More than I budgeted for

[silvergb]

How glad I am that I found this site. I was just about to book on USCARHIRE,s other site to which I was directed by Moneysupermarket a full-size upgraded to a premium for about £250. I don,t know why but something made me hesitate and as I say,how glad I am. On this site I have discovered that they use Budget, not something that you are told of on their other site. I used Budget last year and guess what,yes I had a free upgrade then too. I could not believe the car they gave me was less than 3 years old as advertised. after my holiday I was in communication with their customer relations (sic) dept who continually called me a liar until I provided an e-mail from Ford USA who after receiving my photo confirmed that the model in question had not been made for over 3years. Then I received no more answers to my e-mails, snail mail and several phone calls and eventually gave up. Be warned.

[ShirleyD]

UScarhire gives you the choice of Budget, Alamo or Dollar. The choice is yours, are you sure the one you were looking at was the same company

[roger]

Are you sure you were looking at one of our sites? On all our sites, you get to choose the supplier you prefer for each car (out of Alamo, Budget or Dollar).

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by silvergb
How glad I am that I found this site. I was just about to book on USCARHIRE,s other site to which I was directed by Moneysupermarket a full-size upgraded to a premium for about £250. I don,t know why but something made me hesitate and as I say,how glad I am. On this site I have discovered that they use Budget, not something that you are told of on their other site. I used Budget last year and guess what,yes I had a free upgrade then too. I could not believe the car they gave me was less than 3 years old as advertised. after my holiday I was in communication with their customer relations (sic) dept who continually called me a liar until I provided an e-mail from Ford USA who after receiving my photo confirmed that the model in question had not been made for over 3years. Then I received no more answers to my e-mails, snail mail and several phone calls and eventually gave up. Be warned.
[/quote]

[stabard]

Perhapes you are looking at the .com site which is not one of the ones from here.

[silvergb]

Same site , same reaction.

[roger]

Not sure I follow? Which site were you looking at initially?

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by silvergb
Same site , same reaction.
[/quote]

[silvergb]

Roger, I must make clear that my problem last year was with Budget car rentals not with yourselves. My only beef with uscarhire is that your site omits to mention that the free upgrade with Budget is to a car that was premium once. I think you should state that budget sits comfortably between reputable hire companies e.g. Hertz and rentawreck outfits.

[roger]

Was the main issue with the age of the car, or did you have other problems? The reason I ask is that it is only in the last 6-12 months that Budget have started to replace their cars after around 6 months. Prior to that they were known to have a much older fleet, so I'm not sure if you would have had any ground for complaint unless they had specifically told you the car would be newer, and the older car had problems.

Personally, if I have a 3 year old car, as long is it's in good condition and runs well, then I can't see the major cause for complaint (this situation certainly shouldn't happen nowadays). If the car had major problems, enough for you to have been so upset on your return, then the best option would for you to have complained on collection so they could swap it for you, rather than after the event when it would be too late for Budget to assist. We provide an emergency number on our vouchers if you book through us, so any problem on collection of the car can be resolved on the spot.

[roger]

Looking back, it doesn't appear that your booking was through us anyhow. Also, had you booked through us, you could have called the 24 hour number we provide on our vouchers, to resolve any problems you had.

I still don't follow your comments about what we omit to mention.

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by silvergb
Roger, I must make clear that my problem last year was with Budget car rentals not with yourselves. My only beef with uscarhire is that your site omits to mention that the free upgrade with Budget is to a car that was premium once. I think you should state that budget sits comfortably between reputable hire companies e.g. Hertz and rentawreck outfits.
[/quote]

[steph_goodrum]

We had a brand new Sebring on the trip before last with around 100 miles on the clock. Didnt notice any problems but after abotu 15 days (a couple of days before we were due to come home we had a call from Dollar to say they needed to collect the car for "routine service" so could we o back to the desk and drop it off at which we asked if they could come to us instead as we werent planning to go out till later. They agreed and we also pointed out that we had filled the tank the day before so would they make sure it was full. Again they said yes and arrived about 2 hours later with a replacemnt on a trailer for us, similar car. On speaking to the guy picking up the car we said we though it was a bit off we'd had to wait in for them to do it if the maintenance was planned they should have checked when it was due back and he said it wasnt that at all, there had been a maufacturers recall and something had to be rectified because it was dangerous.

So a brand new car isnt necessarily any safer than an older one. We were just lucky it hadnt caused a problem in the 2 weeks we'd been driving and we had put several miles on the clock by then.