Budget® Reviews
I ordered a 26-foot truck; they confirmed the order of a 26-foot truck; but when I went to the pick-up, the largest truck available was a 16-foot truck. It caused multiple trips and significantly effected the time and costs of the move. I will NEVER use them again or recommend them to my business and personal associates.
I was given a truck in Houston, TX that the engine light and also the diesel exhaust fuel light came on. Called them at 9:30 and a mechanic was dispatched at 12:50. Took 3 hours for the repair and once we got out of town an hour later the lights came back on. Drove the truck to Jackson, MS and lights were still on when I turned in the truck. Wrote Budget an email and also called this morning ( after Labor Day holiday ) and all they reimbursed me for my time and inconvenience was $50. Definitely will never rent from them again since they aren’t dedicated to providing secured and safe vehicles.
After having a reservation for over a month, they called me the night before pickup and told me there was no truck. Their customer service center said they would expedite finding me a truck, but I never heard back from anyone. We ended up finding a truck through Penske last minute, but no thanks to Budget or their customer service team.
It was late August and I was moving from Maryland to SW Florida. The temperatures were in the mid 90's and the Budget Truck's air conditioning didn't work.....not even the fan. I complained to their customer service once my move was complete and, in essence, said I should have done their job and had the air repaired while on the road. The air conditioning should have been working when the truck was picked up and not making it the responsibility of the person renting the truck to have it repaired on the road. STAY AWAY FROM BUDGET TRUCK RENTALS.
We booked with Budget only to find out the night before our move date that our reservation was somehow canceled. Scrambling as our move was during a busy weekend, we called customer service and they couldn't explain why the reservation was cancelled and referred us back to the local truck company we had a reservation with to see if they cancelled. They couldn't tell us why either. We called customer service again and they booked us a new truck with a company about 2 hours away from us. We immediately called the new location only to find out that they didn't have any trucks to be rented and couldn't understand why customer service rented us one from their place. Very very frustrated at this point, we proceeded with another rental company (Uhaul) and confirmed a truck that was actually there and booked successfully. We will NEVER EVER use Budget again. Their system doesn't seem to sync with the actual truck vendors and they don't take accountability. Thank god we didn't get charged as that was the only silver lining. We got lucky that Uhaul had a truck for us otherwise it would have ruined our entire moving schedule.
They called the night before I was moving to Indiana from Florida to leave a message on my phone that they had no tow dollys available for my car. Then I called corporate and the lady said they would get back to me tyhe same day on a dolly at another location. They never got back with me. I am now moved to Indiana, and my car is still in FL at the airport's long term parking. I will never use them again and I will never recommend them to anyone.
Very disappointed with Budget. We made a reservation for their biggest truck and a trailer to tow behind, with a pickup time of 9am. At 8:03 we received a call that the location was out of trailers and the closest one was two hours away. We already had our moving crew scheduled to arrive that morning based on our 9am pickup time, so this had a huge effect on our day. By 9:45 we finally got a call back and were able to drive 45 minutes to pick up our truck and trailer. The man at the location we were sent to was incredibly kind and already had the truck and trailer hooked up for us. Although he was wonderful, overall, our moving day was pretty frustrating since we had to push everything back 2 hours.
This was the 2nd weekend we rented a truck to move our household goods. We learned from the weekend before to reserve the truck the night before we needed it to be assured we would actually be able to get the 26' truck we reserved. The penalty Budget charges for late returns is very minimal so some customers do not return on time which leaves the next renter in a bind. We had to pay for 2 days but after the hassle of the last weekend it was worth it. The truck was fine, no issues.
The truck we reserved was not available at the Rockville, MD location. The manager called 1 day prior to tell us it would be available at another location which was the same distance away. We arrived at 8am to pick up the 26' truck & the clerk didn't have our reservation. He was not willing to help us. We called the manager of the Rockville store and spoke with a regional who stated the truck would not be returned until 11am. So we waited until 11 and no truck. We drove back to Rockville location & spoke with manager who apologized, stated the only trucks left were 2, 12 foot ones. We took those as now it was after noon & we were so far behind. She did give us some free things to help with our move, but it was inconvenient & we had to make more than 1 trip as the truck size was smaller. Lesson learned, reserve and pick up truck 1 day before you need it which we did the following weekend.
Budget truck was fine - nothing too fancy but it got the job done. The guy in charge where we picked up the truck was incredibly helpful - told us to call even after hours because he would be around and even offered to help us put the car on the towing dolly. We were pretty nervous to use a towing trailer for our car (attached to a 16' truck!) because we had never done anything like that before, but after getting used to it it was pretty straight forward. The only thing was we had to go to gas stations, restaurants, etc. where we could pull through into two spots because you can't reverse with a trailer. After unloading the truck at our destination, we discovered that leaving the flashers on for 2 hours had killed the battery. We called the 800 number for a jump and they arrived in less than an hour. We moved in a day earlier than expected, so I called Budget to see if there was somewhere I could drop off the truck after hours. The person on the phone was very helpful and told me I could drop it off at a different after hours location not too far from the other location as long as I called both to let them know. Pretty simple and I was glad they let me change--otherwise we would have had a tough time finding overnight parking in downtown St Louis!
