picked up in time". Skip another 40 minutes and a supervisor in cust. service... We finally get our truck at 7pm. That's 5 hours and 3 dealerships late, if you're counting. Budget offers us $40 off; I later realize half of that gets slapped back on in fees that weren't on the reservation before. It's just cherry on top of the sunday. Glad you value 5 hours of your customer's time and horrible stress with $20, which we've already spent on gas driving back and forth... Can't wait to spread the word about budget on every possible platform and make sure no one has this experience with them, because no one should be subjected to this treatment when they're already going through the stress of moving.

I rented a midsize car at BUDGET at the Milan Malpensa airport in April. Had to wait 45 minutes at the counter until a BUDGET representative was available to do the paperwork. Received a inside and outside dirty car but I had an important appointment and no time to complain and ask for different car. My Italian is very basic but the attendants English was even worse. Personnel seemed to be stressed and was whether friendly nor very helpful but in certain aspects even outright rude. Granted BUDGET offered the cheapest deals. Nevertheless, next time I shall rent from a company which costs a bit more, hoping to get a clean car and nicer service.

The local Budget Truck rental stores I've done business with are nice and helpful, but it's the national roadside assistance and customer service that is awful. Halfway through our journey, the ABS light came on on the dash. We did our part by stopping in a decent sized city (where there was a budget truck location) and called their national roadside assistance helpline. After waiting 20 minutes for them to call back after our initial call, they advised us to keep driving because it's "probably just an issue with the sensor, not the brakes themselves." Well, about an hour later, the rotor came completely off the wheel and we were lucky to maintain control of the vehicle (and not hit any other vehicles) while swerving around the road.

Once stopped, it took a long time to process our issue, to send someone out simply to say state "yes, it is broken and can't be repaired," and then another hour and a half for a tow truck to come. That added up to almost 4 hours on the side of a busy interstate. No one I spoke to really seemed to care at all about the situation I was in. They had no sense of urgency and never called back with new information to keep me updated. I was told by the last person that night that the claim was put in the system (it was now after 10PM), so it should be processed by the closest store and their inventory department starting at 7AM and we should be moving forward in the hours after that. Unfortunately, when I woke up at called them a little bit after 7 (because again, they are horrible at communicating with you), they said they were waiting on one person in New Jersey (we were stuck in Missouri) to get to the office and approve the claim. I asked every which way that I could if there was any other living soul on the planet that could approve this claim and they said no (even though all the boxes had been checked off to get a new truck and someone literally just had to say "yes"). So we waited for hours for that person to show up, and then it took many more hours for a tow truck to bring the functioning truck to us (we were a half hour from the closest store). All along, again, there was no communication from them unless I called and waited on the line for 10+ minutes each time. They also said they would hire a team of movers to help us load the items from the broken down truck to the new one, except that they didn't do that until much later so we were already done doing it ourselves by the time the movers showed up.

After I returned the truck and called the customer service to get a refund and reimbursement for the inconvenience and for the time spent in a hotel, they again showed that they really didn't care about my situation. They read their script that said "I'm sorry to hear that, sir," but when I asked them to consider more than just the "inconvenience," to think about the dangerous situation they put us in when telling us to keep driving on a faulty truck, they just kept reading their same script. "We can offer you a 20% refund on the truck fee," which turned out to be $73, and then I have to email my hotel and food receipts to a specific email address. I'm now struggling to get their email address to work, as I've spent weeks just trying to get through to someone to get some reimbursement back, and simply get someone to care enough to set this straight. My saga with them is still not over, and it feels like it never will be. They are extremely slow and their lack of caring and urgency is infuriating. I've worked in customer service for years and I know that at the end of the day, all people want is to feel like someone cares about your trouble and wants to make it right. I'm not unreasonable in my demands and issues with this company, and yet they have consistently shown through the entire process that they fall very short of the mediocre bar of service I'm asking from them.

I had booked a truck and received a confirmation number from Budget Truck and then packed my entire apartment and people ready to help load the truck and move the things.

30 min. before the pickup they call and cancel my reservation with the excuse that they have overbooked and their will be no trucks available for the coming three days. When asking on what they want to do about the situation they answer "Take you business elsewhere".
Really bad experience and really bad customer service.

Don't ever use this company if you want to be sure of getting a truck.

Reserved a moving truck and a "hand truck" (a dolly) a month in advance. I show up to pick them up and they tell me they haven't had a hand truck at their location in months! Then why did they allow me to reserve it?? Luckily, UHaul did have one and saved my trip at the very last minute. I had another bad experience with this same location when we rented a truck that would not shift into reverse - how the staff does not notice this before renting out the truck, idk. Worse yet, the staff treats your concerns with great apathy, as if you're asking too much of them to rent you a truck that has a working transmission. Will not use this company again. UHaul is more expensive but at least they actually have the equipment you need and it actually works.

Trucks are all old and not reliable.The truck broke down right before my move. I have waited 6 hours for my truck to be fixed. Costumer service is located outside of USA so service sucks.Overall, I would not recommend this company to anyone.