Budget Car Rental — Attraction in Boston

Dear Budget Management, you have sent an email asking for my feedback on recent rental and indicated that you value my opinion. Taking you at your word and knowing survey responses just get aggregated, hope this post gets consideration. If you read the Google reviews, something I highly recommend, you'll see you guys need to go back to the drawing board. One employee kept our experience from being a total mess. We're grateful for him, but we were lucky. Customers don't want to rely on luck when renting a car. Hope this feedback is useful.

A text received on arrival at BOS instructed us to go to Zone 2, select a car, upload an image of the license plate in the app, and be on our way. Thought maybe being a FastBreak member was going to save us the hassle that others have posted about.

Here's the reality. Budget's in a huge parking garage with several other rental car companies. There was no obvious area marked Zone 2. Just a spot in the middle of the garage where tons of peeps were queued up. Not even sure if they were Budget customers, much less FastBreakers. We kept walking through the garage, thinking we'd surely find Zone 2 eventually. No dice.

We did get lucky enough to find an Avis/Budget employee named Gerry in a Customer Service booth that had a Closed sign on the window. Gerry was helping someone else when we got there so I waited to see if he could just point us to Zone 2. He informed me that manning that post wasn't his job but he was trying to be helpful. He listened carefully and confirmed that for some unknown reason there is no area labeled Zone 2, and when he looked in the area where FastBreak cars are supposed to be, there were no cars there. He told us to sit tight as he ran off to find a car for us. We waited a few minutes, not knowing for sure he was going to return. .. .but he did, and with a car in the class we had reserved. He asked us to complete the selection process on the app, but it failed. I've had that experience with Budget before. Can't believe they haven't fixed it. Fortunately, Gerry waited to see if we could complete on our own. Apparently, he was aware that it's not unusual for the app to fail. Gerry used his handheld device to complete the process for us and sent the agreement to me via email.

The car appeared to be fine and the agreement seemed to match our reservation so we drove off, glad to be out in about 1 hour. However, during our week away, the tire pressure light came on. The appropriate pressure in that car's tires is 33PSI. When I figured out how to see the tire pressure of all tires on the dash, one of the rear tires had pressure of 49PSI and the other rear tire had 26PSI. Do they think it's OK if it averages out? The front 2 were slightly under-inflated but not enough to trigger the warning. While trying to balance all 4 at a service station air pump, I noticed that the tires weren't a matching set from the same manufacturer and some of them were pretty beat up looking.

I dunno, man. It seems like Budget ought to be able to streamline their processes and deliver a working app. That would greatly improve the customer experience, which in turn would probably help with their employees' attitudes (Gerry's an exception), and no doubt improve their profitability, too. AND they definitely ought be able to put customers on the road in cars that have undergone basic mechanical checks for function and safety. Several folks have posted complaints about mechanical failures that necessitated returning to Budget. We encountered a group of Germans who had that problem while we were waiting for Gerry to return with a car for us, so this is yet another recurring and unsatisfactory theme.

This industry is ripe for being disrupted, IMO. The established companies seem to be treating the business as a cash cow, not investing in obviously needed improvements and cutting costs wherever they can. Too bad. It's a valuable and needed service, and it would be most appreciated by customers if they'd get their...

Like most others here, terrible experience with this Budget location, and afterwards their national customer service. I’d strongly urge future customers to avoid Budget/Avis at this location. We booked a hybrid car with a different pick up and drop off location well ahead of our trip. We were up charged for the hybrid and one way booking, but seemed worth it for the trip we had in mind. But when we got to the counter at midnight for the pick up, they hemmed and hawed about getting us the car, calling their garage repeatedly for something suitable. They took over an hour, and eventually concluded that despite our reservation no one-way hybrid car was available. We asked for a discount given we weren’t going to get the car we wanted and the original price was an up charge. The two agents at the counter eventually said they would give us a 25% discount and looked busy putting this into their computer. Then they gave us a receipt for the original price, but promising us the discount would be reflected when we returned the car. Exhausted after a trip and already an hour at the counter we accepted and headed to the garage. When we got to the spot where our car was supposed to be there was nothing there. Again we waited for 30 minutes until the garage agent realized they messed up and gave us another car he claimed was an upgrade. When we verified this would be fine with our one way trip, he aborted that plan and again went searching for another car. He eventually gave us a bulky car with poor fuel mileage that wasn’t even reflected as the car we were supposed to have on the receipt. By the time we left it was 2AM and they had wasted 2 hours of our time. The trip went fine, no complaints with the car itself apart from the poor gas millage. We dropped it off at the other airport at the time we had specified in the original booking, were told to leave the keys in the car, and head out. We expected receipt right away, but instead we got one a day later that not only did not apply the 25% discount that was promised to us, but had a late charge, because they claimed we dropped off the vehicle a day later (physically impossible as we had flown out of that city by then). There were so many issues getting these problems fixed. Instead of owning up to it, they just waste your time. We spent hours on the phone with the national customer service, contesting the late fee and the fact there was no 25% off as promised. They said they had sent it to some group to investigate and we’d have to wait 48 hours for the results as the case was still open. Then after 48 hours they instead said the case was closed and the national office had nothing to do. After three days of calls (sometimes with very condescending customer service reps) they finally took off the late fee. But they gave us the run around on the discount and eventually claimed there was nothing on file from the Boston Budget indicating there should be a discount applied. They then told us to call the Boston budget office, which just rings and rings without anyone answering. So we were still up charged for a car we didn’t want and had hours of our time wasted trying to get this right. So what’s the conclusion? Even after reading the terrible reviews from other folks, I was taken aback at how expensive and time consuming dealing with this Budget was. I’d say if you enjoy frustration and being charged extra this is a great location to get your rental car. If you...

Renting a car from Budget car rental felt like dying a death of endless paper cuts. Here are some details: (1) I was charged for RSN (Road Side Assistance), even though I did not request it (I get road side assistance through my credit card, so I would NEVER request this). I did not notice this until the next morning, when I checked my bill. I called, the Budget agent said that there would be no charges (he even gave me a case #), but my final bill included these charges for the entire week. (2) At the counter, the agent asked if I was interested in getting a toll transponder. Not knowing that what she was actually selling not just the transponder usage, but unlimited tolls, and failing to ask for details (and failing to read fine print), I agreed. When I saw the next day what I was charged, I called to cancel this service as of that day, and was told that Budget does not allow any cancellations of services once I leave the rental desk. I would have been fine paying for the one day of usage that had gone by. I consider this to be predatory business practice taking advantage of exhausted customers at the tail end of a very long travel day. (3) It took quite a long time to get through the rental process at the counter. The agent's terminal was locked up (the agent blamed a previous customer touching her monitor). (4) Picking up the car in the lot took 20 minutes or more, even though I had been assigned a specific car. When I went to pick up the car, the attendant said that the car was not in its spot (my wife and I could SEE the assigned car sitting in the specified spot, but we were assured that what we were seeing wasn't actually there). We were told that she didn't know how to find a "W" class car, so we needed to wait until someone showed up who was competent enough to find a "W" class car. After waiting and watching 12 or more customers getting helped and picking up their cars (and another attendant being much more interested in reading here texts on her cell phone than actually helping customers), we finally interrupted the attendant and asked why we were still waiting. She said that, oh, there was a "W" class car (about 30 feet away) that we could take. I have NO IDEA why she (same attendant who made us wait) did not assign us this car 20 minutes earlier.

If you're considering renting from Budget based on the inexpensive rates that they advertise, thing twice (or three times). The extra costs that they sneak in make their rates higher than their competitors who do their business in a much more honest and...