Completely Lost Me As a Customer

Posted Tue June 19, 2012 12:29 pm, by Misty S. written to Budget Car Rental

Write a Letter to this Company

I made a reservation to pick up a Budget Truck Rental on May 22, 2012 to be picked up at a specific Budget center close to my home. We had a move scheduled on Saturday June 16th, 2012 and had to be out of our old residence no later than June 17th, so literally one day to do everything. I made this reservation THREE whole weeks before my reservation to ensure they had plenty of notice to get my truck ready or to at least give me plenty of notice to find other solutions. I received a confirmation email of my reservation with a message clearly at the top that says "Your truck is reserved!". I don't know about you, but when I get an official message from a company telling me something is done, I expect it to be done. I received NO CALL informing me prior to Saturday that my truck would not be there. Budget had THREE WHOLE WEEKS to either get the truck in my city or at least give me the common decency of a phone call to let me know they can't fulfill my needs but I received neither. I showed up at my scheduled time of 10AM on that Saturday morning to pick up my truck and was told they didn't have my truck available. She said she called me at 9:40 to let me know. WOW a whole 20 minutes before my pickup time? How decent of you to let a family know you can't come through for them on the day of the move. Oh but it gets even better, they found a truck for me, but wanted me to drive 45 minutes away to go and pick it up. Seriously? Augusta is a pretty large city, how on earth is it even possible that there are no trucks within the city of Augusta? And HOW in the world, do you not have one ready with a three week notice? I can understand if it was a last minute reservation, but you had 3 weeks to get a truck to me.

I have always rented from Budget, in fact I've rented moving trucks and cars prior to this past weekend but you guys completely screwed me and my family over on this by not having a truck and I will most likely not rent from you again at least for as long as it takes for me to trust your company again. I had people to move me standing by at my home for a solid 3 hours and had I actually drove that 45 minutes to go and pickup that truck and another 45 minutes back, that means I would have had movers for maybe an hour.

What was the solution your store clerk suggested to me? "You could go try the Uhaul down the street." REALLY? Yes, in hindsight I should have rented from Uhaul from the beginning because you all apparently can't read and fulfill your own rental agreements. How about next time instead of suggesting I go to your competitor, that you actually fill your customers orders.

Thankfully I was able to find an alternative, of course it was a much smaller solution and required several trips which cost me more money, but at least it got done.

I would like Budget to start informing people prior to 20 minutes before a pickup time that they can't meet their needs and definitely do not assume people have the time to drive an hour and a half to go pickup and bring back a truck that they originally scheduled locally to save on time.

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Re: Completely Lost Me As a Customer by olie Posted Wed June 20, 2012 @ 1:02 AM See, Misty,I had rented a truck from that exact same location on Friday, June 15. I was supposed to return it by 9:00 on Saturday morning. Except that the people who had "volunteered" to help me flaked out, leaving just my husband and me to do most of the loading and unloading. And getting all the furniture down the stairs. Then, we found that we couldn't park in our driveway because some ignoramus blocked it. So we had to lug all of our stuff a long way. We were up till midnight just getting stuff inside the house and garage so it wouldn't be stolen. Then the power went out, so the alarm didn't go off. We shoulda used the alarms on our cells, huh? So by the time we did get up, it was 8:56, and we still had to get to the gas station to fill up the truck. Oh, and we got a ticket for parking on the street, since the ignoramus left after we went to bed. And that, dear Misty, is why the truck wasn't ready for you when you arrived. Signed, Another Mover Reply I hate to say by MA Bellamy Wed June 20, 2012 @ 10:24 AM