Basically, yes.

Avis Rent A Car System, LLC and Budget Rent A Car System, Inc. were both owned by Cendant, which also (at one time) owned Orbitz as well as the illustrious Wyndham hotel brand, before Cendant split itself into four component businesses--one of which was Cendant Car Rental Group.

That company later rebranded itself as Avis Budget Group, the name it carries today.

In locations where both brands are operated corporately, Avis and Budget typically operate jointly behind the scenes, albeit with separate customer-facing facades (have to create the illusion it's two brands, of course, to maximize public exposure).

In franchised cities, Avis Budget Group maintains separate franchise agreements with Avis and Budget licensees. In both instances, Avis and Budget also maintain different standards; for example, Avis has stricter minimum shuttle bus frequencies and maximum customer wait times/staffing requirements.

Those stricter standards mean that Avis typically has higher prices to correspond with the (theoretically) higher level of service, especially when both brands are operated corporately (and are thus not competing with each other). It's interesting, then, to see in this case that Avis is cheaper than Budget--when both are corporate stores in RNO.

Also, in related news: Avis Budget Group recently announced their intent to purchase Avis Europe plc, thus bringing Avis Europe under the corporate fold. Whether that will have a positive effect on the ability of complaints about European locations to be addressed by U.S. customer care has yet to be determined...

Yeah, I'm adding Budget to my "do not rent" list. I just got billed $20/day for an "upgrade" at MCO. It was actually an involuntary upgrade, as they were out of the car class I had reserved, but yes, if you look at the fine print on the contract, it does indicate the upgrade fee and I did sign it. In my defense, it was after midnight after several hours of flight delays and I was in a rush; and of course, the agent said nothing about an upgrade fee, only that she was upgrading me due to a not having the car I reserved. It also took forever to check out because apparently un-picked-up rentals are purged from their system at midnight and have to be manually rebooked.

I did query customer service, but got the you signed it, you pay for it response.