Budget Car Rental

Terrible Experience with Budget Car Rental – Avoid at All Costs! I had an extremely frustrating and disappointing experience with Budget Car Rental, and I strongly advise others to book elsewhere if you want a smooth, stress-free trip. I initially booked a specific car, but when I arrived, I was told it wasn’t available. Instead of offering a proper solution, they told me I could either wait three hours or pay extra for an upgrade. Reluctantly, I paid for the upgrade to avoid wasting more time. Unfortunately, the upgraded car only lasted a few days before it completely broke down and wouldn’t start. I tried to contact customer support, which turned into a nightmare. Although they claim to have an English-speaking line, that simply isn’t true. Every time I tried speaking English, the call was either dropped or I was ignored. After over two hours, I had to find someone who spoke Italian to help me get through. Eventually, a tow truck arrived, but the experience only got worse. The tow truck driver was extremely rude and unprofessional. He refused to communicate with me even after I tried translating through my phone and didn’t provide any paperwork or information about what was happening. To make things worse, Budget doesn’t deliver a replacement vehicle. I had to find my way to the nearest Budget location myself — wasting even more time and leaving me without a car for the entire weekend. When I finally received the replacement, it was a downgrade: manual, lower spec, and filthy inside. I’ve now been trying for over a month and a half to get a partial refund for the upgrade and the inconvenience, but I’ve had absolutely no luck. Their customer service is virtually non-existent. Do yourself a favor and book with a different rental company. This experience was a nightmare from start to finish, and it seriously affected my travel plans.

We got an Alfa Romeo which was a substitute to what we booked online. The person who gave us the car was polite and helpful. We booked through booking and there was a £200 difference in the excess on the insurance we got on booking compared to what they request but considering the extra charges it was cheaper for us to take the risk and have to pay £200 instead of £500+. The car we got had multiple scratches which we did not mind. However, it was also quite dirty inside with chocolate marks on the passenger door, mud on the rugs and other similar things. We looked beyond that, cleaned what we could/needed, as we were driving it to the Dolomites to hike ourselves. Be careful though! We were under the impression we had paid everything including the tax when we first made the payment with the extra snow covers. Beyond the tax though, the tries charging an extra £120+ for things they couldn’t give us a breakdown for. The lady who did the return was quite rude and even after multiple requests to see the breakdown, she refused to let us talk and show us the breakdown. She wanted to see our contract and absolutely wouldn’t show us what she had on her tablet other than the amount owed. After a while she went away and came back with all the extra charges suddenly gone with the excuse her computer was playing up and her boss had fixed it and now we only owed a third of the original price she was quoting, which was only taxes. Had we not contested the charges she would have scammed us out of a significant amount of money.

If I could give less than 1 star I would. We picked up our suv at the venice airport after waiting in line for about 30+ minutes despite having a reservation. From there we picked up our blue Peugeot which clearly had a huge dent on the right hand side and had been in a pretty big accident. The rep assured my husband it was just cosmetic and nothing was wrong with the car itself. We then got handed a car seat with no instruction on how to install it for our 1 yr old son. When we asked for help it was put in completely wrong, loose and our baby would fall off the suv seat at any sudden stop. Thankfully we took our time to research and figured out the carseat. Within an hour and a half of driving our check tire indicator came on. We were surprised as we were driving on only straight highway roads and soon after boom! Right tire completely exploded while driving on the busy ss38 highway. We pulled over, assessed the tire in the same area as the previous damage was ripped apart. Not drivable whatsoever we called roadside assistance who called a tow truck. The tow truck took the vehicle without giving us any paperwork and I had to call our hotel to drive me my husband and my 1 yr old son and all of our luggage to our hotel. If not for our hotel they would've left us stranded as they said its up to you to find yourselves a taxi (where does one get one on the side of a highway?). From there our dealings with budget, avis and the roadside assistance has been an epic disaster. 15+ calls back and forth and nobody is able yo confirm A) has the car been repaired B) can we pick up that same car C) can u find an automatic vehicle anywhere??. Their best option was ...pickup a car in Verona more than 2 hours away by train from where we are staying and nowhere close to where we need to go. They have not reached out to us after numerous inquiries into what's happening with the car, no possibility of finding any replacement by the time we need to leave, no help whatsoever. To top it off, they gave us the wrong number of the budget location in venice and our hotel concierge was unable to contact them either. Many futile attempts to resolve this issue left our last day at our hotel completely stressed, unable to enjoy our stay at a spa resort, while avis and budget told my husband to fend for himself and run around like an idiot travelling an hour away just to be told sorry there's no cars available. Truly truly unbelievably inept service. I doubt we will even get any money back. Frustrated beyond belief and only thankful none of us especially my young son were injured in the incident.

I cannot express how awful of an experience this was. I wish I could put zero stars as one seems far too generous. Long story short, we were provided a dirty car at baseline and after driving on the regular highway for a few hours a wrench repair symbol appeared with an engine repair warning sign on the dashboard. We called the budget office and they told us it just needed an oil change and to continue driving it. After driving for another hour or two the next day, the car couldn’t exceed 50 mph and sounded like the engine was going to fall out. We got stranded at a gas station in the middle of nowhere with roadside assistance taking our only mode of transportation away from us and providing no replacement vehicle. We spent the next 3 days calling nonstop to get a new vehicle and they kept telling us to try other locations (nothing was available). We ended up having to book a car with Alamo on short notice and then had to spend almost 2 days riding trains and taking taxis so we could get back to the airport. We ended up spending an extra $1000 and only drove our week long reservation for 1.5 days total. Of course, we’re still trying to get our money back and the hold on our credit card still hasn’t been lifted. This is illegal??

Be careful with people working at the Budget office (Venice Airport). They are very nice but they make me sign an additional insurance to the one I already had signed with Rentalcars. At least in my case, they just informed me about what included but they didn't ask me about it and just put it in the contract before signing it. Result... +100% of the expected cost to rent a car for 4 days. Besides that they didn't deliver the car to us with a full tank of gas (see attached picture) and then they wanted me to pay for the difference. Surreal... In my country this is called being a scammer. Hope you've all achieved your sales target in 2023 even if it's by stealing from families. Enjoy! Happy Christmas!

O experiență excelentă și plăcută! Întregul proces a fost rapid și simplu. Am închiriat un Fiat 500 aflat într-o stare impecabilă. Personalul de la ghișeu a fost amabil și clar în explicații. Returnarea mașinii s-a desfășurat fără probleme.

I recently rented from Budget at Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE) and, unfortunately, the experience was horrible. Our car broke down and we received NO support, which put us in a dangerous situation. Unable to contact the office at a crucial time – I tried calling but received no response, and had no way to communicate with staff. Roadside assistance came to tow the car, did not offer taxi or new car. This left us stranded and scrambling for alternatives in remote Italy. Forced to spend nearly $1,000 extra just to get to a safe place and stay on track with our vacation. Because Budget wasn’t reachable, we had to rent from a different provider at significantly higher cost—a situation that was completely avoidable with accessible customer service. It’s frustrating to be financially penalized by a company when what you needed most—simple communication—was the missing piece.They still have a credit card hold on our account for the rental AND have ignored all emails regarding the car. I sincerely hope Budget uses this feedback to improve their responsiveness, especially in urgent situations. A rental experience shouldn’t derail your trip or your budget.