Budget Truck Rental Lied to then given malfuctioning equipment Beaverton Oregon

I just completed a cross-country move. I spent months planning and preparing so that it would be as stress-free as possible. Unfortunately I used Budget Truck Rental who did everything they could to add as much stress to it as possible. The story starts over a month ago when I realized that I could not select my vehicle on their website when I went to go rent a car hauler. The website said if you could not find your vehicle on the drop-down list to take it into one of the local dealers and have them approve your vehicle. So that's what I did. I took it in to the Beaverton Oregon location.

My first clue that this was not going to go smoothly was on that visit. There was only one person working and they had locked up to go do something right in the middle of the afternoon (this will become more relevant later on). When he finally returned and I explained the situation he acted way to Cavalier about inspecting my vehicle. All he did was look out the window at my vehicle and then immediately said that I would be able to use the two wheel dolly if I wanted and worst case scenario come back for the four-wheel. A month goes by and I go in to pick up my reserved equipment.

This experience starts off with me having to listen to another customer complain that he was being overcharged by $100. When it's finally my turn there's now a different gentleman working the counter who immediately goes into a sales pitch about how I don't want the two wheel Dolly that it will just cause me problems but instead should get the four wheel. I assumed this man had my best interest at heart and that this wasn't just a sales pitch, I later on realized I was wrong (especially when I was then charged a higher rate for the 4 wheel car hauler because it wasn't reserved beforehand). The gentleman then proceeded to confirm my information at which point we realized the wrong vehicle was listed. After I corrected him and gave him the right information this is when my personal hell began. Because even though I had come in a month earlier to have my vehicle pre-approved, this gentleman now begin to tell me that I was not going to be able to rent the car hauler.

The worst part of this was that he was unable to tell me why I could not tow my vehicle with their equipment. He seemingly was just throwing his hands up in the air as if he didn't care. So I began to press him about all the different reasons why it might not work. The one we kept coming back to was my vehicle's weight. So I went about doing everything I could to determine what my vehicle's weight was. I would have assumed that this was his job and that he should have been doing that but again he didn't appear to care at all. After searching the sticker on the inside of my door and Googling my car's weight eventually the employee began to do a little investigation of his own. Except his idea of investigating was to try to call Uhaul to see if they would rent me car hauler but apparently even though he works in that industry he had no idea what the local U-Haul number was and accidentally called their 800 customer service line. This is the point in which he really began to give up and tell me that there was no way I was going to be able to rent that car hauler. Now I'm beginning to really panic. I had planned everything very specifically including my living situation and job situation. I knew that if I did not get the truck and car hauler that morning my schedule was going to be ruined and I could potentially become homeless and jobless. These facts didn't seem to bother him at all. He seemed to treat his job as if he was flipping burgers and if he made a mistake it wasn't that big of a deal. It didn't seem to matter to him that his employee pre-approved my vehicle and their error was now potentially going to ruin my life. Eventually I had to break down and cry in front of this man and literally beg him to rent me the equipment that I had reserved ahead of time.

He finally conceded as if he was doing me a favor. We then went outside to do the inspection of the equipment. At this point I realize that his sales pitch from earlier about choosing the four-wheel instead of the two wheel car hauler was not in my best interest but a pre-planned thing because I realized he had already hooked up my truck to the 4 Wheel car hauler before I ever even got there. We do the inspection of the equipment and he notes all the scratches and dings. He then backs the car and trailer out so that I can load my vehicle onto it. It's only then after he gets out of the cab of the truck that he informs me that the check engine light is on for this truck but proceeds to tell me that it's nothing to worry about because it's related to an aftermarket gas cap they had to use when the original was lost. At this point I was thinking that I really did not want to deal with that during a cross-country move but I was so worried that if I said anything he was going to go back on his decision to rent me the equipment. Again it wasn't just a simple thing, I was concerned that if I spoke up he was going to tell me he didn't have another truck for me and I was going to go back to worrying about being jobless and homeless. So I loaded up my vehicle and took off.

The next morning when I got rolling down the highway a thought occurred to me. If this check engine light really is just related to the improper fitting gas cap, what would happen if something really did go wrong with the engine, I would have no way of knowing. This became a gigantic stressor for me during the whole trip. I was crossing States like Wyoming and Nebraska where there's nothing around sometimes for 100 miles. So every time there was a little bit of rattle in the steering wheel or I smelled something funny coming from the vents I would have a little mini panic attack that something was going wrong with the truck and I would be stranded in 20 degree weather with no cell reception nowhere near anywhere that could help me. It's at this point that I realize I paid hundreds of dollars hoping to not be stressed out during this move but ended up paying Budget Truck Rental to stress me out for the entire move. The thought also occurred to me, and confirmed by Googling later, that with a gas cap that did not fit correctly I very potentially could be losing gas from evaporation. Something very relevant and stressful when you're paying close to $800 in gas to cross the country. Thankfully I made it across the country.

When I turned the equipment in I did so during business hours hoping to speak with someone. Unfortunately at the location that I had to turn it in the business appeared open but nobody was working. I ended up getting the attention of a business running out of the back of that business who gave me a phone number to call. That person gave me the customer service number for Budget. I assumed that when Budgets customer service heard about my Horror Story they would sympathize with me. What I found was a group of people who could not have cared less, who actually tried to blame all of these problems on me, who couldn't do something as simple as make a phone call and call me back. After having to argue with them and request supervisors they finally decided to call the Beaverton Oregon location to confirm the details.

Now if you remember back at the beginning of the story when I visited the Beaverton Oregon location in the middle of the day and no one was there? Well apparently that's a common practice at that location because customer service was now telling me there was nothing they could do because they could not get anybody to pick up at that location during the middle of the business day. I requested that they try again to which they refused. Apparently this giant National company does not have the ability to call back their own locations and then reach out to me when they finally get a hold of them. Instead they stated that I had to call back again, go through the very annoying menu that they have, re-explain the whole situation again to another customer service rep and have them call again. So that's what I did immediately following my first phone call. That customer service rep said the same thing that when they called they couldn't get ahold of anyone. So I had him call again. This time they finally got ahold of somebody at that location.

When the customer service rep came back onto the phone with me he ignored all of the things that I had said to him and the previous customer service reps and again proceeded to act as if this whole situation was my fault. But for some reason still wished to refund me part of what I paid. At this point I finally felt some justice had been served, until the customer service rep informed me that they were only willing to refund me $19.20. So here's what I've realized. Budget Truck Rental employs incompetent people who are incapable of doing their job no matter what you do to try to circumvent that problem. I realize you cannot trust anything that they say because they are completely  unknowledgeable about their own job. I realized that their employees do not treat their job with any kind of seriousness, that they believe their actions do not carry any kind of serious life altering consequences. I realized that Budget Truck Rental employees do not take any pride in their work. I realized they do not take any pride in their product. I realized that Budget Truck Rental feels it is completely appropriate to rent people malfunctioning equipment for major cross country moves. I realized that even when Budget Truck Rental is made aware of these egregious mistakes their customer service reps are trained to bully their customers into believing it's their own fault.

Please do not fall into the same trap that I did in believing that I was receiving a good deal. I did not receive a deal. I was ripped off. I was scammed. I paid hundreds of dollars to have multiple panic attacks. I paid hundreds of dollars to be stressed out for days. I paid hundreds of dollars to have minimum wage employees sitting behind a phone try to make me feel like this was all my fault. In case I did not make it completely obvious I will never ever use Budget Truck Rental again. I will spend the rest of my life warning everyone I know to never use them. This review is going to be plastered everywhere around the internet and sent to the Better Business Bureau and Consumer Affairs. If you have any common sense at all you will go with one of their competitors!