Budget Rent A Car 10246 Atlantic Blvd Jacksonville, FL

LA and I were in Jacksonville for 3 weeks conducting Market Research. We have rented from Avis and Enterprise in the past, but now own our own business and were looking to save some money on a 3 week rental and decided on Budget. Picking up the car was fine, but upon returning, we were surprised to find the $27/day under-25 fee (amounting to $540 with tax). The initial rental agent did not notify us of this, and the online reservation did not add this in since I made the reservation. When we've rented with Avis, our corporate policy covered the fee, and State Farm Insurance negates the fee with Enterprise.

The owner of the location was no help in helping us resolve the situation. Clearly, if we had known the fee would be on there, we never would have rented from Budget, so its not like we were trying to get out of paying; we were simply unaware. The owner (he said he'd been working there for 6 years) said the only way to take it off was to get approval from the district manager. We called him and he was very rude on the phone. He told us the owner was the only one who could help us. We hung up and told the owner what the district manager had said.
He said we could do things "the easy way or the hard way." We chose easy. He said there was no easy way. OK, we chose the hard way. This is $540 we're talking about. He said there is no hard way; there is no way to get a refund. He gave us the number for customer service, which turned out to be the national Budget reservations line. They gave us customer service, who gave the owner Station Adjustments. He gave us the number for Stations Adjustment. We called to get a recording requiring manager/owner information, and had to go back inside the location to have the owner call and leave information.

A few days later, Station Adjustment called us looking for the owner or district manager, since the owner gave SA our phone number. They said they could take care of it but needed authorization because of the amount. I never got a call or email back from anyone at Budget and later checked our credit card statement and found that in fact the amount was credited to us. After all that we will never rent from Budget again.

While I'm at it, the owner did not inspect our car after we returned it; he just took the keys, and while we were trying to resolve our situation, rented the car out to someone else--no car wash, no vacuum, didn't even make sure the gas tank was full. I'm sure that's against corporate policy somewhere.