Budget Car Rental Ireland
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Poor service awful vehicle
I hired a vehicle from 31/08 - 02/09/2024 from Budget at Dublin airport. The queue in the terminal was handled quickly and instructions were clear. The wait for the minibus was a bit of a joke as we had been waiting about 10 minutes and other customers arrived after us. When a minibus eventually arrived it pulled up halfway down the stance and other people were able to get on before us. My self and one other of our company secured seats but had to wait for the rest of our company to arrive on the next minibus. On arrival at the pick up desk I was informed that the comprehensive insurance I had taken out with Booking.com (at the same time as the car hire) was not enough and they would have to put a hold of over €2000 on my credit card. This was declined so I had to pay £220 from my bank. The next problem however, was the vehicle we were given. A Dacia reg number 231-D-5841. about 2 minutes into the journey I noticed the clutch was slipping. This became progressivly worse and I then found it almost impossible at times to change gear as the selected gear would not engage. The warning light for loss of tire pressure also illuminated.Because I was on route to a wedding and had quite tight timescale to get to my destination I was unable to return the vehicle right away. The vehicle was not used the following day and only used on the Monday to return us to the airport. The clutch continued to slip, gear engagement was extremely difficult and at one stage the vehicle jumped out of gear into neutral. I reported the issue to the staff at the returns desk and recommended that the vehicle should be checked right away as I felt the clutch was about to go completely and this would obviously been dangerous if a driver was unable to select a gear on the motor way. This was met with complete indifference bordering on rudeness by the staff at the desk. They chose only to note the milage of the vehicle, hand me a note of this and tell me to go back to the desk and close the booking!