Don't Rent Cars From Budget
UPDATE 3/21/09
I nearly choked when I heard my coworker had booked a car through Budget this weekend. I immediately pointed him to this entry to point out the mistake that he just made. He did some research to find out what the charges were, something I never bothered to do even at my clear level of dissatisfaction.
| *2.5% TAF | .53 |
| #TX8.25%+$10CFC | 10.00 |
| LDW | 9.00 |
| PAE/ESP/SLI CHG | 14.80 |
So to be fair, this is in a way my own fault for not reading the fine print. Lesson learned. As my coworker put it, caveat emptor - "let the buyer beware".
I will not, however, be changing the title of this post. Had I been asked like most rental car companies do, I would have definitely declined the insurance. Who knows, maybe I did - I don't remember the conversation from two months ago. Also, the random tourism and facility charges should have been included in my initial quote. I think these are deceptive business practices.
Don't rent cars from Budget.
UPDATE 3/1/2009
Below is the response I received after submitting a claim on 2/1/09:
"Thank you!
We have received your online claim form.
Budget will reply to all claims via e-mail within 10 business days, whether your request is approved or denied.
Within 10 business days after our receipt of an approved claim, we will issue a reimbursement to the same credit
card used to pay for the rental. In the case of a denied claim, Customer Service will promptly advise why the
claim was not accepted.
If, in the unlikely event you don't hear from us in 10 days, please contact Customer Service by sending an e-mail to rateguarantee@cendant.com.
Thank you for visiting budget.com! "
Twenty business days have come and gone. I am not going to email them. I am done with Budget and I will reiterate:
Don't rent cars from Budget.
_________________________________________________
2/1/2009
I rented a car for three days in LA from Dollar Rent A Car. They didn't have as many airport shuttles as other rental companies and the customer service wasn't great but when I made the reservation they quoted for me for $75.61 and guess what? That's how much I ended up paying.
I happened to take a second trip to LA and rented a car for one day from Budget. They quoted me for $52.96 with a base rate of $34.99 and $17.97 in taxes and surcharges. I planned to rent a GPS for $13.95 but still didn't expect to spend more than $70 total. Budget charged me $96.05.
| Minimum Charge | 34.99 |
| Adjustment (A) | 13.99 |
| **11 . 11% FEE | 8.08 |
| FUEL SERVICE | 13.99 |
| GPS | 13.95 |
| TAXABLE SUBTOT | 57.02 |
| TAX 8.250% | 4.70 |
| *2.5% TAF | .53 |
| #TX8.25%+$10CFC | 10.00 |
| LDW | 9.00 |
| PAE/ESP/SLI CHG | 14.80 |
**CONCESSION RECOVERY FEE
*TOURISM ASSESSMENT FEE
#$10/RNTL CUST FAC CHARGE
My first thoughts were that they inaccurately charged me for not returning the car with a full tank of gas, but when I brought this up to the person who printed my receipt, he said that he had "taken care of it". I scanned the above and noted the adjustment but still didn't understand why the total was so much. I still don't. The line items make no sense.
I should have filed a complaint much earlier but in writing this post I went to budget.com and found they have a "rate promise" and that you can submit a claim if additional charges go up between when you reserve and rent your car. I doubt I can recover any costs though because of a 7 day window but I filed a claim anyway. The thing that bothers me most is that the charges don't make sense. Even if Budget can convince me they are legit, I shouldn't have to go through this inconvenience to find out.
Don't rent cars from Budget.
Oh no!! I'm sorry to hear that you had such a horrible experience! I've only rented a car once...from Enterprise. Stanford has a special deal with them, so that us young people (haha, under 25, you know!) can rent cars. Well, it ended up being sooo expensive! I mean, I'm sure it didn't help that we had to pay for insurance and stuff, but it did seem really ridiculous! Good luck with your claim!
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that is not cool.
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what was the additional $19 they charged you for at the bottom? Enterprise is pretty good!
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Not sure - they all look like random acronyms to me.
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boo that sucks. dollar car rental all the way!
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Go Green!!! Walk next time.
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Hi,
Same thing happened to me with Budget. I bought a vacation package from Expedia and on my way to get the car, the girl asked if I needed insurance and I said yes. We had to return the car after a day for an exchange because of noisy motor and when I got home from my trip my credit card bill from Budget was $488 !!! That was the additional charges just for a week's rent. That doesn't include the cost of the rental which was already paid as part of the package deal. The additional costs were due to the following :
LDW (loss damage waiver) : 25.99
PAE : 6.95
ESP : 5.00
SLI : 14.43
She practically gave me all the insurance she can find !!! PAE/SLI/ESP are all health insurances. UGH !
And how in the world will a budget car worth 13,000 cost so much LDW insurance in Orlando ?
yeah, so tourists beware of BUDGET ! No wonder the line was short in the airport for this company.
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Sorry to hear you had a such a bad experience. At least we can learn from it and hope that we've warned others.
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I agree with the fact that you should have filed a complaint against them a long time ago, the kind of experience you have had with them, should have taught you not to wait for the 10 business days they were requesting.
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If all the people would be like you then this kind of companies would most likely not exist. The respect for the customer is very important, unfortunately not all the business practices and business visions are compatible with that. Thanks for warning us!
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what was the additional $19 they charged you for at the bottom? Enterprise is pretty good
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Thanks for such a informative article...It was really helpful...Thank you so much...
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I will never a rent from Budget. I have never had a good experience with them, and feel like their customer service stinks.
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I just came back from Orlando, I rent at budget for 6 days, they charged me the PAE/ESP/SLI CHG for 7 times because the week rate a total of $101us, but I repeated times told the vendor that I didn't want any insurance at all, because my visa covers me, even I repeated in front of their camera and he said there was no insurance. But in the receipt appears this SLI thing.
Don't rent from budget, also I don't usually do it from one dollar because once they stole a camera in Dallas. I left it on the glovecompartment, I came back later and they said no responsibility for forgotten objects in the vehicle.
Congratulations to coolguyphil who wrote this blog, it is bad to know that after 2 years budget still doing the same fraud to their customers.
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