Gib Leonard’s Car Clearance Center

Do NOT rent from this location, they will most definately charge excess amounts to your credit card, provide no receipt for the charges, then hang up on you repeatedly if you call to discuss it. I called Budget directly to assist with resolving this issue with the franchise but this location refused to answer calls from Budget as well. Additionally, I witnessed an Employee guide a rental car to back out of the parking lot only he directed the little car right into the back of the truck I was renting. The car was damaged and so was the truck. The car couldn’t see with all the tall trucks around so he was relying on the help of this employee to back out of the lot. Then the employee blamed the customer and told him he would have to pay for the damages. This place is a total scam on additional charges for damages they are liable for. Avoid this place at all costs.

Rented from them again and, yep, they’re still signing contracts, charging credit cards, and giving out trucks. Pretty darn good business model for a truck rental place, if I do say so myself. Never had a bad experience with these folks to date.

Ugh. I hate writing 1-​star reviews. But a girl’s gotta do what a girls gotta do right? I’m only doing it for you Unilocal so that you can learn from my mistake.
Ok. Here we go:
I just relocated to Arlington from Philadelphia. We moved down on Sunday but had to park overnight because the storage place wasn’t open. We parked it and moved my things into storage on Monday (today). On our way to the unit, I hit a sign and broke the mirror. My boyfriend, who was in his car behind me, got into the truck with me to help me make right turns (because I broke the right mirror). We got to the storage unit in Arlington, moved my things out, and decided to play it safe by going to the closest budget. We get there and… just when we thought things couldn’t get worse.
Major rudeness from every angle of the room. So the first guy wasn’t nice at all, which is fine because sometime people are just unhappy. I can deal with that, but then he became huffy. That was weird because he asked me a series of questions before finally telling me he didn’t have any room for another truck. He asked me how the mirror broke, where it broke, where I was originally scheduled to take it, and maybe two other questions. Why in the world ask me all those damn questions if you know you don’t have room. That just makes me think you’re lying and don’t want to deal with the broken mirror. He still wasn’t that bad though. If he had been the only person I dealt with, I may have given 2 stars.
But theeeeen, from the right of the office, another worker decides he has to be the big bad wolf and provide an unnecessary aggressive no. He didn’t look up at us once. It was so rude. It was really bad. He should’ve just said, «Get the fuck out of here», because that’s what he pretty much said. Remember that this is on top of an already stressful move that included me breaking a mirror. If I wasn’t stressed I would’ve probably not been affected at all. I wish people could be nicer.
Anyway, I still need to be objective, so here’s the good.
1. This is the only Budget in Arlington
2. They had a good amount of trucks
I will still never use Budget again.

The guy that owns the place is a HUGE bag, and made a very simple process extremely stressful. I’m a consultant and travel often so I’m familiar with how the rental process should work. I chose budget for a rental truck because they were having a promotion that made their trucks slightly less expensive than their competitors, but this was a mistake.
My husband and I got to the rental office 10 minutes before they opened so we wouldn’t have to waste time waiting in line. I had movers coming to my place at 9:30 that charge by the minute (I live a short 5 minute drive away) so I figured I’d be in and out of the place by 9:15. When the doors opened at 9 there were a good ten people behind us. I handed the man my credit card and driver’s license and told him I had a reservation.
He asked if I wanted to purchase extra insurance for $ 120. I told him no, that I already had insurance; at which point he stepped out from behind his desk and addressed the entire line. «Ok, folks. We’ve got some brave souls here not purchasing insurance today. I’ve been in this business 18 years. I own this place, and I have seen everything. 99% of the time your insurance will not cover truck rentals. This is completely different than car rentals, and your insurance will only cover liability to the truck so we always recommend you take it, now (back to me)… are you sure you don’t want the insurance?» I said I was sure, and that I had already checked with my insurance provider and felt confident I would be covered. He looked at his partner at the other desk and shook his head and scoffed, «brave souls.»
I was more than a little annoyed at this point because I didn’t feel that the public display was necessary and I was already in a hurry, but I held my tongue. He then told me to enter my address into his computer, and got up and started working with other people. As soon as I touched the keyboard the window disappeared, but I still had to wait another five minutes for him to come back to me. When I explained what happened he said, «Oh, I’m sorry. I thought because you’re young you’d be technically savvy.» I’m an IT consultant, and very comfortable navigating around a PC, but even if I wasn’t I would never talk to a client that way.
I stared back at him and he told me that I might lose my reservation; at which point I began having an internal melt down. I had already incurred about $ 3,000 in expenses for this move to happen that day and this guy is telling me it won’t because the window disappeared? All I could say is «that’s not funny,» and me he would «see what he could do.» He fumbled logging into his application about six times (I honestly think he was just trying to mess with me at this point) and then when he finally got in he told me I was lucky. He then looked at my husband and said are you the only one driving? I told him I was. He said, ok because if anyone else drives the truck won’t be insured (seriously, again with the insurance? Ugh!). We told him we were in a rush so he finally gave me the form I had to sign and told me the truck was the only one outside and that I couldn’t miss it. Great. It was 9:20 and I would make it back just in time before the movers did. I walk outside and immediately see the budget truck I ordered sitting alone in the lot ready to go. I assumed this had to be my truck and got inside. He then came out a minute later and told me I had to pay more attention, that the number on my key didn’t match the number on the back of this truck. My car was parked out on the side of the street. I have a sneaking suspicion that he only came out to see if I really was the person that was going to drive the truck away, because he had a line of 15 people at this point and had already finished assisting me but who knows for sure? All I can say is that it took me thirty painful minutes to get out of the office, (the movers beat me home) and the customer service was terrible.

I have never dealt with a more useless or unhelpful company in my life. I was doing a local, one day move and was warned against using U-​haul, so I thought that I would give Budget a try. Plus, they were running a special for 25% off if you rented a truck from Sunday — Thursday.
I booked a cargo van because that was the largest «truck» I could use given the small alley at my apartment complex and the tight one way streets in DC where I would be moving. So I made my reservation online, received my reservation confirmation email, and took vacation time from work to take advantage of the discount they were offering.
I arrived at 9:15 on Monday (15 minutes after they opened) and knew as soon as I pulled in that there would be trouble. They only had one cargo van and a handful of other larger trucks. When I walked in the office, I was third in line.
The first girl completed her paperwork and went outside to inspect the truck with the salesman. Of course, they went straight for the cargo van, did inspection, and off she went.
The gentleman after me was in some sort of argument with the salesman, but I’m not sure exactly what it was about. All I know is that it ended with the salesman giving the guy an address and telling him that a truck would be waiting for him there.
Now it was my turn. I give him my reservation and said that I had the cargo van reserved, of which there were none! He looked at my reservation and said, «Ok, you can have the 16 foot truck.» When I told him that I couldn’t take a truck that big and that I had a confirmed reservation for a cargo van, he said, «I’m sorry, but we only have 1 van and it goes to the first person.» I told him that was unacceptable and asked what alternatives I had given that I had a reservation and had taken valuable vacation time, and he just stared at me blankly. I’m assuming that this was his defense mechanism. I asked him again what I was supposed to do, and he said, «Look, there are seven people after you that think they reserved the cargo van too.» as he pointed at the monitor. I’m not sure how this was supposed to make things better. I told him to cancel my «confirmed reservation» and left. I finished my move using several friends and their cars.
I don’t understand how places like this stay in business and how they can make multiple reservations when they only have 1 van. I will never go back here and will warn any friends who are moving about this place.

Got our truck relatively quickly, with no issues.

I rented a 15′ Budget truck from Gib Leonard’s when I moved out of my apartment.
Main problem: there was only 1 woman manning the office on a Sunday. But wait, it gets more absurd! Not only was she working the Budget truck rental, she was also working the Avis car rental desk. She would run back and forth between the two offices that were housed in the same building. After 30 minutes of handling Avis customers, she took 3 Budget customers (including me) to the Budget office in the back, processed two of them, and after another 20 minutes told me to go inspect my truck. When I returned, she had gone back to the Avis desk to clear some more Avis customers for another 30 minutes.
In her defense, she was working as efficiently as possible (while dealing with a particularly annoying customer). And she even told us to complain to the boss during the week because it was so ludicrous to expect her to be able to run the entire office on a weekend, when everyone is renting trucks to move. The end result is that I drove my truck off the lot about 1.5 hours after arriving there, which is unacceptable.
So their customer service kinda blows, which is to be expected when you go to these truck rental places.
The flip side is that the truck I received was in very good condition, there’s a gas station nearby to fill the truck up right before you return it, and most importantly, you can walk to the Clarendon Metro station, which is the only reason this business is getting 2 stars.
And a lesson I learned, if you’re putting stuff in storage, these storage facilities will often have trucks that they will rent out to you for free or for a much-​reduced price.