The rate quoted in Hamilton was higher than their online scheduler but because it wasn t a corporate

A couple weeks ago I moved . In the original story I mentioned that this involved renting a truck from Budget Rent-a-Car. I also discussed a complaint national car rental emerald club about Budget Rent-a-Car: national car rental emerald club its franchisee refused to accept a $20-off coupon. This $20 doesn t seem like a lot on my final $320 bill. But it was meaningful, because I had included it when comparing a few online national car rental emerald club rental quotes. (I ve reproduced the coupon here as an integral element to my criticism of Budget and in the public interest of protecting other consumers
I tweeted my moving post at Budget, thinking the passive aggressive commentary might get some attention from their corporate. Nada. Already the hoped-for $20 is starting to seem like insufficient compensation for my effort spent pursuing the grievance. But I figured a phone call would at least let me spin this sorry tale into an article. Boy, did it ever.
I rang up the first service line listed on the Contact Us page. The line was only for reservations. national car rental emerald club They transferred me to the customer service group, but that was only for car-related customer service. I got sent over to truck rentals the US, not Canadian, line. They assured me I d now be sent to the proper group, national car rental emerald club and I was transferred to the first line I called. At this point, I was told Oh, you need the Canadian group that handles customer service for trucks , as if I hadn t made those facts clear to the last three people. Finally, somebody understood me.
And yet they sent me to the customer service line for American truck rentals again. This story is not exaggerated I could have spent all day being bounced from line-to-line. I explained that to the new representative, national car rental emerald club and she immediately pronounced she had the solution. By now, I was a half-hour older and wiser than when I first called, so I asked Can you please national car rental emerald club tell me the phone number?  Naturally, it was the first phone number I had called. After explaining the situation to her a second time (and, overall, the umpteenth time) she grasped why I was frustrated about Budget s uniquely Kafka-esque phone hell. She offered that the only other option was to transfer me to a corporate-owned location that does truck rentals in Canada. Why not, right? In for a twenty dollar coupon, in for an hour long debacle.
national car rental emerald club I ended up talking to a gentleman at the Yonge store in Toronto. He said he d find me the correct number and call me back. When I got off the line, I looked again at the Contact Us page (which has remarkably tiny text). I scrolled down further and found out that there isn t a Canadian 1-800 number for complaining about customer service when it s related to a truck rental. You have to call the location from which you rented the truck. In fairness to my own powers of observation, it s not like anybody at any of the Budget phone lines knew this simple fact.
Of course, having to call the franchise that I m complaining about is problematic because the franchise in question is the problem . If they had taken the $20 coupon we wouldn t have an issue to resolve. In short, there is no phone number for lodging customer complaints about truck rentals to Budget if you live in Canada. My options are to pound my head against a wall, call the franchisee to pound my head against a wall, or write a letter to the US head office of a massive international conglomerate (which I can only imagine would be less productive than pounding my head against a wall).
I knew that Budget s franchised rental business in B.C. had relentlessly screwed consumers so badly that the RCMP is investigating . That should have given me pause but didn t. After sharing the first part of this story last week, a loyal Reader shared a personal tale about the company s downright nasty service . Now it seems that Budget Rent-a-Car can t even provide extremely reasonable redress to jilted consumers like me (i.e. the $20 from a coupon they should have taken but didn t). I m confident saying that Budget sucks and I d be a fool to use their services in the future.
At least social media gives us an outlet to vent frustrations. It used to be in the past all you could do was tell all your friends that XYZ company is a sad sack of crap and hope they told 10 of their friends. Now you can tell the internet and hope their social media team sniffs national car rental emerald club the story and tries to help.
There s an episode of Corner Gas where Brent s dad, Oscar tries to return some stubby beer bottles to the liquor store. Since they no longer use those bottles, the guy at the store rejects them. Oscar complains about this to everyone in town and they in turn, to placate him, hand over $1.20 saying the guy at the liquor store had asked them to pass it on to him.
Your pain does make for a good blog post, and will take a decent amount of profit away from Budget. I thought of doing something similar regarding buying a car from a dealership recently, but my anger has simmered down enough now.
If you ever have a consumer complaint Gene you know I d love to host it. No $20 necessary, lol; I think these types of posts make for great reading. Even if there s no result they re certainly cathartic for the writer (as you mentioned). I was angry up until I wrote this post. When I finished it and knew hundreds of visitors and regular national car rental emerald club readers would read it, plus a permanent stream of search traffic, I felt better. I actually did it last week and bumped it for Greg s guest post; just having it lined up was enough. And then, sometimes, like with the FlightCentre issue, the company comes through in a massive way.
I don t rent a lot of cars, but I have a friend that works at a car rental place (not Budget) that handles all of my requests. It makes it easier. Sorry to hear that you couldn t get anything done. It is fruitless national car rental emerald club to complain to the franchise that you want to complain about. I have had success with social media in the past with bad customer service. It seems Budget doesn t really care though.
Yeah exactly. Also have had some stellar experiences by using social media. Not in this instance. Sadly, this bad experience is costing them a lot more than $20, but I m glad to be able to warn fellow consumers. That s worth $20 to me.
I hate when companies are so franchise based that coupons are basically worthless. We have a Dairy Queen around here that doesn t honor any company promotions, and same with some Hungry Howies locations.
Absolutely, it hurts the whole brand image. The gentleman at the Toronto location mentioned to me Unfortunately it s a franchise system so hopefully you don t think it reflects poorly on everybody. And I said Well, unfortunately, you have the same franchisor and the same brand and the same head office. If a McDonald s location acted like this, the corporate national car rental emerald club office national car rental emerald club would step in and use their contractual rights to smack them into line. Because that s the reality; national car rental emerald club there are weak franchises and strong franchises. My experience with Budget would indicate it s closer to the former.
Speaking from my past life as a Budget guy in Victoria You mentioned your rate for three days and 450 km was $320. Was that the total based upon their standard time and km rates or did they offer you a package deal? If it is the latter, then they may feel that they have already discounted the rate and in essence, your use of the coupon did not meet the conditions (i.e. cannot be used in conjunction with other discounts). When I was in this business, these coupons were at every tourist trap in Victoria and when someone came in with one our typical response was That is off our rack rate, let s see what else we have and once they were in their much lower autoclub or business traveler discount, the coupon was no longer valid, but it got them in the door. However, our management gave us incredible latitude to keep customers happy, and anyone putting up a fuss about the terms .. yup, $20 no problem . I am surprised the franchise is so intent on holding their ground.
The rate quoted in Hamilton was higher than their online scheduler but because it wasn t a corporate location I couldn t book online, I had to do it through the franchise. And there was no corporate location within any reasonable distance so saving $60 wouldn t be worth the risk of KM overage + extra gas.
I m not aware of any discount I received or the rack rate situation but such vague, unpublished prices are subject to manipulation by a franchisee. It d make any claim that I m getting a discount hard to refute, even when the price is so much higher than the corporate store rate (and I m renting in Hamilton as opposed to a bigger national car rental emerald club city). My understanding is that it was all very standard there was a certain daily cost + truck insurance and each day came with 150km.
As you note, they enticed me in the door and then I got my price switched to something higher. I was in no place to argue and I m not moving again for a long time so I ate my pride and the $20. But I sure as heck won t be renting from Budget again.
I read the article link in your post. I am surprised to be honest. The Vancouver franchise is separate from Victoria. In my experience, when a car came in with damage, it was sent for three quotes and repaired at the lowest price. The customer would also be charged lost time on the car in addition to the repair but this is industry standard. All supporting documentation would be provided to the customer. This is about 16 years ago and the competitive landscape has changed. At the time, Budget was likely 80% of the market in Victoria, and probably Vancouver national car rental emerald club too. The arrival of Enterprise, Alamo etc has brought rates down so perhaps somebody looked at the opportunity in damage repair.
Yeah, when they admitted they stopped actually repairing damage they charged for, then when it got bad enough they sent it to a separate corporation with the same ownership (conflict of interest) without any independent evaluation All I can say is I wouldn t be using Budget anywhere in BC even though it sounds like the franchise you worked national car rental emerald club at wasn t in the portfolio of