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Help! Budget Charged Us $450 to Clean Our Rental Car. Can They Do That?
Sure, there were footprints and some dirt, but days after a family from Ireland returned a car to Kennedy Airport, they were hit with the maximum cleaning fee.
Dear Tripped Up,
We rented a car from the Budget agency at Kennedy Airport in New York this past August for a two-week family vacation. When we returned it, the staff member who checked it in told me everything was fine. But four days later Budget sent a letter saying it was charging my credit card $450 for “Excessive Interior Dirt — Sand.” I complained multiple times via email, sending them time-stamped photos and video I had taken of the car’s interior, to no avail. Can you help? Arden, Kells, Ireland
Dear Arden,
I took a look at your images, but also those from Budget’s own damage report, and could see little grime beyond kid footprints on the back of the driver’s seat and some dirt in the footwells.
The company’s terms and conditions note that it can bill you “for what we determine in our sole discretion are excessive stains, trash, dirt, soilage, odors or pet hair,” and elsewhere on its website states that fees max out at $450, noting that “tobacco odor and residue” might result in such a charge.
Determining cleaning fees is not an exact science, but it’s also not brain surgery: Budget went overboard here. As far as I can see, there’s no excessive anywhere.
Soon after I contacted Budget, an employee called you to offer a full refund and you said the company admitted the charge was disproportionate. But in a statement sent to me, Lauren Bristow, Budget’s director of marketing and communications, avoided admitting the company was at fault.
“In this case, the vehicle did require additional cleaning, which resulted in the cleaning fee,” she wrote. “However, as part of our commitment to customer satisfaction and based on this customer’s overall rental experience, we did refund the charge in full as a gesture of goodwill.”
