I have been hiring cars regularly for many years, atleast once a month and many times even more and so have tried most car hire companies out there. The main one that I detest and try to avoid is Budget for the simple reasons that I find them sneaky, blatant liars and incompetent, especially in Ireland.
I find that most of the time you have slight gripes about most rentals e.g. the car not being cleaned properly, the staff at the desk slow etc, but none of these are major issues. But it becomes a major issue when the likes of Budget don't look after their cars properly and send out unsuspecting hirers in their faulty cars, which has happended to me once or twice...again especially in Ireland where I rent from most regulalrly.
The main thing I hate about renting from them is that now they don't just place a hold on your credit for the amout of the excess (which usually comes to 1300 euro for me), they actualy charge it to your credit card so that it appears on your credit card statement as a charge and only gets refunded once the rental ends which could take weeks. My problem a fews times was that the money got charged on my credit card and then before the 1300 was refunded I received my credit card statement for that month with the charge on! When queried with Budget they said that'll it'll get refunded ofcourse but too late for me by then as I had to either pay off my balance on my credit card (which I do every month) or only pay the minimum that month, get charged interest for not paying off the balance, and then get a refund in the next month's statment.
And also as I have a UK credit card and Budget Ireland charge in Euros, you get a great whacking conversion charge from your credit card company first when they take out the money and then when they return it.
Another time they asked if I wanted the excess to be charged in GBP instead and ofcourse I though 'yes! this is much better' but ofcourse then there was no conversion charge from my credit card company but whatever company Budget use to do their currency exchange charge you instead and what's returned wasn't the same as what was charged on the credit card!
So what does Budget do with this excess money before they return it?? It must sit for the few weeks they have it in some high interest account I have no doubt. Other car hire companies only put a block on your credit card for the excess not charge it!
By the way, for information purposes I have used Budget in the UK as well and they are a bit better but they also charge your credit card for the excess which could be hundreds and hundreds of pounds and only gets refunded once the rental ends.
As you can see from his rant I am not happy with Budget and refuse to use them ever again.
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petermountain 30.11.2006 (30.11.2006)
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