On 3/9 an RV on I-5 clipped the back tire of my rental car. This resulted in a sever collision, where I was left witha totalled car. I immediately called Budgets 800# on my rental confirmation (1-800-527-0700). They told me they could not help me, I needed to call the office where I picked up the car. This would be Oakland International Airport.
I called the Oakland number (510-633-5100) 27 times over the course of 3 hours and the 800# a total of seven times. The Oakland office never answered.in fact at one point they began picking up and immediately hanging up the phone. The 800 number also called the OAK branch and was only able to leave a message for the manager to call them and me back. This never happened.
I was forced to hitch a ride with the tow copany the Sherrif departments sercured. Afterwhich I spent 3 hours waiting in a filthy room while the tow truck drivers chatted about being in court fro beating thier wives and "slapping pu$y". Yes, that is exactly what I said.
I waited their until one of my friends in LA could drive up, pick me up and take me to Burbank airport, where I had to pay for a full fare one way ticket to Oakland ($140.00).
In Oakland my sister and I stopped off at the Budget counter after she picked me up. We were informed by Azali that he, Sandim, whom we also spoke with, and the manager Judy Cameron were all working during the time of my accident. They were there at the time that the message was left and they had no answer for why the phone was not answered.
They initially refused to give me the general manager and regional manager's information. After much prodding they gave the general manager's name of Ed Phillips. They also gave me the station manager's name, Rahim Sabur, who I spoke with on Monday 3/10. It would have been Rahim or Judy that would have received the message regarding my case. Neither parties returned the call.
When speaking with Rahim, he was unsympathetic and told me it could take more than 24hours to get the car in thier possession and that they would charge me until it was. He had nothing to say about the service at his site and could only be bothered to send me the incident report for by fax.By the way, this was the first I'd heard of a incident report.
I have not called Ed, because I was too busy trying to get confirmation that the car was picked up and my invoice was closed out. This was finally completed, 3/21 after 10 more calls to the roadside assistance vendor that Budget uses, and separate calls to Budget's 800#. It seems a shame that the best service I got was from a non-Budget company.
I have already spoken with the travel contract manager at my compnay, to ensure they are removed as a preferred vendor. We are the largest bank in the world and I travel constantly. I do not ever want to have a situation like this occur, for me or any of my colleagues and employees.
I will be filing a complaint with Hotwire, from which I rented the car, not knowing it would be budget. I will also be filing a complaint with budgets headquarters. Although, I understand that this behavior is typical of Budget and they do not care. I expect Budget to refund the cost of my flight home and the cost of my rental. We has see if they continue to be unethical, unprofessional and simply ridiculous.
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