Budget España Reviews 299

Absolutely terrible company, I wish I read the reviews before booking as would have definitely booked elsewhere, we travel to Gran Canaria annually and have never had to wait in any queue for as long as we did here, it was worse than queuing at a theme park for rides, we joined the queue and it didn’t move for 30 minutes, finally got the the check-in desk after 1 hour 25 minutes. Many people cancelled and decided to get a taxi. Will never use Budget car rental again so please avoid.

You better not rent a car from Avis/Budget at La Gomera. Our car has tires at or below the legal limit of 1.6 mm profile. Also the TPMS warning system was not working. When we flattened a tire, they tried to make us pay for two new front tires. Luckily we had photo and video evidence that the tires were unsafe and at the end-of-life. This was clearly an attempted fraud.

I am absolutely outraged that Avis/Budget charged 358€ to my account without a single notification, invoice, or explanation. It is predatory and unacceptable for a company to take that much money from a customer and provide zero documentation as to why. I now have to waste my time chasing them for answers regarding this unauthorized charge. Avoid this company at all costs—they cannot be trusted with your credit card information.

I had a fabulous experience with Budget. Having been stung by another rental company for damage i did not do i thought i would pay the little extra and go somewhere good. I wasn't disappointed. There were so many aspects of experience that I enjoyed. for example, I really liked how the rental company was situated was in the airport. The collection process was excellent Victoria Maria was accommodating kind and professional. There was no hard sell on insurance. The car itself was fantastic. It was a great colour blue had very little with damage, it was clean, full of petrol and it drove well, and there were no problems. The drop off also was excellent, as well and very quick. All in all, I could not be more impressed with budget rent a car.

Yvonne was amazing, streamlined our process as saw our young children were tired and grumpy from their flight. All efficient and easy and our car was spotless. Thank you!

Booked through BA, having got flights through them with a headline figure of £286.50 for 4 days. Ended up paying E615.19. High pressure sales of maximum cover on collection (sir, you might get hit by a meteorite). CDW, ok that makes sense. Another E31 for windscreen, E26 for roadside assistance, E36 for travel partner (WTF is that?) plus E71 "surcharge amount" which I believe is an airport pick up surcharge which I don't remember seeing at the time of booking and can't see I was advised of up front. All plus 21% VAT. Hands up for not having gone through and challenged everything when collecting the vehicle but when you have paid upfront and are in a bit of a hurry, you miss these things, and they know that. Lesson learned and Budget a couple of hundred Euro better off at my expense.

Typical general behaviour in this industry, but I shall be unlikely to use Budget again, anywhere, and have advised BA (who I doubt are terribly interested). I sent an email to Budget after having gone through the estimated final bill and received no response (Budget, if you are reading this my booking no. was: 31021008GB4)
The hire car, however, was fine. Chalk this one up to experience.

terrible service!! Stay away from this company as far as you can! They charged us extra (140EUR) for the services we were informed were covered by the insurance we had.

Beware if you are over 75 and you have booked in UK or Northern Ireland. Upon arrival i was asked to produce a certificate from my doctor to say that I was fit and healthy to drive the car. Also to produce a certificate from my insurance company to show that I hadn't any accidents. We live in Spain and all of these documents would have cost money plus translation costs which would make the cost of hiring more expensive. I did check through the Budget Car Hire. Com site before booking was made but there was NO indications of age restriction for over 75... Then they said they wanted another £250 for their insurance, even though I had my own, plus another £100 for fuel. We refused to pay the extra costs and demanded our money back but we were given an email address to write to but we are still waiting for a reply. We finally found a car with Indigo.com (Matt, Conor, Sam & Cherie) who were wonderful and got us a car the next day. Avoid Budget Car Hire as they discriminate against pensioners and it's deceptive to take the money and not return it, even when you put in all your details including age, surely it could be flagged up to look for age restriction rules and make it easier to find. Upon speaking to others at our hotel, this has happened many times to other guests. This needs to stop. We shall be taking legal action if our money is not returned and referring it to the Umbudsman to look into discriminating against pensioners...

I would never recommend this company to anyone,
I reserved a suv car online and bought comprehensive insurance aswell, when i got there they said we have another car that was not suv, it was a small car, also they said you have to buy insurance with us and they charged me again €250 for the insurance, that’s ridiculous, i have a trouble to bring the car back , could find my way back to the drop point , it took me about 2 hours in the airport to find the way, i had to get off the car and walked to them and ask for help, although I didn’t get help from them and i had to ask random people to help me, they made my holiday end up very bad and exhausting 👎🏻👎🏻

I rented a vehicle from Budget through booking.com like I’ve done on many trips abroad. I paid for the hire of the car with booking.com and left a deposit with budget when I arrived at Malaga airport.

A week later when I returned the vehicle I handed back the keys. All was okay.

Two days later when I returned to Ireland, I noticed a debit of €398 from my account. I immediately got in touch with the budget who offered little help and didn’t even provide as much as a receipt or an invoice to me.

I then began to read reviews on the company in Malaga and immediately regretted not carrying out my own due diligence. It’s clear to see that this is common for them to charge for various miscellaneous charges and a tax at 21% on all charges.

After a few days I finally got in touch with someone who told me it will take up to 30 business days for an investigation to be carried out by them. Funny that this takes so long to carry out considering they apply these charges after 48 hours with little investigation carried out.

I’ve spoken to my bank who can apply a charge back once they are satisfied that the money has been taken from me unlawfully. If anyone else has the same problem I suggest that you go through this process.

I’ve instructed budget that I will be going this route and that they can take me to the European small claims court if they believe they have a case. I’ve spoken to the Irish consumer watchdog who have a liaison with the Spanish equivalent and they’ve taken an interest in this case after I presented them with so many more similar.

I couldn’t recommend budget car hire to anyone. Poor service and possibly committing fraud along the way with these charges.

We were charged 140€ for pre existing bump next to the licence plate with additional fees + 40€ + 70€ to it. We took pictures before using the car showing pre existing bump but they still want to charge us.
This is clearly a scam and I am pretty sure they use this over and over again. Do not use their service!

Arrived using quick pass and given keys to our vehicle. Shocked to find every panel scratched or dented, not sure if fit for the road. They said they would swap but this took an additional hour to complete, not a great experience.

I lost over €600 with this company. They wouldn't give me the car I had paid for and was waiting there for me because I arrived late to pick it up due to a flight delay of 2 hours. My booked pickup time was 11:00 p.m, the rental company office closed at 11:45 p.m. I called the emergency contact numbers and there was no answer so I emailed them as soon as I found out that my flight had been delayed to inform them of my late arrival to pick up the car. I arrived at midnight and it was closed so I went there in the morning, they opened 7:30am and I was there at 8: 00am.

Check the terms and conditions very carefully and don't make the same costly mistake as I did! If you are late to pick up your vehicle, you will be charged in FULL and not be given the car even if it is available. Also, they claim to give a 2-hour grace period between the booked pickup time and the actual time the vehicle is picked up. However, if the booked pickup time is within 2 hours of the rental company closing time, then the grace period doesn't apply!

I found them to be extremely unfair in their business practises and dealings. It's all about screwing the customer over. They show no empathy or fairness towards their customers. Be careful and think about the risk you are taking by dealing with this type of company. Better to avoid them if you can.

I had booked an 8 seater van for my family with kids and the experience completely ruined our holiday :(

Perfect experience. Arrived early morning and was the first customer there, booked no. 001 and entered. It took me 2 minutes to be in the brand new clean car. An Italina lady called Bianca was super friendly and helpful at the counter. After two weeks, gave the car and another extremely professional lady inspected it and signed that all were perfect and was on my way in a couple of minutes. I have travelled a lot and rented tons of cars, but this was the best experience ever.

I initially booked a 3-day rental with Budget for €116, but was shocked to find an additional €133 charge just because I returned the car 42 minutes late. When I went to the front desk for help, the staff couldn’t assist and simply directed me to contact email support. Unfortunately, email support turned out to be completely useless — I never received any response. There seems to be no way to resolve issues in person, which is incredibly frustrating.

Hired a car through Rentalcars dot com with full insurance picked up at Malaga Airport. We arrived in the evening from the UK and was dealt with by Diego. Really helpful with no push to buy other products. We paid the deposit knowing the excesses and left the airport in a lovely Ibiza. My advice would always be to take photos of the car noting any dents, scratches to paintwork and wheels. You always see negative reviews, well here’s a positive one 🤟

They charged me for something after coming back home.
No explanation what am I being charged for and no answer from Budget customer care.

The service provided was extremely slow. Although there were only two people ahead of us in the queue, it took over an hour to get the car. Also, I was expecting a 9 seater vehicle, but received a 7 seater. This caused a great deal of inconvenience. The delay in receiving the vehicle led to my group missing travel connections and arriving at our destination 6 hours later than expected. My group and I are of the firm opinion that Budget car hire provide an inefficient, disorganised service and are of the view not to use the service again and to dissuade other people from using the service.

The pricing structure lacks transparency, leading to unexpected costs. I was very disappointed to hear the excess was 4000 euros and the cost of bringing down that excess was 70 euros a day. I find that pricing excessive a disappointing and has caused our group disappointment

The budget staff member we were dealing with was continually distracted by phone calls (which he took) and by other customers, equally frustrated as we were. This delayed and prolonged the time it took for our car hire to be arranged.

Rented from Budget at Madrid Airport T4.
4 days rental with unlimited mileage.
We had checked in online using Budget quick pass. When arriving at airport just follow signs for Avis/Budget, then don't go to the kiosk and queue, but down the walk way opposite kiosk in to car park where you will find a bigger office.
We queued for only a couple of minutes and was served by very friendly young bloke who spoke perfect English. He took a few minutes to check my documents and told me the category of car I had booked was unavailable so they had given me a better category for the same price. He gave me the keys and told me which bay the car was parked in. He showed me on the documents some damage that was marked on the car and advised just to take a quick video around the car if there was any damage not showing on paperwork. I did find a couple of small dents and scratches not marked, so beware.
On return just follow signs for car rental and leave the car in any of the Avis/Budget parking bays, which are clearly marked. take the keys back to the office where another friendly gentleman came and had a quick check around the car making sure we had refuelled it. I did point out the couple of marks that wasn't on original paperwork and said i had video, he said not to worry and was happy with condition and said deposit would be returned to my card.
There was a very high excess in case of damage 2800 euros, I was offered insurance to cover this, but had already taken out a policy with reduce my excess which was much cheaper.

Despite the many bad reviews we had a very good experience with Budget in Barcelona Airport.

When we arrive we are 1,5 hours late and worried about late fees, or them even being open as its just past midnight. Luckily they still were open and had no questions as to our lateness caused by the airport.

The hand-off of the car is quick, and efficient. We get a slightly larger car than was booked, as they didn't have the exact car. No try at upping the price which was lovely. The man at the counter speaks excellent English and lets us know what we've booked for and the price that possibly can be paid and does not try to force us to put on any extra insurance.

At hand-in we arrive and a new man is in charge of taking the car. Asks few and simple questions like if the gas is full, if everything was fine.

He asks about a scratch on the mirror that he can't see on the report and we unfortunately forgot to take videos until we arrived at our destination, but we are truthful saying we did not have anything to do with the scratch, and he accepts with no problem, just advising us another time to remember to take videos before leaving the airport, which was our mistake obviously.

Overall a great and professional service by Budget that did not take more than a max of 15 minutes of our time overall.