Budget Car Rental

This establishment speaks poorly for budgets reputation. The staff was overwhelmed, unfriendly, and useless. I arrived shortly before my reservation to be informed that they were unaware of the reservation and didn’t have any trucks and that I should call the help number to find the nearest truck. After waiting twenty minutes for someone to pick up the phone they then said they would have to call new back in two hours. No thanks. They told me to go inside to cancel the reservation, went inside and they told me to call the number. Are you kidding me?

0 stars.
This place truly has the most incompetent, unfriendly, or shady employees hired here. Let’s start with Day 1:
I reserved a truck online and was given an estimated total of $ 70 for a trip from Silver Spring to Falls Church. I agreed to return the truck to the original location to avoid higher fees. My appointment was at 11AM. Upon my arrival, which I was 10 minutes earlier, my initial reaction was the location and store front: in the worse parts of the neighborhood and the store front lacking maintenance. I noticed only 2 employees working the run down front desk: a middle aged woman with Purple Hair and an Olive Skinned gentleman with an accent. The woman seemed new because, while she greeted every customer that came in, she basically handed the customers over to the guy. Thus, all us customers (4 in total) waited for 1 man’s time. Woman with purple hair’s job? Check for dents on the trucks and occasionally jump to conclusions. Purple Hair was finishing up with a couple. Clearly subtly and customer service is not taught in training. I overheard her blame the couple for a dent they were not responsible for, to a point where they had to defend themselves. It was not until Olive Skinned defended their honor and told Purple Hair that the dent was there prior. Purple Hair finally backed down.
I waited 20 minutes to get my paperwork done. The man rushed through the details of the paperwork, especially the fees. Had I not stopped to read the contract through myself, I would have been paying for hidden fees.
Truck was dirty inside, but they expect you top the gas off when you return it.
The next morning I had to return the truck back. I arrived 15 minutes earlier and spotted a different gentleman, we’ll call him Mr. Rude. As a sat in the truck waiting, we made eye contact but he continued to finish what he was doing rather than greet me. I hopped out of the truck 5 minutes before the store opened and immediately his stuck his index finger up and told me «Wait a second. I have 5 minutes until the store opens.» What the fudge, man.
Purple Hair came in a few minutes later, and immediately barked at a gentleman that parked a car in front of the store, under the impression that he was leaving his personal car there to park when really he was just dropping off.
Mr. Rude finally had time for me, and again rushed through the paperwork so I could get out of his hair. I ultimately paid $ 115. From $ 70 to $ 115? $ 30 insurance they claim? Yeah, I’m confused too. Paid it anyways just to get the H-​E-​double hockey sticks out of there.
SHUT THIS PLACE DOWN.

We rented a one way one day car from silver spring maryland to Dulles airport. We were given a sonata with major tire pressure problem. We returned the car to the center and the people at the counter behaved oddly as they knew they had a problem car. Too dangerous for employees to drive but wanted a unwitting paying customer to deliver it to the next destination for them. Customers beware of hidden dangers when renting cars here.

Boo worst customer service ever the supposibly part owner guy named Aman is a crook I was 1 min. Late and he wanted to charge me a late fee and gave me attitude about the situation I left more gas then I left with and he tried to charge me for gas this guy’s unethical this place sucks they don’t deserve no business!

terrible terrible costomer service i returned the gas exactly were it was and on time, they charged for gas and for being late, then the guy was rude and said he was the owner his name is a
Aman … stay away from this place!!! look at the reviews.

I am surprised reading the rest of the reviews here after completing my rental. My experience: I booked online through a third party site that gave me the best rate. I signed up for a budget account so they had all my preferences set ahead of time. I walked in and was helped by multiple staff. I do agree they must have insufficient inventory, though. I reserved a compact car and they gave me a larger one (no upcharge) because that was all they had. I was in and out in minutes. My return also hardly took a minute. I would return here to rent a car. Based on others’ reviews and my experience with them also not having the car I reserved, I would probably look to a larger site if I needed something specific.

Horrible place to rent anything! They scammed my 71 year old mother, made her buy insurance! Then when ask why he did that his response was «You are lucky I gave you the rental!» & «Just don’t come back here next time!» Ask for his name… He would give it to us, he hung up & was rude to the corporate office rep! Horrible time! Then they called to Police on her!!!

If I could give this place less than one star I would. First, Avis owns Budget but unless you know that you won’t know that the Avis reservation you made for this address is, in fact, valid. Not a single sign up. That was my first indication that this place was going to be a problem. Secondly, they are incredibly… no, outrageously slow. And not for a good reason. They’re too busy chatting with each other and their buddies. Third, they’re rude. They screwed up and don’t have the car I reserved ready (though they have the nerve to try to get you to prepay online — never do that unless you have free time to wait for your «discount»). Yet they still have the nerve to be rude rather than apologetic.

Based on the reviews, and never having rented a car before I was skeptical when I used the results of a thirdparty website to book with this budget. BUT I have zero complaints about my experience. There was no wait to get my car and I was upgraded free of charge. When I brought the car back it was quick as well with no problems what so ever. I will definitely use this place again.

I made a reservation for a sunday in order to move from Takoma Park into DC. However, when I showed up to the location, there were a number of people ahead of me in line and the one person who was working was explaining to another customer that they didn’t have her 16 ft truck available because they gave it to someone who had a reservation for a 10 ft truck and that they didn’t have any of those either. Apparently the one truck they had left was a 24ft truck. Reading the other reviews, it is clear that they have no sense of inventory management or customer service.
I left the budget office and immediately went to the huge UHaul location in Takoma Park. Within a half an hour, I had a truck, even though I had not made a reservation. I made the move during the day and was able to drop the truck off after hours. I had previously noticed that the Budget location said «no after hours drop offs» on their door, even though you can make a reservation online for an after-​hour drop.
This would have been the end of it had I not noticed a $ 50 «No Show» charge on my credit card. I called customer service and they took it off, but it is ridiculous that I had to do so. I don’t know why I went with budget in the first place.

Will never again reserve a car here. It’s inconvenient and the staff is plain rude.

Your truck is not here. The «reservation» you made with Budget is merely a suggestion. What, you didn’t read the fine print? Sorry, this place has a postage stamp-​sized parking lot and no place to put the trucks people thought they would rent. That this store knows this by rote, and that the Budget chain finds it acceptable to lie to people like this means this isn’t a glitch, but the way they want to run their business. Save yourself the stress and hassle of their deceptions, and take your business elsewhere.

I wish we could do ZERO stars. I booked a van for Memorial Day on the Budget website in order to complete a move between College Park and Bethesda. I showed up to find the office closed. No signs, not even one to acknowledge the holiday, just closed. Budget 800# scrambled to find me something small in the area for the same rate and threw in some free miles to compensate for the distance, but it delayed my move 2 – 3 hours and ran it into the peak heat of the day.

We’re moving from Petworth to Friendship Heights, and this was the second time my wife and I rented a truck from this outfit to complete the move. Last time everything was fine, although there was a lot of pressure from Budget to buy the additional insurance — understandable from their perspective.
However, this time they chiseled me out of twenty bucks.
I rented the truck last Friday night from the Sligo Ave budget, drove it to Petworth, and parked it in front of my house overnight. In the morning I filled it up with stuff, drove it to Friendship Heights to unload, then drove packing materials etc from there to the Ft. Totten Waste transfer station, then back to Budget to drop off. They presented me with my bill, which was $ 74.79. I think hmm. I remember it being about fifty bucks last time I did this same thing, I’ll double check when I get home.
I go home and google map my specific point-​to-​point route. it was 23.3 miles exactly. I look at my bill — they claim I drove 48 miles. That can’t be. I call the Budget people at Sligo and ask them to check their logs — there must be some mistake. They say no, the truck went 48 miles. A call to the Budget home office and that’s no help either.
I check my receipt from the gas station where I refilled the tank — $ 12.87 or about 3.4 gallons. Divide that out and according to budget, my truck performed a magical 14 mpg through stop-​and-​go traffic, but wait! the Budget site says that truck gets 6 — 10 mpg, consistent with the 23.3 mile, 7 mpg trip that I actually did.
Bottom line, they cheated me out of twenty bucks and wouldn’t own up to it. Judging from some of the other Unilocal reviews here, if you’re going to use this location, don’t trust them any further than you can throw them.

We showed up 20 minutes early to pick up our truck to move out of our apartment. We had a reservation. The staff took my name, and then 10 minutes after we were supposed to get the truck announced that they didn’t have a truck for us. First they insisted I didn’t have a reservation, but after I pulled up the confirmation email on my phone they conceded that I was in the system but they were out of vehicles. Not a smaller truck, not a bigger truck, just «no trucks.»
Because they kept us waiting for so long, we were unable to make it to another Budget prior to closing. Our entire life at this point was packed away and ready to be loaded into a truck for the move. We ended up having to delay for a day, which was a major hassle.
Literally could not get the guy in there to say «sorry.»
The entire place is sketchy as hell. Pay the extra couple bucks and go to Enterprise.

I see bad reviews which is unfortunate but my experience is always great. I am a regular here and I always get excellent service. I get better cars than other local car rental locations and the guy Armand is great. He goes beyond the service required for me each time I rent a car. Great place I’m going their today after a bad experience with Enterprise Rental. Enterprise is at the corner of my block but the service forces me to go to Sligo Ave b\Budget.

I would give them –10 000 if I could. This company is a disgrace and I will not be holding back on my hatred of them in this review. Despite reserving a 16ft truck nearly 2 weeks in advance for 8am on a Saturday morning, my wife and I encountered the following problems:
1. Location was not open until 9am — why were we able to make a reservation for 8am? We got up an hour early for nothing. We saw a mechanic working on the vehicles and all he could say was «I don’t know nothin’ bout that». Useless.
2. Arrived at the location at 8:55am only to find about 5 people in front of us, and the mechanic telling everyone «We ain’t got no trucks». The rental agent, whose name I believe was Arman, didn’t even arrive until 9:10am and proceeded to slowly serve the people in front of us, including telling a couple of people there wasn’t a truck for them, even though they also had reservations. Another rental agent arrived, a female, who proceeded to stand around, look grumpy and be totally and completely useless in doing anything, the ultimate pathetic employee.
3. Finally got served at about 9:45am and of course were told we didn’t have a truck. Arman proceeded to call corporate to see if there was a truck anywhere else around, of course there wasn’t so I spoke to the customer service manager there who explained there wouldn’t be anything today but maybe tomorrow there would be. I told her we reserved a truck for today, we should have one today. We had to move on the Saturday, we had no choice, we didn’t expect to turn up and be told they wouldn’t have anything for us. Both she and Arman took my cell number and told me they’d call me as soon as a truck became available. Neither of them ever did.
4. I received a $ 50 charge on my account stating «NO SHOW’ even though it was up to them to let me know when a truck was available. Absolute disgrace and trust me I will not rest until it is refunded.
Don’t trust any reviews praising them, I am 100% sure they are employees/​friends using aliases. Boycott these scumbags completely. We called U-​Haul as soon as we left and got a truck within 30 minutes from the Hyattsville location, and their service was exemplary in comparison.
Budget Rentals are appalling in every way, DO NOT USE THEM EVER!

TOTALLY INCOMPETENT!
I rented a truck online ahead of time so it would be ready when I got there. It took 1.5 hours to get the keys! There was only one person on staff who was not equipped to handle the customers in the place, let alone many of his friends that were just hanging out chatting with him. I was double charged for my order and never received a receipt. When I called and asked for a receipt I was told it would be emailed to me. When this never arrived I called back and was told emailing receipts wasn’t possible and the only thing he could do was fax the receipt to me. It’s 2014 and I don’t have a fax machine! I have an email receipt from when I made the reservation online… why can’t this place get their s*** together?

Worst rental experience ever. Truck was not ready for a full hour after reserved time. Under staffed.

I needed a one-​way rental and it seemed like everyone and their mama was trying to rent a vehicle that day because this place was the third place I tried that morning. The other two were out of cars and thought they would have something by that afternoon, but I needed a vehicle that morning and that wouldn’t do.
This budget is a bit of a ways from downtown silver spring but you can still get to it fairly easily on foot and by bus. It is tiny but actually has a small lot of cars and NO CUSTOMER PARKING. For goodness sake, don’t park on the driveway! When I was trying to pull out of the lot with my rental someone tried to park right behind me.
It does get very crowded in the shop quickly, and there’s limited seating so if it’s a busy day (like when I came in) be prepared to stand. And this location always seems to be severely understaffed, manned by one lone worker slaving away behind one desk and two computers. The guy moves fast, can juggle pretty well, and is a multi-​tasking rock star but that still doesn’t change the fact that the business, especially during the busy summer months, needs more bodies behind the desk.