Renting a vehicle should be simple. You go online, pick what you need, reserve it, show up, and drive away. That's how it's supposed to work. My experience with Budget Auto Rental was nothing like that — and if you're planning a family trip that depends on a specific type of vehicle, you should know what you might be in for.

This is the full process, from the moment I started booking online to the moment we finally pulled out of the garage.

Booking on the Website

The first sign that this was going to be a headache came before I ever left the house. I went to Budget's website to book a 12-passenger van for our Disney World trip. The booking flow itself was straightforward enough — pick your dates, pick your vehicle class, enter your details. But when it came time to choose a pickup location, there was only one option: Albany International Airport.

For the type of vehicle we needed, that was it. No other locations, no alternatives. Now, I should note: there are no Budget locations anywhere near me in southern Vermont. The closest Budget facilities are in Albany — but Albany has multiple locations, not just the airport. So why I was restricted to picking up at the airport specifically baffled me. If you needed this van, you picked it up at the airport. Period.

We live in southern Vermont, so the airport wasn't the worst drive — still about an hour each way — but being locked into one specific location when other Budget facilities exist in the same city made no sense.

The website also wasn't clear about a lot of things. For example, I added my wife as a secondary driver during the booking process because I assumed that's how it worked — you list all drivers upfront. When I got to the counter, the agent informed me that spouses are free to be added as secondary drivers. No charge. But the website didn't mention that anywhere during booking, and sure enough, I was charged $60 for it. That's another $60 I now have to try to get refunded.

I booked it, paid for it, and moved on. That part was fine. Everything after that was not.

Before we left for the airport, I tried to call the Albany International Airport Budget location directly to confirm our reservation and make sure everything was in order. I called about five different times — no one ever answered. Not once.

I reached out to Budget's customer service about it, and they were just as baffled as I was. They had no idea why the airport location wasn't answering their phones.

It wasn't until I was finally at the counter — after waiting in line for three hours — that I mentioned this to the agent. He explained that the airport location has no phone lines right now due to construction being completed at the airport. That's why no one was answering. It made perfect sense at that point, but it also meant there was no way to confirm anything with the actual location before showing up. If I had known that, I wouldn't have wasted my time trying to call.

Arrival at Albany International Airport

We arrived at the airport with my family, ready to pick up the van. Our reservation had us down for a noon pickup. The Budget counter is supposed to have a vestibule right there in the parking garage — a small desk where you can handle pickup without having to walk all the way into the terminal.

It was closed.

There was no signage explaining why, no note pointing us where to go, nobody staffing it. So we loaded the family up and walked into the main airport terminal to find the Budget counters inside.

The Line

We walked into the terminal and found a single line of people waiting at the Budget counter. Not a line for check-in, not a line for a specific service — one line for everything. Reservations, walk-ups, pickups, returns, all funneling through the same desks.

There were roughly 100 people ahead of us.

We had already reserved and paid for our vehicle. That didn't matter. There was no express lane, no priority pickup, no separate queue for existing reservations. We got in line like everyone else and we waited.

Three hours.

My pickup time was 12:00 PM. By the time I actually reached the counter, it was close to 3:00 PM. Three hours of standing in an airport terminal with my family because Budget couldn't be bothered to staff their counters adequately or prioritize customers who had already committed to a reservation.

The Deposit Problem

When I finally got to the desk, the first thing that went wrong was the deposit. The agent told me I needed to pay the deposit and asked for my card. I handed over my debit card — the same card I had used to book the rental — and swiped it.

Denied.

I knew there was plenty of money on the card. I tried again. Denied again. The agent explained that Budget required a major credit card for the deposit — not a debit card, regardless of how much money was in the account.

Here's what made this particularly frustrating: before driving to the airport, I had called Budget's customer service line specifically to ask what was required for pickup. I wanted to make sure I had everything I needed so we wouldn't run into any issues. The customer service agent I spoke with told me — clearly and explicitly — that Budget does allow deposits to be made on debit cards.

So I showed up prepared, exactly as I had been told to be, and it turned out the information I was given was wrong. The policy the agent on the phone described and the policy the counter enforced were two completely different things.

Thankfully, my mom was with us on this trip, and we were able to use her major credit card for the deposit. If we hadn't had that option, we would have been left without a vehicle for our family trip. We would also have lost out on the hotel, since that was already booked and getting refunds is quite difficult. Our trip would have been completely ruined. That's not a situation anyone should find themselves in after doing their due diligence and calling ahead.

The Vehicle Wasn't Ready

Once the deposit situation was sorted, I thought we were finally in the clear. We were not.

The manager came over to the desk to apologize — which I appreciated — and then informed me that my vehicle was not yet ready. The earliest it would be available, he said, was 6:00 PM.

Six o'clock. My pickup time was noon. It was already three in the afternoon. He was asking us to sit in the airport for another three hours.

I told him that was not acceptable. We had already been in line for three hours. We had a family with us. We had a long drive ahead of us. Waiting another three hours on top of everything we had already been through was not possible.

To the manager's credit, he took that seriously. Within a few minutes he came back and said he had found a vehicle for us. He handed us a paper slip and sent us out to the garage to pick it up.

The Wrong Vehicle — But It Worked Out

When we got out to the garage and found the van, something was immediately off. There were more seats than we expected.

We had originally rented the 12-passenger model. The 12-passenger version has enough room behind the last row for luggage, which was important — we were a family of travelers heading to Florida for a week. What they gave us was the 15-passenger model, which has seats packed all the way to the back doors.

At first I thought this was going to be a serious problem. With all those extra seats, there was nowhere to put our luggage. The van was bigger but somehow had less usable cargo space for our needs.

Thankfully, the seats in the Ford Transit are removable. We pulled a few seats out, made room for our luggage, and we were good to go. It wasn't what we booked, but it worked.

I've written a full review of the 2026 Ford Transit 15-Passenger Van separately if you want to read about the vehicle itself — it's a great van. The rental experience was the problem.

The Billing Surprise

After we returned home, I started reviewing the charges on the major credit card that was used for the security deposit. I expected to receive a bill in the mail for any additional charges — tolls, fuel, whatever — not to have charges automatically applied to the card they had on file for the deposit.

But there they were: two charges I didn't expect to see.

The first was $165.99 for e-tolls. I expected to receive a bill for tolls after returning the vehicle, not to have the charge automatically applied to the card they had on file for the security deposit. But since we did go through tolls on our way down to Florida and back, at least that one made sense.

The second charge was $205.01, and I had no idea what it was for.

I called Budget to ask about the charge. The customer service agent's first response was that it was a refuel charge — meaning they were charging me because I didn't return the van with a full tank of gas.

I explained to the agent that we absolutely did fill the tank before returning it. I even had a picture of the fuel gauge from dropoff to prove it:

The gauge clearly shows the tank was full — the white bar is all the way up at the F mark. I wasn't willing to pay a refuel charge when I had proof that I returned it with a full tank.

The agent put me on hold to try to refund the transaction. The call dropped while I was waiting.

I called back a second time. This agent told me the $205.01 charge was for a vehicle upgrade — which we never requested or authorized. We got what they gave us, nothing more. This agent also tried to refund the transaction, but the call dropped again while I was on hold.

At this point I was beyond frustrated. Two dropped calls, two different explanations for the same charge, and still no resolution.

I called back a third time and explained that we had not upgraded our vehicle and that this was an invalid charge. This agent told me the charge was for added mileage. They couldn't refund the transaction directly, but they would escalate my claim to a department that could process the refund.

I was told to expect an email from this department. Up until this point, I have not received any such email. Thankfully, I do have a claim number that I can use to get updates on the case — but that means I have to call back every few days to check on the status myself.

Looking back at the pattern here: none of the agents could give me a real, consistent reason for the charge. It feels like they were just trying to ignore my refund request and find any excuse to make the charge stick. The first claim was a refuel charge — that was debunked when I sent the picture of the fuel gauge showing a full tank. Then it quickly turned into a vehicle upgrade charge — which was also false. The third agent told me the charge was for extra mileage. That one I debunked too: while we were standing at the counter waiting for our vehicle, I specifically asked the Budget employee if we needed to pay for additional mileage since we were driving to Florida. He looked at me and said, "No, you're good — it has unlimited mileage."

I'm still waiting to hear back from this "special department" to see if they're going to come up with yet another reason for the charge. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised.

Final Thoughts

The van was good. The process of getting it was one of the worst customer service experiences I've had.

From a confusing website that locked us into a single pickup location, to a closed counter with no signage, to a three-hour line where our prepaid reservation meant nothing — every step of this process was built to wear you down. The deposit policy contradicted what customer service had explicitly confirmed by phone. The vehicle wasn't ready at the reserved time. And when they finally handed us a van, it wasn't even the class we booked. The manager did step up when I pushed back, and I'm grateful for that. But I shouldn't have had to push back at all — not after three hours in line, not after a denied deposit, not after being told to wait another three hours. That tells you everything you need to know about how this process is designed to work. It's not designed for the customer. It's designed to be cheap, and you get exactly what you pay for.

If you're renting from Budget for a family trip, especially one where you need a specific vehicle type, here's my advice: call ahead, confirm everything in writing, bring a major credit card even if they tell you a debit card is fine, and show up expecting to wait.