Budget Car Rental — Car Rental in Anchorage

ALL reviews about Budget Car Rental

• Amber

  Added 2014.09.24

  Landed a 2am and went to pick up my reservation. Could not get attendant to come out and perform the damage survey with me. My wife and I walked around the car (as best we could give the vehicles parked on either side). I went back to the attendant and said (this thing is beat to hell). No acknowledgement. Upon returning, a different attendant squatted low and found an obscure ding under the running board.....now guess what's happening? Unbelievable. Never again. I'll pay more for a professional car rental service. They are terrible. They charged me $200 for no reason in name of cleanliness. Worst is that one of their employee Peter left a voicemail after the return saying they will charge me $20, but they deducted $200 from my card without telling me. That's a fraud! When I called their manager Kathlyn, she asked me for the voice mail and denied to recognize $20 charge that Peter clearly said in the voice mail. They are running scam business. They will give you cheaper prices for rental cars but makes their money using these scams. Stay Away!! They are very Sloppy and irresponsible... When we arrived Seattle we found my brother's tablet left in the car , so I had to contact Budget again.They charged me 145.50 USD total including 25USD adminstration fee for sending back my home. Basically this charge has already more than it's value itsilf. Also they estimated this item's value higher than itself and that's why I would be charged another import tax by my country. Althought I prefered USPS and it would make everything I complained here gone. Basically Budget's not responsible for all of these. But the point is , they wrote the wrong contact information at the beginning,including my email address and telephone number. And that is why when I haven't received this item when I returned home right after four weeks they sent it out. So I contacted Fed EX immediately they told this package was stuck at the Custom,it needed to fill out some documents to enter my country. But Fed Ex coundn't contact me then due to wrong contacting information. Basically I have to say that Fed Ex and Budget didn't try very best to contact me , so this package finally returned back to ANC airport. However , Budget jsut didn't care about it. They didn't try to correct their mistake to pass the Custom but they allowed it to got sent to their office. Fortunately I contact Fed Ex immediately in person and correct all the contacting information,Fed Ex helped me intercept this package before returned Budget's office. Otherwise,I have to pay another huge delivery fee. If Budget wrote the correct contact information,I would have received this package now. They didn't try hard to correct their mistates or contact me.I was not satisfied their sloppiness and irresponsibility. But they didn't admit their mistakes and make any sincerely apology for that. Once again. I won't use Budget anymore. I really hate Budget , Two of my most terrible experiences all are Budget , However , this Budget @ANC airport definitely was the worst one. I never use Budget anymore. 1.They were NOT allowed to pickup your car early. I arrived ANC airport around one hour earlier than actual pickup time , but they told me my car wasn't ready.Even I told them I would return the car very early but I still had to wait for entire an hour. It seems it's a Budget's general rule from my experience(Only Budget). It also happened @Vienna last time. It should blame myself to misjudge the pickup time. But the point is they didn't inform me while the car was ready. So they just kept me waiting almost entire an hour there. 2.They lied to me and forced me to buy LIS(insurance) I returned to the waiting line around seven minutes before my pickup time,their clerk A(he) helped check my booking and then their another clerk B(She) passed my car key to her colleague(clerk A) and implied that it's my car key. ( My car actually was ready for a while) He then checked my booking again and then asked me to showed my insurance for this car.I just told him that I have purchased it from expedia. Then he carefully check my insurance T&C(which took me a lot of time) and then he told me it's only a CDW but not included LSI. If I didn't buy any LSI they refused to rent this car to me base on Alaska's law. He even impolitely asked me to stand aside to bypassed me to service next customer.That meant I didn't have any choice back then. They ultimately forced me to buy their insurance.(Only I could do was signed and claimed their insurance as what he asked) However I think it was not right for my dozen rental experiences. So I contacted next counter's clerk(another company) about this LSI stuff and Alaska's Law related. She told me basically it's optional and they cannot force me to buy it. But she also told me maybe there will be different rental policy base on different company. So I crossed the rental Hall to consult Hertz again. Their clerk(She) specifically told me they(Budget) cannot force me to buy any insurance,she also kindly help me contact Budget(by phone) this situation.She finally helped me settle my problem and told me to return to Budget counter and Budget would help me remove this LSI from my contract.But I didn't know whom she contacted with. When I ran to their (should be)intern manager to ask them to remove it. Guess what,he still insisted that they refused to rent a car to me if I didn't buy this insurance. So I returned to Hertz again for another help. She told her manager(He) entire story and then he told me he would go to Budget counter with me in person to resolve this issue for me.Either had been informed by their colleague or saw Hertz's manager coming with me,This budget's (should be)intern manager changed his words immediately and then asked his colleague(she) to remove this LIS from my contract.Finally I got rid of this nightmare with Hertz's help and I always appreciate it. Basically I have used Budget several times,some were good but this was the most dishonorable rental location and the worst one I encountered, I definitely won't use it anymore. Pro: Rented from Budget after placing order online. Got a Toyota Sierra, which was clean and prepared. Con: Counter rep informed me that it was "company policy" to buy their insurance and would not let me opt out. This was probably because the airport design had hairpin curve turns where the vehicles could easily get scratched while exiting the parking area - kinda shady to me.