So, this post is going to be kind of bitchy but let it serve as a cautionary tale to you: stay far away from Budget truck rentals.
In July of 2006 I rented a Budget truck to move from Mesa to our current home, La Jolla Del Sol. Other than being completely exhausted after a full day of moving and having lost my sister’s couch (oops… sorry, Jenne :-p), things went well. I returned the truck a day after I got it and things were fine.
Fast forward to October or so of 2007. I receive a call from Budget saying that someone filed a claim that I hit their vehicle with the truck. Of course, since this never happened I was caught completely off-guard and wanted to know exactly what they claimed I did. As it turns out, they said they didn’t have any information other than it happened in San Diego. They said they would get more information and call me back. Several days later I received an early morning phone call which I let go to voicemail. It was Budget calling back with “more details,” so I returned their call to figure out exactly what was going on. Of course, the person who was assigned to my “claim” was conveniently not available so I left a voicemail telling them to call me back.
Time passed, I received no further phone calls from them, and the whole ordeal passed from my mind. Fast-forward again, this time to this past Monday. I received a voicemail from a collection agency saying that I should call them back immediately. I did just that and apparently Budget passed the claim on to them, saying that I owed them $1900 (or maybe $1009, I couldn’t really tell). Of course, I told the nice woman with the collection agency that I was protesting this bogus claim. She told me to try contacting Budget again because there wasn’t anything she could do.
I still had the old voicemail from Budget on my phone so I called again to figure out why the hell I wasn’t notified about this. Of course, the person who was assigned to my claim is no longer working with Budget so I got shoved to another guy’s voicemail. I told this person to call me back immediately but it wasn’t until 5AM the next day that the call was returned. Again, I let it go to voicemail and called them when I actually woke up in the morning. This time I actually got the person on the phone and I explained my situation. I didn’t have the claim number (because I couldn’t understand it from the voicemail that the original person had left) so the Budget person said he would have to search for it (”It will take a few minutes,” he claimed) and give me another call. He also mentioned about it being part of the “old system” so it would be more difficult than it normally would be.
It’s been two business days now and I still haven’t received a return call. Of course, this whole situation is utterly ridiculous. From the person originally calling me that had no real details on the claim, down to lack of return calls, now being pushed to a collection agency. I still have no idea what I supposedly did but now I have to worry about some collection agency probing into my credit and making me look bad. If I don’t hear something back by Friday I will probably have to contact the Student Law Services on campus. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that though.
As I said at the beginning of this post, if you know what is good for you, you’ll stay away from Budget.
- Sat
