Hertz - sorry for choosing budget over hertz

Usually I rent from hertz but this weekend I decided to save $100 on a weekend rental and rent from Budget. I made the reservation over a month ago- it was supppose to be for a cadillac CTS. When I arrived at the airport(MIA) budget location I gave them my license and credit card and I was told to stand on the side and I will be called when my car is ready. fine. Over the next hour and 45 minutes I politely asked several times where is the car and they told me to wait. finally after an hour and 45 minutes I got angry, raised my voice and demanded answers. then the manager comes over and tells me that they dont have the CTS and he offered me an expedition at the same price. I refused because I dont like big SUVs and the expedition isnt covered by my insurance. the manager was like "oh well" and walked off as if this whole ordeal was my fault. then I left with no car. This ruined my weekend trip.

if they didnt have the car that I reserved they should have tried to rectify the situation by giving me another car when I arrived-not almost 2 hours later. They did have other cars, during my long wait I watched many folks come in get a car and leave.

From now on I will stick with hertz even if I have to pay 30% more. 2 hours is long time to waste after flying 4 hours for a weekend trip

sorry, I had to to vent

since budget is almost always cheaper than hertz, maybe for the next time, you can still have your reservation with budget, but have a backup reservation with hertz, just in case, that way you wouldn't be stuck without a car

MIA is the worst place on earth to rent a car. I once made the mistake of using Alamo there for a similar reason: I wanted a convertible, and I got greedy when I saw a sweet promotional rate with Alamo.

The problem then was that the Quicksilver kiosks were out of order. ALL of them were dead. Mass chaos in the "regular" line - I wasn't about to stand in that. My traveling companion at the time spoke pretty good Spanish, so we were able to corral one of the workers outside, get ahold of some keys to a convertible, and then find a manager to give us the paperwork to that car. Totally backwards process, and it took over a half hour. Totally not worth the fifty bucks or whatever I saved vs. doing a Hertz rental.

I'm still occasionally willing to do a "second tier" rental. But it's generally gotta be a weeklong rental or more (where losing 10-15 minutes isn't quite as much of an impact), a hundred bucks or more in savings, and at an airport that I have a reasonably good feeling won't be totally nuts when I arrive. So places like MIA, LAS, etc. - I don't gamble. Somewhere smaller or less of a party destination...might be worth a shot.