Budget Car & Truck Rental Blenheim Airport

CORRUPT? I was charged $194NZDfor fuel charges for supposedly not filling the tank. Ive provided gas receipts from the day it was returned and even the previous day. Taken over 3 weeks and still not solved. BUDGET Never provided any proof it wasnt full just charged me hoping I might not notice. No one in return lot when we brought our broken MG rental in to exchange it for something that wasnt a death trap. To date 15 emails! With customer service representative Nestor Allan Nicolas. CHECK YOUR BILL AND KEEP FUEL RECEIPTS! CORRUPT! I wont be contacting you directly. People need to know what a shady operation you run!
Apr 9th, 2023

Tread carefully with these guys. Hired a car from Nelson to Blenheim and returned it full to the brim with gas but still got charged $33 for petrol. Asked for a refund but still no sign of the money coming back. At best poor administration and at worst someone is up to something dodgy. Definitely will not use again
Aug 29th, 2022

car was great .had a few problems getting one even tho I had booked one ! my booking was unexpectedly cancelled ! had to book all over again on the day I arrived flew in from the waikato . bit of a pain , was charged twice for bond too , got sorted...eventually .
Aug 7th, 2022

Oct 2nd, 2021

I'm not really a naming and shaming type person online so I will try and keep this short... unfortunately the short story is still quite long. We booked a car from Budget rentals NZ on the 20th of December for a trip to Blenheim at the beginning of Jan (with my Mum and Mike). I checked a few dates for availability and decided to hire it from the 2-5 Jan for around $280. Screen shot the quote and the form I filled out and the confirmation screen page with confirmation numbers. All good. Next day I logged into where I booked the car and the dates had changed from 2-3 Jan for the same price. When I go to change it to 2 -5 Jan it charges me $800+! I rang them up and they said they cant change it on their system but if I have a confirmation (which I offered to email to them) then the Blenheim branch can keep that quote. They gave me an email address which ended up not being correct! We get to Blenheim and the manager is on holiday. The lady at the counter says she cant believe the charge on the car. We show her the confirmation and she agrees that we should only have to pay $280 for the 2-5. Unfortunately she doesn't have the ability to change the rates. After she tries the CS line with no result, she suggests we go with the 2-3rd booking and just keep the car until she calls us. So we sign a document for the $280 + insurance and take the car. We get multiple phone calls over the next 3 day trip about it. They let's us keep the car till the 5th as we had a confirmation for that and said we wouldn't get charged anymore until it gets sorted. I can tell you, it was a very stressful time during what was meant to be a relaxing holiday. We get home and my credit card has been charged $800+. Of course, the excuses started with Budget. We had to wait for people to come back on holiday first, so we waited 2 week. Then when they "looked into it" they blamed us for the mistake. Their reasoning was we chose the 2-3rd, confirmed everything, then went to modify the dates to the 2-5th... so the dates show 2-5th but the rate was still 2-3rd price. They claimed we never confirmed the 2-5th dates so the price never changed. The managed to replicate the quote screen shots this way (no mention of the confirmation page that I sent them) This is DESPITE me sending all the screen shots of the the confirmation with the date and price on it! I have given them a month to reply to my last email with this evidence and they have ignored me. Nick and I would normally just let it go but we feel like we have been had. What if we couldn't afford it? What if we were a family that had been scrimping and saving for a year and this was our family holiday away. What if we had no idea about screenshots and had zero tech know how? I find this whole behavior disgusting. I have kept all the emails so whoever is interested can see all the evidence. I don't usually ask for shares but I hope this gets shared far and wide. Budget needs to be held accountable so this doesn't happened to someone else. They need to fix their processes and apologise. On my post on my page I have the photo of the confirmation with this story. At this point it isn't about the money anymore, it is about the horrendous behavior towards us that made us feel like we were the idiots and did something wrong.
Mar 29th, 2020