Budget Reviews 

Life threatening and Dodgy cars, feared for my life, I pressed the brake and it jerked the car over the lane. contacted customer services to report it, no response and care given.

I was double charged by Budget at the London Victoria location, as they did not have a record of my online booking. This has been ongoing for 4 months (Sept - Dec). Now Budget is refusing to acknowledge the double charge. This is extremely frustrating.

If you can avoid renting a car with Budget please do.

Rented a car at Cork Airport. Scammers.

Very disappointed! Definitely wouldn’t recommend renting a car from them. Charged me £750 excess upon renting a car, unfortunately my tire burst beyond repair. They’ve charged me full amount of excess for the new tire!!! This must be the most expensive tire in the world. Bunch of money grabbers. Very disappointing especially in todays reality.

Booked a car from Budget Inverness airport through easyjet car rental-

Angry Alan at the Budget desk would not accept my license, despite it being 100% valid. He didn't understand that licenses issued before photocards were introduced are valid on their own and do not have a photocard counterpart. I had to get a car from Sixt (with the same license) and I couldn't believe my eyes when Easyjet refused to refund.

I've never heard anything so ridiculous- I turned up on time with a valid clean license and photo ID, they refused to give me the car, kept my money and were plain rude in the process.

I have rented a car using this license many times this year Easyjet/Budget are just plain wrong here.

Easyjet/Budget Inverness- 11/10/20 REFUSED CAR, KEPT MONEY!
Sixt Inverness- 11/10/20 Great service
Europcar Inverness- 21/09/20 All good
Europcar Inverness- 07/09/20 No problem
Europcar Inverness- 12/08/20 Great
Europcar Edinburgh- 15/07/20 No Issues
Focus Inverness- 23/06/20 Brilliant company

I didn’t realise EasyJet had teamed up with Budget - EasyJet don’t advertise this until you click through to the voucher. First impressions at the empty desk at Glasgow airport weren’t good. After 15 minutes wait the staff were on hand. Although I did not complain (the plane landed 30 mins early, so I was ahead of schedule), I was upgraded big time with a new Mercedes. Works for me - thanks!

The worst car rental. They told me that nothing was wrong with the car than three weeks later they take out money from my account based on nothing. I tried to call them but no one picked up.

False damage charges - after renting through a third party was charged an additional £340 with no evidence of damage ( wasn't any) or proof of repair receipt. contacted via phone after no response from emails. still no further information provided.

A SCAM of a company, Avoid completely

Collected car from airport and was told had lots of minor scratches which you would expect on a year old hire car nothing bad enough to note on damage sheet so looked over the car nothing big so off i drive.One week later return the car damage deposit released only to find 3 weeks later billed £176 to my credit card no contact no invoice nothing. Rang and found that the charges were for damage which was false. Would stay away scandalous company shouldn't be allowed to trade.

PLEASE AVOID THIS HORRIBLE COMPANY!!!! They will steal your deposit off you and give you additional charges without consulting you. This is the worst company I have ever used, they are fraudsters and should be put out of business. The police need to be called on this disgusting company

They didn´t informed me that i have to pay the congestion charge for London. Normally this is included when you rent a car in central London. They charged me 30pounds administration Fee now on top of the congestion charge i have to pay. I think that´s their way to make extra money on their car rentals. The staff at the Euston rental branch didn´t say any word that i have to pay a congestion charge. Very fishy.....

One of the worst experiences using Budget Bristol North. I rented a car and paid for full insurance. On the day I should be returning the car, I got a puncture on one tire. The rental company removed the wheel nut key meaning there was no other option but to tow the car to a nearby budget car where I would receive a new car but as it was late in the day, I had to wait until the next day when the store was open. Due to covid-19, I could not get into the AA van towing my car. When I rang the budget bristol store I was told I should order an uber to follow the AA van which cost me £60 and they would refund me the full amount for the uber as well as not charging me an extra day rental on the new car. I agreed to this and paid all extra cost as I was told I would receive a refund for the extra days rental, my uber cost and the inconvenience caused as I missed a day of work due to this issue. Upon arriving at the bristol north budget store to return my car. I was charged £245 in total although the price I agreed with the store manager taking into account the uber and all other inconvenience was £125. I was told by the store manager I would be I would receive a refund with 3-5 working days of £120. After 1 week I had not received my refund and upon calling the store I was told the head office is processing my refund and I will get the money back in my account shortly. After a month of calling the store and hearing the same story, I decided to make a formal complaint. When I made the complaint I was told by the budget team that no refund request was made by the store and there is nothing they can do to help. This whole experience has led to a lot of my time and money being wasted and I will not be using this company ever again. The manager of this store lied to me and I don't think there was ever any intention to give me a refund as I have asked this store every time for a confirmation email upon them sending a refund request and I am yet to receive any emails. The manager of the store is now also ignoring my calls and is refusing to be helpful.

They charged me £452 of extras on a car I already had paid everything for :( actually completely scammed and asked for my credit card details and signature with no guidance to what I was signing total lesson learned not to trust any company or person who asks for any details scum of the earth workers and company taking advantage of people during corona virus :(

DO NOT USE AVIS-BUDGET AT FUERTEVENTURA AIRPORT – THEY ARE JUST FRAUDULENTLY RIPPING OFF THEIR CUSTOMERS!

We’re a family of 4 (Mum, Dad and 2 girls aged 17 and 13) and have recently returned from a 2-week holiday in Corralejo, Fuerteventura.

We booked car hire with AVIS-Budget via ‘rentalcars.com’ in the UK and, because we have booked car hire overseas (with different firms) many times before, and never taken out the additional expensive insurance, we did not expect to be ripped off in the way that we were with AVIS-Budget at Fuerteventura airport. Normally, we just rely upon the basic insurance which is already included in the rental price.

We should have suspected there was something wrong when AVIS-Budget had no customers waiting to collect cars from them at the airport and yet the car hire outlet next door (AutoReisen) had a massive queue! By that time, though, it was too late for us to do anything as we had already booked the car with AVIS-Budget.

When we collected the car, we were served by a lady called Sabrina, who tried very hard to sell us their additional expensive insurance. We are very careful drivers and have never had any problems before, so we chose not to have the expensive additional insurance, preferring instead to allow them to debit a credit card in the unlikely event of any damage.
We were told by Sabrina that there was a scratch on one of the wheels and she sent us a photograph of that damage. This made us wonder, so we check the car externally and there were about 14 other scratches on the car. We took photos of these other scratches and sent them to Sabrina. It is fair to say that the car already had extensive wear & tear damage before we even collected it (and that was just external – we did not think at the time, but we should have checked the interior as well).

When we returned the car at the end of our 2-week holiday, full with fuel and without any new damage, nobody wanted to check the car (although we asked them to do so), so we just handed in the keys and went to board our flight. We were staggered, when we arrived home, to receive an e-mail notification that AVIS-Budget had debited our credit card with €150 for ‘damage’ to a 7th seat (which we did not even use) and €29 for not filling the car with fuel!

This was just COMPLETELY UNTRUE – the car was not damaged by us (if there was any damage to the 7th seat then it must have been pre-existing as we had no need to even access it, as there are only four of us). The car was also completely full of fuel, as we filled up twice during our stay.

We complained via their online process, and will continue complaining, but we just keep getting fobbed off by their ‘Customer Services’ department, so we are now doing all we can to warn other unsuspecting holidaymakers.

It seems that if you take out AVIS-Budget’s additional expensive insurance you will be ok but, if you don’t, they will charge you for ‘damage’ that was already there! Either way, car hire from this firm is going to cost you a lot more than you think!!

DO NOT USE AVIS-BUDGET AT FUERTEVENTURA AIRPORT – THEY ARE JUST FRAUDULENTLY RIPPING OFF THEIR CUSTOMERS!

By far the worst rent car company ever. After two months, they have yet to send me back my money. Unbelievable. Never again. I will reach European Customers Rights in order to take me money back.

I strongly advise against Budget Car Rental

I strongly advise against this rental agency as they are not reliable at all. 3 days before departure they cancel my reservation, telling me that they are not open after 16:00 but when I booked it was written they are open until 22:00 (as they write in the email) at this point I had to book from a other agency paying 3 times more than I would normally pay because many agencies no longer had cars available, so I had to take one from the dear ones. No more Budget.

I've hired cars in the UK and Ireland 20+ with budget. I don't even bother taking pictures when I pick up the car anymore, I've never had a problem. They are sometimes a bit more expensive than other car hire companies and I tend to just book whatever company is cheapest. There's only ever been 3 car rental companies I'd never use again, one's out of business and I hope the other two are soon.

I've only ever seen one person being charged for damage whist I was returning my car. Judging from the mud and mess inside the car I assume the charge was fair.

We haven't even picked the car up and there's problems. Had to cancel due to COVID19. Had to search to find how to. THEN they wouldn't acknowledge either the surname or the booking number. Spoke to someone on the phone and they couldn't even find the booking! Yet I had the printed confirmation email in front of me. So we can't formally cancel a non-existant booking. Can't wait to see if they try to charge us when we don't turn up!

Do not use this company, I should of listened to all the bad reviews. I received an invoice for an amount I hadn’t agreed. On looking at the break down of costs they added charges for fuel, even though I had refuelled at the airport prior to handing the car back. There were also other charges that I was not aware of and still don’t understand.

I have rented cars for decades now using other companies and this is the first time I have come across any issues. I definitely will not be using Budget again!

I don’t usually write reviews, but I feel so aggrieved that I felt I had to. If you don’t take notice of all these bad reviews, please take photo evidence and keep receipts for fuel and the condition of the car as they will take money off you without discretion.

Firstly they held 1000 pounds more than they should have on my card for 14 days and only returned the money after I called to complain.

Secondly once our final receipt came through there are more than 200 pounds worth of unexplained charges on the bill that have been automatically taken from our card.

Zero response to emails or any form of contact for an explanation. Highly untrustworthy. Please do not use them - its not worth the risk of being ripped off.