Budget Rent-A-Car – Hyatt Regency Embarcadero

I had a very pleasant experience after booking with this Budget in San Francisco. The entire exchange took less than 5 minutes, as I arrived just slightly early and was on my way with the expected car shortly after. It is easy to find inside the Hyatt, the valet brings the car directly to you, and away you go.
I had no issues with my reservation (although I was hesitant to book after reading some other reviews). The charge was a few dollars above the initial estimate gave me, but not enough to make much of a difference in my experience. I just found it a little odd.
I cannot comment on the return of the car at this specific location because I returned the vehicle in Burbank the next day, but that process was very smooth as well.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this Budget. Make your reservation in advance, be there on time, and you should be good to go.

Easy Peasey! No problems at all.
Made the reservation on my phone at Budget’s website about 30 hours beforehand and the car was ready when I went to pick it up. Their were two folks working the desk one did the paperwork, quicker than most other rental experiences I have had elsewhere. The other guy went to confirm that the car was ready and the car had already been brought up from wherever it was and was waiting at the driveway. Clean and ready to go and in good shape.
Drop off was after hours, so I just explained it to the valet and he immediately took care of it with no check through issues. One thing to note, if you are dropping off the car when the desk is closed (which it likely will be) there is a $ 25 fee added on for the valet and drop-​off. Which is kinda crappy. But, in explaining to the valet that I was already a checked-​in guest at the Hyatt, he told me that fee was waived, BONUS! So, confirm that little detail if you are a guest there, as it was certainly nice.
That rates are reasonable and pretty standard for the location and car sizes. The counter is on the ground floor, kind of in a corner as one enters from Drumm Street.
The place handles both Budget and Avis (odd?!), and it is past the escalators and elevators on the Market Street side of the building.
Definitely cannot give them five stars because the limited hours lack convenience to most customers who are going to be returning (picking up during off hours s not an option) when the desk is closed. Also, it would be super helpful to have garage parking with in and out privileges, even for a small fee, which would help with multiple day rentals. But all in all for a downtown SF rental experience, pretty decent.

DO NOT USE, I made a reservation for mid size almost 10 days in advance. When I cam to pick up the car they did not have the mid size I reserved, instead I had to wait for almost 30 minutes to get a small size.
the sad thing is they fail to acknowledge they mafe a mistake and at least be nice about it.
all I got was bad attitude and a feeling like I was a bad customer who complain all the time

I’m going to chip my 2 cents in and say I had an AWESOME experience with renting a car at this particular location.
I reserved my car in advance online. They gave me a cute ford fiesta in tip top shape. It was very clean, new, smelled great, worked great.
Picking up the car and dropping off the car was a breeze. They have valets that go pick up the car for you so you don’t have to walk around confused in those large endless parking lots.
Dropping off was easy… just drove up to the front entrance of the hotel, and handed my keys over to the valet, then walked to market and grabbed a bus home. I wish every car rental experience was this easy!

Location, location, location. Yes, you have to wait a little while for the valet to get your car from the garage, but this means you don’t have to go walking through a garage looking for your car in the first place. We waited about 10 minutes for our car to show up.
Price was right (Orbitz), service was efficient, and the car was a clean and relatively new Ford Focus, which was zippy and fun to drive to and around Point Reyes. Would definitely come here for a rental again.

AVOID.
This place does not know how to maintain their rental cars nor know a thing about customer service. The cars are in horrible condition and in need of major maintenance. The customer service reps are lazy, apathetic and slow. I’ve used this business three times, and had a bad experience all three times.
1. First time I rented a car, the car came with an empty tank of gas. I was on my way to a client site for work and despite the time crunch, I was forced to make a gas stop. When I mentioned this to the front desk, the representative responded with «Oh, the car was returned late last night so we didn’t have a chance to fill it up.» Seriously?!
2. Second time, I rented a car on a semi-​rainy day. The moment I turned on the windshield wipers, the wipers started jumping around in all kinds of directions and eventually stopped moving at all. Had it rained more than it did on that day, I would have been in big trouble.
3. Third time, the car I had would not accelerate past 40 MPH and would make a deafening noise that sounded like a TRACTOR. The a tractor is the last thing I want my car to sound like. It was horrid.
I vow to never return.

Not difficult to find unless you’re retarded, I mean the «Hyatt Regency» is in the name so inside the hotel would be a good place to start! Amazing location for San Francisco residents living in this part of town and not wanting to hike all the way to SFO or deal with the mob scenes of Union Square. Hailing for Manhattan, I’m just so not interested in owning a car. ZipCar is amazing for a few hours to a day, but a proper rental car is best when you want to go somewhere farther away for a long weekend.
My biggest issue is that the hours are convenient for the workers, but not so much for customers. You can drop off past closing time (5:30PM on weekdays, 1PM on weekends) until midnight, but will have to pay an extra $ 15 valet fee. Very inconsiderate to customers since long weekend trips usually end late in the evening, but worth the $ 15 just to be done with it all.
The lone guy at the desk was very quick and nice. I liked having the hotel valet take care of bringing out and returning the car to avoid obnoxious parking garage navigation myself. I didn’t experience any of the delays other people complained about, but then again, I was the only customer each time so that might have biased things.
The price was very reasonable, just google «Budget Coupon Code» before you book online to find some discounts. Try to avoid the add-​on fees, I mean who pays $ 15.95/day for GPS when everyone’s smart phone has Google Maps nowadays? A cheap car phone charger can keep you navigating the whole time despite battery hungry 3G. Also, research your credit card’s car insurance policy, it probably covers a lot of the things Budget offers (and you know their sales people won’t tell you about redundant coverage!).

Good rental. I don’t know why people are complaining about it. I’ve used it many times and never had any problems.

I don’t know what everyone else’s problem is but I had a great experience renting here. I booked online through
, it was clear that it was inside the Hyatt, and when I went to pick up and drop off the car, there was no line at all. My chevy malibu was also very clean and new. Great location near the financial district and ferry building.

This location s-​u-​c-​k-​s. Every time I have come here to pick up a car, I’ve waited in line for almost an hour. Horrible.

I should be clear that I’ll speak of my personal experience and a bit of my observations involving OTHER customers.
Pluses:
Excellent location — if you are coming from Sausalito to rent you can take the ferry and walk across the street in 2 mins.
Friendly Staff — they DO want you to be happy.
Pick up and drop off are easy with the ‘valet.‘
Opportunities for improvement:
They could be more efficient. While the staff do mean well, they get easily distracted and long delays ensue.
Budget might consider reducing the amount of forms and paper they use in a single rental transaction. I could hear the trees falling to the ground as the printer churned out pages and pages of paper for my one week rental!
I’m not sure how to fix this or make it more efficient but this location is SO BUSY that it’s impossible to get through on the telephone.
My experience overall was a VERY GOOD one. In the end I delayed my excellently priced one week rental by 3 days and got a free upgrade to a hybrid car to boot! I did have to wait A LOT and was slightly inconvenienced when I showed up and the staff were at lunch for an hour, but that was a chance to ask for some flexibility in my reservation which was fairly provided.
I thought Maria was friend, funny and did her best to make sure each customer was pleased.
I got the impression that there were many ‘regulars’ particularly locals, who rent from this location. It had a neighborhoody, «Cheers» feeling… even though it’s located inside the Hyatt Hotel at the top of the Embarcadero.
I’d rent there again for sure. I’d just allow extra time for the entire process.

Its really too bad that there are not 0 stars. I rented here through Orbitz, thinking it would not be that different from all my previous rental experiences at other companies (mostly Alamo). However, it was. (1) Their address is listed as «5 Embarcadero». Without distinguishing between «Embarcadero center» or «The Embarcadero», which allows one to walk in circles gettting angrier and angrier (2) You can call for directions after which an incredibly snide condescending woman will answer the phone and give you poor directions and provide you with more fodder for hostility (3) upon arrival, she will continue to barely cover her contempt or her ignorance of how the internet works (4) this is the single worst business experience i have had in years (5) i will gladly dedicate some portion of my consumer brain bad talking budget rent a car for the remainder of my life.

zero! do not rent here! the manager maria talks shit about every single customer after they leave!