The need for a temporary storage unit presented itself when my partner and I decided to cohabitate. Since we both had furnished homes, there would be surplus furniture. We decided to store the surplus for a few months until making a final determination of what to do with it all. A week before the scheduled move, I contacted three storage facilities and opted for the one closest to our house, namely the U-Haul in Dublin, CA. Little did I know, that would soon become a very bad decision.

I went to the storage office to look at the storage unit sizes available since I wasn’t exactly sure which one I would need. The woman who initially helped me was nice, helpful and showed me the various options. I elected the 10’ x 10’ unit, completed the paperwork, received our security gate pass code and purchased the required U-Haul lock. Accompanied by movers, we arrived on Monday December 5th with the items for storage. When we pull up the gate to enter our security code, it was difficult to do because the keypad numbers were worn off. We tried a couple of times and the gate finally opened. When we proceeded to open the roll-up door to our new storage unit, we’re greeted by a dead rat and trash all around. Normally I simply would have left and found a new facility, but our movers were still standing by and there simply wasn’t enough time to secure a new storage facility; therefore I march into the office and requested a new storage unit for obvious reasons. It took over 30 minutes to determine they did not have another same sized unit, so they offered us two 8’ x 8’ units located next to each other at the same price as our 10 x 10 unit. They sent us to the location of our new units, but we when we arrived we learned the units already had locks and appeared to be in use. We continued to go through this exercise for another 30 minutes until they finally sent one of their own employees to do the search for available units. Since I wasn’t born yesterday, I asked the U-Haul employee to confirm the price in writing for the two units, which he did by noting the information in our record, on my original paperwork and provided me a copy. What should have taken 1 hour to unload and lock up, took three hours (our movers were getting paid by the hour, rightfully so).

We thought our U-Haul troubles were behind, but we quickly learned differently when we received our first bill. We should have been charged for the original size unit, but we were charged more, the regular full price for two units, something U-Haul said they would adjust. I called the U-Haul office and spoke with the Manager and went through the entire story. He saw the note in the record and said he would have it taken care off. We promptly paid the correct adjusted amount that day. The following month we get another invoice with the unpaid charges (which should have been adjusted) and the current month charges, which still have not been correctly adjusted. Since it was near a weekend, I decided to go to the office in person and speak with the manager directly. There were only two people behind the counter to help the line of 7+ people, most waiting to purchases boxes/tape, rent vehicles or get propane and all of whom were equally as unhappy as I that the line wasn’t moving. After 30 minutes, it was my turn and I asked to speak with the manager. He pulled up the record and indicated he sent the request, but that there was no way for him to make the adjustment in the system as he did not have the authority to do so — it had to be done by the corporate office. I requested that he contact the headquarter office but he indicated he was too busy given the weekend and no one would be there anyway, so he would do it on Monday. We paid the 2nd invoice less the amount needed to be adjusted.

A few weeks later, we received two separate lien notices (one for each unit) indicating we were past due and that if the charges weren’t settled, the contents would be sold. Subsequently, my mother, who was listed as emergency contact, also received two lien notices regarding my two storage units. I called my local U-Haul office the following day and again asked to speak with the manager to get the status of the incorrect invoicing and to share my frustration in receiving lien notices as a result. He indicated there was no way for him to stop the lien notices, but as soon as headquarter office corrected the charges, they would stop. This went on for another month with additional lien notices arriving every few weeks and calls to the Manager being a complete waste of time. In the meantime, it was necessary for us to access our storage unit. When we arrived at the security gate, the keypad was still so worn that we weren’t able to read the numbers easily. After several attempts, we could not get the gate to open so I walked inside only to learn that our code had been suspended for non-payment. Needless to say I was furious. I explained the problem and asked her to access our record. She indicated she couldn’t fix our code, it would have to be done by a manager, but she would let us through the gate. We drove to our storage unit area only to find a special “U-Haul” lock had now also been placed on our storage units preventing us from accessing the contents. We drove back to the office. The same woman said she would send someone to remove the “U-Haul” lock (wouldn’t that have been nice for her to have done when she learned the reason for our gate code being suspended). We waited by the unit for someone to remove the lock. By the time we retrieved what we came for, the entire process took about an hour, something clearly that should have taken 10 minutes.

Finally I decided to remove the middleman and deal directly with the headquarter office personnel. I called the individual with whom the manager indicated would be handling it. When I called her, she mentioned she was no longer doing ‘that’ job but what see what she could do because they hadn’t replaced her yet. She promised to call me back the following day. I didn’t hear back so I called her again. The woman who answered the phone said the person I was trying to contact was on vacation and that there was no one that could help me while she was out, but that I should call back a week later. In the meantime, more lien notices. I called the following week and was placed on hold for over 20 minutes before I hung up. I called back and was transferred to a mailbox that was full and would not accept new messages. These type of telephone experience continued over the next couple of days with calls that were transferred to people who indicated they could not help, promises of someone checking into the problem for me, calls transferred to extensions that had no voicemail box and would ring and ring, etc. It took another 2-3 weeks before I made any headway in resolving this matter.

The incorrect charges were finally corrected, we moved our items out of storage shortly thereafter and vowed never to return to U-Haul again. We’ve all heard that saying…. “never say never”, but I can honestly say that I will never return to U-Haul.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Service Stories, Nightmare Service, Accountability in Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.