Budget

The rate error story that got away — in a big way

Pavel IgnatovShutterstock
Pavel IgnatovShutterstock
Anyone who reads this site probably knows my position on rate errors, which is to say I think it’s wrong to take advantage of someone else’s mistake, even if it’s made by a big travel company.

So you can imagine how dismayed I was when I got a call from Howard Steinberg, who owns several Budget car rental franchises in the United States. Not only had one of his customers exploited a rate error, he says, but I had helped the traveler do it.

How’s that?

Well, to get up to speed on this story, here’s the Q&A column that started it all. It involved a reader named Brandon Chase who had received a mysterious phone call from Budget’s auditing department, notifying him of a billing error. Budget re-charged his credit card $85, apparently not giving him a discount it had promised.
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74 comments

Oh no, Budget had second thoughts about my discount

Maria Scaldina/Shutterstock
Maria Scaldina/Shutterstock
Question: I’d like to share my recent Budget Car Rental experience with you that has me committed to never doing business with them again.

A couple weeks ago I received a voicemail saying the Budget at the Kansas City airport would be charging me an extra $104 because an “internal audit” found they gave me too much of a discount. My receipt shows the $85 discount, which seemed right since there was an advertised discount.

So, they billed my credit card without my authorization, and then added in all the additional taxes and fees to bring the amount up to $104. I called Budget corporate and the franchise, but nobody would help fix the issue, even though I had a receipt to prove we “agreed” on the lesser amount.
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85 comments

Could the Canadian car rental scandal spread?

broadSomething about the $667 repair bill that Enterprise Rent-a-Car recently sent Jerry Bitting looked suspicious to him.

For starters, the car didn’t appear to be the one that Bitting, an account executive for a federal agency in Washington, had rented. The dates when the damage occured didn’t match the dates on which he’d driven the Mazda 3. The pictures were taken weeks after he’d returned the car. And questions to Enterprise’s damage recovery unit, asking for an explanation of the inconsistencies, were met with silence.

“I told them that the damages were not there when I picked up the car or dropped it off,” Bitting says.
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57 comments

The car rental industry’s day of reckoning may be close

Ilya Alkishin/Shutterstock
The car rental industry is in trouble. And this time, it can’t be fixed by quietly settling out of court with its customers or lobbying a few state lawmakers.

Maybe you’ve seen the recent TV report about the allegedly bogus damage claims filed by Budget against its customers in Canada. You’ve probably said to yourself, “A-ha! I knew they were doing that!

So are a lot of other people.
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39 comments

Budget threatens customer with lawsuit, garnishment after he questions damage claim

Just in case you thought my recent critique of the car rental industry’s damage claims practices was over the top — and I assure you, it wasn’t — let me introduce you to Jonathan Kiluk.

He rented a late-model, four-door Toyota Camry from Budget Rent-A-Car in Ontario, Calif., earlier this year and is now being pursued by the company in a way that you might find a little troubling.
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112 comments

Are car rental companies forcing you to buy insurance you don’t need?

Every road leads to ... a surcharge? / Photo by John Peacock - Flickr
Question: My wife rented a car at the Orlando airport from Budget recently. Even though she said she did not want or need the extra loss damage waiver insurance, she was informed that her car insurance was “invalid” and that in order to rent the car she needed Florida insurance.
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63 comments