Hey folks.

Just wondering if anyone else has had anything like this happen.

We have rented vans in the past and have used Minster Van Hire in York and the service and quality of the vans has always been very good. They take you right round the van and cover every inch before you take it out and do the same on return. The vans themselves are usually Ford Transit based box vans and very nice and powerful but still pretty good at fuel on a steady run etc.

This time round we found that Budget were pretty cheap and ordered a van from them.

Got there on saturday morning and the van we had ordered hadn't turned up. It was meant to be just a long wheel base VW Crafter (or similar!). They gave us an 05' plate LDV Box van with a tail lift. Great, we thought, a bigger van with a tail lift for the price of a normal van.

They then didn't even bother to walk round the van with us to check to any existing damage etc. Fine, I thought, as it doens't bother me as there would be no leg to stand on should any damage occur while in my posession.

Anyway after a very quick run through from the guy we set off.

All seemed well until we tried to join the A64... errr... is it a 1 litre engine or something?! I stuggled to maintain 50/55 with nothing in. Not good. Down to 4th all the time thrashing it trying to keep the speed going.

Anyway it wasn't too bad and we got to Tadcaster (not far). As my mum went to take her seatbelt off it wouldn't budge. It then just completely fell apart and it turns out it was broken and had we of had an accident would have done buggar all! Luckily we hadn't gone far at this point and there was another seat.

Then I realised that the handbrake did buggar all! Pulled all the way up it did nothing to hold the van!

Part way through the next day after being very tired from lifting/carrying and getting stressed with the lack of power from the van on the motorway the wipers packed in while it was raining heavily!

Called RAC out as I still had to get back to York (we were in Birstall, west yorks at this point). He got them going. The mechanism had seized.

Then driving back they kept stopping and each time I was about to pull over and they started again (they stopped for about 10 seconds at a time).

Other problems we had were the brakes pulling to the left quite badly and a lot of play in the steering wheel. we also couldn't lock the back of the van up as the lock was seized so had to leave a load of stuff in overnight. Luckily with the taillift switched off inside the cabin it covered the door and prevented access.

I dropped the van off this morning and expressed my dissappointment! They gave me a days worth of rental back after first offering another van for another day for free (yeah right!). I also refused to fill the van back up (was on 3/4 instead of full) due to having already filled it up from nearly empty due to having to thrash it everywhere!

They again never bothered to walk round and check the van.

Very shoddy company with even worse vans it seems!

Phil

Just found out why the van was so painfully slow...

It's a 2.5 litre. 72 bhp at 4,000rpm and 113lb-ft at 2,000rpm! Ouch! That's about as much as our old 306 1.9D had! Really not fit for purpose in a van able to carry 1.5 tonnes!

Same here with Budget, rented a Luton to pick up some Data cabinets and the Cab was yellow and the box was white.

Checked the reg online and it was registered as a Pick up!

Terrible state mechanically and woefully underpowered.

Those LDV vans are a bag of shi*e even when new,that is a very old van by hire company standards,im guessing it was the back up van should something happen to the other vans,we used to have a fleet of ldv minibuses,the ones with the pug 1.9d & the 2.5d,truely horrible vehicles!!

Budget are really poor in York, rented off them in the past a couple of times and was not impressed. Could of been worse by practical van hire still being in business, their vans were really shocking! Had a mini bus off minster a few weeks back and that kept on stalling when cold or when it felt like it, of course it behaved for them, don't think they would of given me a replacement if I didn't have the report from the AA which said take straight to the garage, even then they attempted to fob me off!

Those LDV lutons are awful. No wonder the firm did poorly.

My dads got a ldv maxus long wheel base high roof job, its got the slightly more powerful 90bhp engine in it but its not a patch on his old peugeot boxer van build quality wise and that had a 2.5 turbo diesel in it aswell but would quiet happily sit at 90 on motorway fully loaded.

I believe the ldvs use the same engine as jeep use in there 4x4's and from my experiance of them there a right sack of crap

Those LDV vans are a bag of shi*e even when new,that is a very old van by hire company standards,im guessing it was the back up van should something happen to the other vans,we used to have a fleet of ldv minibuses,the ones with the pug 1.9d & the 2.5d,truely horrible vehicles!!

Yep! I honestly cannot believe that it was a 2005 vehicle! The dash looked like it was from the early 90's, the door handles lookes like they had come of some 70's car, the gearbox felt like syncros had only just been invented, the engine- well truely unbelievable that someone was making engines so appauling in that year. There were better diesel engines around in the 80's/90's surely!

Anyway like I said I made my feelings clear and said that I would never want to rent one of their vans again. Pretty sure that the one I had was the backup one but still I would never trust one of their vehicles again.

The RAC man was far from impressed with the van too. He too couldn't believe just how shoddy it was when he asked me to fire it up to see if the wipers got faster with more power- as the engine shook and chugged into life! lol

Phil

I use practical round here, spot on, the bloke even wangled me going on the insurance a year under their limit. Nice 2 year old boxter, flew down the road. No complaints & cheap!

If that was me I would have refused to drive it any further once discovering the seatbelt problem.

I would have been straight on the phone telling them about the shoddy / unsafe state of it, left it in the nearest train station and got the train home!

I appreciate you might have been a few miles from home and wanting to get your job done, but it's far better to have to do it another day than the possible consequences of driving a vehicle it that condition.

The LDV vans had a solid front axle too really bad handling, the transit I had was in a totally different league could of drove one every day if it wasn't limited to 62mph!

Yeah the LDV of that era had leaf springs all round & a steering box,cheap & nasty cr*p. Our transit minibus is limited to 62 mph. :-(

My dads got a ldv maxus long wheel base high roof job, its got the slightly more powerful 90bhp engine in it but its not a patch on his old peugeot boxer van build quality wise and that had a 2.5 turbo diesel in it aswell but would quiet happily sit at 90 on motorway fully loaded.

I believe the ldvs use the same engine as jeep use in there 4x4's and from my experiance of them there a right sack of crap

Not sure about the LWB High room but i had to jump start a SWB maxus the other day (hire van used by us) & that had the transit/mondeo tddi engine in it.

The old LDV vans used the 2.25 then 2.5 litre Land Rover engines, not jeep ones!!

Our LDV 200 series & pilots had the peugeout 1.9D & the 400 series & convoys had the ford 2.5 DI engines. The maxus FWD have the ford tddi engine. The petrol ones had the rover V8 in (that was the only good thing about them!) :-)I believe some early ones had the perkins diesel but ive never seen one with the landrover 2.5 tdi in (all our defenders have these engines in them).