Budget Rent A Car

Don’t waste your time here. I can not even begin to express how angry this place made me. I rented a moving truck from here online 3 weeks before my move date. I called the week I was supposed to pick it up to confirm they had the reservation and the truck. Whomever I spoke to said, yes we have your reservation and the truck is here. I show up Saturday am to get it… NO TRUCK ON SITE. To make matters worse, the guy working at the desk picks up the phone (seemingly to help me find a truck at another location nearby) and I hear him say «no we don’t have any SUVs»… which is MOST DEFINITELY not helping to find me a truck that they were supposed to have in the first place. Thankfully we had a back up plan for moving, otherwise I would have been completely screwed. I told them to cancel the reservation, but I had to call the main company line to do so… so I did. At least corporate did not try to charge me for cancelling the reservation.
Save yourself the trouble, don’t bother with this location. You would think the manager would call me to smooth things over after the fact… nope. I guess customer service and customer retention doesn’t matter here.

This place should not be in business! They are dishonest, uncourteous and unprofessional.
Price in agreement is NOT what you will pay at the end, the scams are many! In our case it was 25% more!
After we saw the gas tank was NOT full (⁷⁄₈), they refused to redo the agreement and said it was not a problem, sure enough they charged us for returning the car with the same gas we rented it. (and $ 28 for ¹⁄₈ of a tank)
They do NOT have a drop off for the car and keys, unlike most other car rental places, and they will NOT notify you of this.
It goes on and on… stay away from this place!

Worst rental car experience EVER.
Here’s the story. In June I rented a car at 8:30 Friday morning to return at 8:30 Sunday morning. But see, they don’t open until 9 on Sunday mornings, so, yes, they actually made me sit there and wait 30 minutes on Friday to give me the two day rate.
Oh no, I didn’t HAVE to wait — that was my choice. Otherwise I would pay a three day rental for a half-​hour. Perhaps that sounds reasonable, if in fact, I hadn’t a reservation in my hand that said 8:30 Friday to 8:30 Sunday…
On Sunday I returned the car at 9 am when they opened. I was not the first in line, there was only one person behind the counter, and I waited. And waited. Guess what? My car was considered «late» by the time they processed the paperwork.
Luckily, Budget Corporate agreed to refund me the extra day charge because I guess they know that this is the worst Budget Rent A Car franchise in the world. It’s also dirty and unprofessional, but that’s just icing on the cake.

I cannot stress how BAD the customer service is at this location, this office is very unprofessional and disorganized. If Unilocal had a negative 5 stars option I would select that for this review.
It took 25 min. for them to give me a moving rental truck.
There were three employees at the desk but it took two to check out a car to someone ahead of me and then the other one keep answering phones instead of processing my reservation. Once I was finally given my bill I had to ask them to explain the charges. Then I asked when we had to return the truck to be considered for a one day rental and they said before closing (DO NOT TRUST WHAT THESE EMPLOYEES SAY!).
I returned the truck at 12:00pm, it took them 20 min. to process my return. Then I was given my receipt again without explanation of the charges. I asked why I was being charged for my two day reservation if I returned the truck as they said before closing that day. They then said I needed to have the truck back before 11:00 am to be considered for a one day rental, not closing. They made a mistake and then I had to pay the price for their misleading information.
I advise DO NOT to do business with this Budget/​Avis location!

Is there an option for zero stars!!! As this place has no after hours drop off and they failed to inform us of this, we were stuck with their car over night and had to stay in a nearby hotel just so that we could drop off the car on the following day when they opened again. We called them and tried to find another drop off but there were none opened within at least 50 miles of the rental location. They offered us no help despite us also being in the middle of a snow blizzard!!! The gas tank wasn’t full when received and despite assuring us that it was not a problem they nevertheless also charged us for it!!! This place should not be in business, they are dishonest, uncourteous and unprofessional!!!

I assumed a place operating under the Budget name would have to meet certain standards of cleanliness and service. Apparently not.
We had just moved to New Haven, and needed to rent a car to make trips to IKEA etc. The prices here are expensive, but we didn’t know any better — and trusted the Budget name, despite the rough appearance of this place.
So we rented a car. It was pretty grubby, but the guy working in the yard was pretty helpful and seemed nice, helping direct us out of the lot.
The maps on the GPS unit provided were a couple of years out of date, but we didn’t complain about that. Despite paying a lot for the unit.
The real issue arose when we returned the car. We were about 5 minutes later than the scheduled time — our fault, of course. However, because of this, «the system» meant we would have to pay for another full day, plus insurance! Over $ 100! Apparently «the system» is so powerful that it can’t be overridden. Since we were going to be paying for another full day, we just took the car for another day. But it is the last time we will use this place.
Other things that would give the impression of a more professional organization: staff dressing appropriately, and replacing the noisy 1980s-​style dot matrix printers with something quieter.

Stay away from this facility at all costs.
I urgently needed a car due to a flight cancellation at HVN and thus needed to get to another regional airport. I really needed the car for a total of 1 hour. My charge was $ 86 including fees/​taxes!!! Ridiculous. Moreover, the staff are incredibly rude and unprofessional — it took him 20 minutes to sign the car out. And when I got the car, it was double parked which cost me more time to get them to move it out since the guy had a hard time figuring how to get the other car out of park.
And for the coup d’etat, it only had 1 working wiper blade… and it was pouring out.
I’d rather get punched in the face and have my wallet stolen than lose my soul at this place.

These guys are awful. Online multiple days before hand, I reserved a 10′ truck to move from CT to PA across states. I asked for furniture pads and a hand truck. Not only did it take the employee ONE HOUR to enter my information into the slow ass computer system, but he needed to re-​entering several times finally got it to work. Next, the guy showed me where the truck was, and the furniture pads and said they didn’t have the hand truck. And when I said, uh where is it, they acted defensive and told me I should buy one from home depot. I told him I wish I knew that before coming here where your website said there’d be one. Completely un professional and terrible service.

I wish Unilocal had a negative rating section as this place get
First off I went down to the location 2 days before to confirm our rental as we did everything online. I gave the customer service rep my confirmation number. He said we were all set for a mid-​size SUV which would be the Ford Edge. Me — Excellent, do you know which one as I see 2 outside. He said probably the white one. Me — Ok cool. See you at 7am Friday.
We arrive Friday at 7am process the paperwork, sign the paperwork and he hands me over the keys to a Chevy?! Me — umm you said I was getting a Ford Edge. Ass-​whole rep, We gave it to someone else because they paid more than you. ME — Pissed off and not in the mood — really you gave my rental to someone else because I got a discount and you made more money off someone else. Mr Ass-​whole — Yes sorry.
WTF
OK so I go outside and its a new Chevy Captiva. It was nice but not as big/​wide as we were traveling to SC (15yrs) with 2 kids in the back and wanted them to have more room.
So you would think thats the bad part right??? NOPE. We rented the SUV for 10 days. We decided we would be home early from vacation and called to ask if we can drop off the SUV back on Sunday instead of Monday. They said yes thats fine — our hours on Sunday are 9am 1pm. OK great.
My next question was since I am returning it a day early I will be getting a full credit? Correct? The answer was NO — Ready for this one folks… Because I rented the car/​picked it up at 7am I would have to return it at 7am on Sunday to get a credit. They do not open until 9am on Sunday. So I get ZERO back. Bend over Mr J and take my shoe right in the a$$. (thats how I felt)
I rented cars from other companies and from other budget rental agents and never ever was treated like this.
DO NOT RENT A CAR /​TRUCk /​SUV — Don’t ever look in the direction of that place.
— JM

*** This is for the Tweed Airport location that is unavailable as an option on Unilocal.***
No ½ star option? Darn. Awful service in an industry known for bad service, surly attitudes and people who seem to hate their jobs. They’ve outdone themselves in the most negative way.
I had made reservations with a debit card several weeks in advance and they accepted it online. When we got there on the prescribed evening they said they don’t take ATM at that location «for over 10 years». When I protested her attitude was «Tough £€$@ why are you telling me this? It’s not my problem — buzz off!». She was rude and said to call 800-​customer service.
Luckily Hertz was next door and gladly took my debit card. They shook their head at Budget and made a comment that if Budget is bored then theyd just as soon send registered clients on their way… and will relish telling pepole. So sorry… too tough! Doesnt matter youre with your 17 year old daughter looking at schools and you’re just pulling inoto town at 8:00 pm on a cold night. Oh, and by the way, stop bugging me when you can get a cab. THe only thing she didn’t tell me is to F?@@$&&– OFF!
BUT SHE DIDNT… AWFUL, AFWFUL, BUSINESS…
3
Where’s that ½ star button again???
PS — this location was also an Avis co-​brand. So, Avis, you may bite just as well too!
P. S. — Budget… Cheers to you!

No after hours drop off and if you change your reservation the price can increase dramatically– depending on who helps you which is just the luck of the draw. Very odd because we were dropping off the rental 2 days early. Fortunately we ended up dealing with someone really nice and they didn’t make us pay extra. Otherwise a very positive experience just wish there was more consistency with pricing and options to drop off at more locations without extra fees.