Budget Car Rental

"Please DO NOT rent from Budget. I originally requested a Toyota Corolla. They ended up giving me a ford mustang but DID NOT tell me it was as an EV. I got in the car and realized but it was midnight and I was willing to just make it easy and take it. Little did I know (not being from the area) that there are basically no EV chargers to be found. I ended up calling the next day to try and get ahold of somebody to see if I could exchange the car and they kept telling me, "it's my responsibility to charge it". How am I supposed to charge it when there are no chargers in the area??? I even took it to a Chevy dealership which had one and when I plugged it in at 7pm it said would not be charged until 6am the next morning. I am on vacation so this is clearly not an option. I waited until the next morning to go to the nearest budget and try to swap it out for a gas car (Budget location in Cape Coral, FL) and they basically laughed and said we'll give you another EV car but you can't trade that for a gas. I then asked do you even have a charger here for it? They replied NO. Budget is basically renting out EV cars and they don't even have a place to charge them!!! I finally just dropped the keys and car there so it wouldn't die on the side of the road and had to UBER the rest of my vacation and pay for all the UBERS. I asked budget to make it right and they ended up charging me $300.00!!!!! YES $300.00 because I couldn't drop it at the location I picked it up from otherwise it would die on the side of the road. I did everything I could. Went to a car dealership on vacation!!! Budget still insisted they would charge me the $300. DO NOT EVER RENT FROM BUDGET CAR RENTALS. My vacation was absolutely ruined and luckily there was Uber otherwise I would have been completely stranded."

"This review is for the Cape Coral location. This is one of less than 5 reviews i have left in my entire life..I already had a truck scheduled to pick up in Fort Myers, without even notifying me, it wound up they had no trucks and switched my rental to Cape Coral. Of course, when I got to Cape Coral, they had no idea that i was coming and had not received the switch. The gentleman behind the counter, I believe it was Fabian?, man, he went totally above and beyond to get me hooked up, even though they were inundated with insane customers at that time. He helped me with insurance and really took great care of me...Just wanted to make sure he was recognized!!! Thanks Bob"

"I was able to request to rent a vehicle when Cape Coral had 2 vehicles. One which had no stereo and the other that was an EV and had 30% charge. I spent my first day of vacation looking for a charging station, couldn’t find one. Hooked it up to the house we were renting, it said 88 hours to charge. I wasn't able to spend 3 days waiting for this car to charge and be stuck on vacation. Spend day 2 looking for a charging station to find one but it would of taken hours to even be able to charge it because there was a huge line of people waiting. I called Cape Coral the third day to see if they had any vehicles yet so I could exchange mine. I had to call that store 7 times for someone to answer the phone. The gentleman at Cape Coral was trying to do his best to help us, but the lady there ignored me and was hopped up on drugs. I ended up calling customer service to find a place to take the EV back to since Cape Coral had no vehicles, was given the run around from customer service. I had less than 30% battery and was told to take it to Cape Coral where they had no vehicles. I wasted more of my time, calling fort Myers budget, where no one answered. Ended up driving to fort Myers, hoping I wouldn’t be stranded. Wasted another hour there to get a new vehicle. The gentleman there was great. But I was not told the upgrade fee would come out of my 250$. Why were vehicles being given out without a full gas tank, and without it being fully charged? I wouldn’t of had an issue if the EV was fully charged, and I wasn’t given the run around multiple times! This was highly inconvenient, and the lady at Cape Coral was very unprofessional. This is the worst experience I’ve ever had with any rental company. It’s been over a week and I have yet to see any money back in my account from my 250$ hold. Samuel from customer service emailed me yesterday but has yet to respond, wouldn’t be surprised if they ignored me all together."

"Rented a vehicle for 7 days, had a vehicle performance issue and called within 1 hour to try to resolve with no luck, call back the following morning still no resolution. Asked for a supervisor, was told it would take 24-48 hrs for a call back. It has now been 10+ days w/o call back. Reason for 2 stars vs just one star: Pick up and return of the vehicle was a seem less process and customer service at the 800# as well calls to two direct location tried to help but had limited authority. This was my first rental with Budget and I’ll choose another rental in the future even if I have to pay a little more. Update : I have adjusted my rating according to the response that I received from budget customer service. They immediately replied to my Google review and asked that I send detailed information regarding the issue. So after spending an hour and a half on the phone while on vacation to try to get this resolved and another 30 minutes Fulfilling their request their answer was as follows: Any difficulties or problems encountered by a customer are a concern to us, and we apologize most sincerely for any inconvenience you may have been caused. We can certainly understand your frustration. Please be assured that your experience was not typical of Budget usual high standards, and that a report to the responsible manager has been submitted to prevent any recurrence. Although we realize that we cannot make up for a disappointing experience such as this, we do appreciate your contacting us. Only by being made aware of a problem can we correct it and offer the high quality of service that our customers expect and deserve. Short version of their answer is they did absolutely nothing, but take up additional time on my end by requesting additional information. I would rate the pick up drop off portion of our experience at five stars but but follow through and Customer Service issues during or after your trip is definitely less than one star."