California Highway 1

Pretty good!

Very good

This company is really bad. We arrived at the airport at 9 o'clock and had clearly booked a Ford Escape, but we were offered a BMW X5. The representative was Chinese and we made it clear we didn’t need an X5. However, they still processed an order for the X5 after completing the booking, which would cost us an extra $600 per day. Luckily, we noticed the error and requested a change, but then they asked if we wanted a GPS. We declined, and by this time, we had already wasted an hour because she told us it would take a long time to modify the order. Then they offered an upgrade to a Ford Edge, which we also didn’t need, and asked if we wanted additional personal insurance, even though we had bought all necessary insurance when booking. By 11:30, two hours had passed. My friend and I realized they wouldn't let us pick up the car unless we bought something extra. We had no choice but to choose personal insurance. The car we ended up with was an old Jeep, not the Ford Escape we originally booked, and it consumed a lot of oil. This was a very unsatisfactory car rental experience, and I will not use Budget again.

When picking up the car, the store staff misled us about the car model. We had booked a mid-to-large model through the website, but the staff at the counter kept saying that mid-to-large models were not available and offered us cars like the Toyota Corolla and Volkswagen Santana, which are smaller models. After insisting, the staff reluctantly told us to wait and, after further urging, begrudgingly found us a Ford mid-to-large model, claiming it was the only one available. When we went to pick up the Ford, we found multiple scratches on both the front and rear parts, and one of the windows was broken and couldn't close. Fortunately, a fellow Chinese staff member downstairs promptly helped us replace it with a relatively new Mazda 6. The attitude of the staff at the counter was really disappointing, especially since it was clear that there were other mid-to-large cars available!

Long wait during pickup, in spite of the fact that I was covered by recommended full insurance including road side assistance during online reservation, I was insisted to take additional road side assistance during the pick up causing an additional expense of US$44 per week.