Budget Rent A Car
Reviews and Complaints

Rented a car and the inside keeps randomly smelling like gasoline (not while or after pumping gas but while driving down the road/idling) and I cant imagine thats a safe situation. I call road side assistance and am asked if I tried an air freshener..

its not the smell that concerns me , its the cause! I am then told that I should take it to the closest budget location (90 mi away and sold out) and to tell staff I dont feel safe driving it. If I dont feel safe driving it why would I DRIVE it 90 miles then have no way to get home?? Then I am told road side assistance can pick up the vehicle but they cannot assist me with getting another vehicle unless I go to a location and they cannot refund my almost $1000 since I prepaid for it.

I asked to speak with mgmt and was refused multiple times then spoke with someone new told that I can either drive it or have it picked up and no other assistance can be provided. Each person I have spoken with has not listened which is obvious bc they keep saying maybe the car smells bad? Why does the smell come and go then? If the car just smelled bad it would be constant and decreasing, not reoccurring.

Im flabbergasted that a company would treat a customer this way when the customer is just concerned with the safety of the vehicle and their own safety.

I am in the middle of a mountain range so frequently no cell signal to go anywhere so what happens if the car breaks down while im crossing a remote area with no cell service? not Budgetsl problem i guess?

Good Afternoon,

I booked a compact vehicle online from the 7923 West Broad location with zipcode 23294 on 6.3.24. When I called the location to arrange a pick up I was informed that the only available cars were SUV's.

I am on a budget and inquired if I would be charged for an SUV to which I was rudely told yes. When I nicely tried to explain my situation to your associate she ruxely told me to hold on. She came back on the phone and told me she could give me an electric vehicle. I declined as that is not what I reserved.

I asked if I would be charged the cancellation fee as I was not given what I reserved nor did anyone call to tell me it wasnt available. She grew increasingly rude and said "yeah." I told her to cancel reservation, that I would be disputing charge and asked to speak with a manager/supervisor. She told me she didnt have one. I then asked for a contact number for customer servi e which she gave me.

When I asked for her name she hung up. I attempted to call back 4x in which I was hung up each time.

When I contact the number she gave me the representative tells me there is no reservation but I have a charge of $165.57 in my account from Budget.

The manner in which one of your associates treated me, your customer, today is disgracefu. Budget should be beyond embarrassed to have an individual like that representing you.

I will never use you again and will make sure to share my experience daily. I will also be notifying Better Business Bureau and flood any social media platform.

Respectfully

Sarah Wright

Pertains to Orlando Airport Budget Rental Car. The line to the rental counter was literally more than a quarter mile.

Once I finally got to the counter, the ambient noise prevented me from hearing the attendant 'upgrade' me. Only after I signed the agreement and left the line did I learn I had been upcharged more than $100 for a few day rental. I found 'Brenda' who was managing the garage. She wrote a note on my receipt and told me the person at the exit would reverse the charge.

That person gave me the impression she had done so, but, of course, no! I subsequently spent hours on the phone attempting to rectify this but, to no avail. Why is Budget still in business after treating its customers like this?

I will never rent from Budget again. You shouldn't either.

I want to warn everyone never to rent a car from Budget Rental Cars. They engage in very sneaky and deceptive billing practices.

I rented a car for two days from Budget Rental Cars in Portland, Oregon in early November 2023. As expected I filled up the car with gas at a gas station less than one mile from the Portland airport and then returned the car.

Imagine my surprise a few days later when I was going over my final bill and I found two nasty surprises: (1) Budget charged me a $15.99 fee for not providing them with a copy of my gas refill receipt. At no point did ANYONE at Budget every tell me that I needed to show them a copy of my gas station receipt from when I filled the car's tank right before returning the car. Plus they could crank the car and see that the gas tank was full (which they obviously did based up the gas amount they printed on my receipt), so there was no need for them to require a copy of my receipt; and (2) Their actual receipt showed that the car had 15.8 gallons in the tank when I drove it off the airport lot and also had 15.8 gallons in the tank when I returned it to the airport lot.

And the receipt showed that I only drove the car a total of 66 miles. I had to put 5.63 gallons of gas in the car to fill it up at the gas station near the airport. I rented a Toyota Camry. Driving 66 miles divided by 5.63 gallons implies an MGP of 11.7 miles per gallon.

A Toyota Camry gets at least 25 miles per gallon. What this means is that the car didn't really have 15.8 gallons of gas in the tank when I drove it off the airport lot. Budget tried to defraud me by erroneously putting on their paperwork that the gas tank was full when it obviously was not based upon the amount of gas I had to put in the car to fill it back up.

I had to call Budget's customer service line multiple times to try to get both of these issues straightened out. I demanded a full refund of the bogus $15.99 charge for not showing them my gas purchase receipt, and I demanded a refund of the price of 3 gallons of gas that I should not have had to pay if the tank had really been full when I picked up the car.

It took multiple phone calls but I did get these two credits out of Budget.

The purpose of this warning, even though I got the two credits I wanted, is to let all consumers know that Budget is obviously trying to defraud its customers and hoping they won't notice the bogus and extra charges on their receipts. If I hadn't paid careful attention to the number of miles I drove and calculate how much gas I should have had to purchase to refill the tank, they would have gotten away with this fraud attempt.

I shudder to think how many Budget car rental customers have not noticed that they had to purchase too much gas to refill their tank upon return, or how many Budget car rental customers didn't notice a $15.99 charge tacked on to the bill for not showing their gas purchase receipt (when no one at any point in the rental process ever mentioned this requirement or asked to see the receipt, which was in my pocket).

Avoid renting cars from Budget unless you want to be defrauded. I wish I could give them zero stars.