Stephanie M.

My family and I planned to take a trip to the country of Panama to visit some family and have my one year old able to spend some time with his grandparents for Christmas and New Years. Upon arriving in the country, on Dec 25, and making our way through the maze of the airport immigration and customs check points, with 7 ppl and a baby, we arrived at the Budget car rental kiosk only to be told that the rental that we had booked with them through booking.com had been sold to another customer since we were past the 1 hour buffer on our pickup time... They also said that they had no other cars available for us at this time. At this point we had the 7 of us plus a baby, with no car seat (car seat was part of the rental agreement) in a country where we had limited phone service options and resources and unable to get a large enough car for the week that we would be staying there...
From when we landed to when we got to the budget kiosk it took 1.5 hours, due to the long holiday lines at immigration and customs. Evidently, it is their policy that if you are 1 hour late they have the right to rent your car to someone else and not refund your money. My problem with this is that apparently they use the arrival time of your flight as the pickup time, making it nearly impossible (especially during the holidays) to make it from the gate to the car rental kiosk in under an hour... my family was forced to find other travel accommodations at a far greater cost that wasn't even large enough to fit everyone so we were forced to drive around with family members and a baby that were improperly secured in the vehicle.
Both budget and booking.com said that they stood by this ludicrous policy and that they would not be refunding us the $500 for the rental that we never received. We will not be using either of these services again, and hope that this information helps others in their decision making while looking for companies to aid them in their travel plans.

My family and I planned to take a trip to the country of Panama to visit some family and have my one year old able to spend some time with his grandparents for Christmas and New Years. Upon arriving in the country, on Dec 25, and making our way through the maze of the airport immigration and customs check points, with 7 ppl and a baby, we arrived at the Budget car rental kiosk only to be told that the rental that we had booked with them through booking.com had been sold to another customer since we were past the 1 hour buffer on our pickup time... They also said that they had no other cars available for us at this time. At this point we had the 7 of us plus a baby, with no car seat (car seat was part of the rental agreement) in a country where we had limited phone service options and resources and unable to get a large enough car for the week that we would be staying there...
From when we landed to when we got to the budget kiosk it took 1.5 hours, due to the long holiday lines at immigration and customs. Evidently, it is their policy that if you are 1 hour late they have the right to rent your car to someone else and not refund your money. My problem with this is that apparently they use the arrival time of your flight as the pickup time, making it nearly impossible (especially during the holidays) to make it from the gate to the car rental kiosk in under an hour... my family was forced to find other travel accommodations at a far greater cost that wasn't even large enough to fit everyone so we were forced to drive around with family members and a baby that were improperly secured in the vehicle.
Both budget and booking.com said that they stood by this ludicrous policy and that they would not be refunding us the $500 for the rental that we never received. We will not be using either of these services again, and hope that this information helps others in their decision making while looking for companies to aid them in their travel plans.