Complaint Review: Budget Rent-A-Car; Cendant; Louisiana Rent-A-Car LLC D/b/a Budget Rent A Car Of Lafayette; - Lafayette And Shreveport Louisiana

When you make the reservation, you have to specify that you need a one way rental. If you just made a reservation for a regular daily rental, returning at the same location you rented from, then you cannot expect to be able to return the car somewhere else without an additional (usually very large) charge to your credit card. What does it list as the return location on your rental contract? If it lists anywhere other than where you rented it, you may have a reason to dispute the charges.. if it lists your return location as LaFayette, LA.. then they expected it returned to LaFayette. Here is how it worked at the relatively small location I worked at. If someone needed a one way rental, we had to use one of the cars from "corporate" if we had any at the time. Those are cars that come from somewhere else across the Budget system. If we had a car from the location the one way renter wanted to drop it off at, the price would be cheaper. If we had more than one "corporate" car, we would send the car from the location closest to the customer's desired drop off point. If we had NO cars from corporate locations and only our own local fleet, we'd have to fly someone down to the drop off location and pick up our car after our renter returned it. This kind of rental would be very expensive and most people would not book with us after hearing the rate. So saying on the website that the one way rentals are affordable.. maybe if there are lots of cars that can be used for rentals.. but that's not usually the case in smaller markets. I cannot explain the condition of the car you rented.. but if it was as bad as it sounds, I would have requested a different car.

"There is just NO way that a one way reservation of roughly 400 miles would only be $31-something" Not entirely true. It depends on the location's vehicle situation. I work for Budget somewhere in Pennsylvania, and I've had people check in Mini-Vans that came one from Florida for $29.99 a day.. Too many vehicles and the price most likely drops. Supply and Demand.

I am certain that you made a mistake when making the reservation. There is just NO way that a one way reservation of roughly 400 miles would only be $31-something. I have no doubt that that was the DAILY rate for renting the car, and you only had it one day, but one-way rentals are way more than rentals where you return the car to the same place. If you made the reservation online, it automatically defaults to "return to same location." If you want to make it a one-way rental, you have to go into a separate area on the website to do that. I'm only saying this because some of the blame, as far as the dollar rate is wrong - however what they did in overcharging and not explaining it is utterly ludicrous. Have you tried disputing the charge with your credit card company? They will (should) suspend the charge while they investigate it. Good luck to you.

The standard contract specifies that you must return the car to the original renting location. If you are doing a one-way trip, there's a different contract. You misinterpreted the web site as implying that one-way or local rentals are allowed under the same standard deal. They are not. You have to specify at the time of rental. "Low rate for one-way" means when they write you a one-way contract, it will be for a competetive low rate compared to other one-way rentals. It will still be a lot more than a local rental. I don't agree with them not being able to immediately tell you exactly what the penalty would be. To say "as much as $500" and then charge you $1800 is out of line. You should've been able to dispute the amount over $500 with your credit card company.