Castle Storage Storage company changes rules and auctions your unit to themselves. Be careful what you store. Eugene , Oregon
I had a storage unit with castle storage for about 6-7 months. Let me say they really know how to bury you with late fees (fees with an s plural more than one). Their late fees are like parking tickets if you don't pay them within x amount of time they double. Im not sure how the bills get so high so fast but they do and before you know it your unit goes into lean status. Anyway so after so long I was in lein status owing almost $600 dollars. My unit was scheduled for auction and I could not stop that from happening unless I came to the office and payed the full amount in cash. No other forms of payment would be accepted. So on the original scheduled date I called to see what time the auction was and i learn they had rescheduled the auction. They changed the day of the auction from a sunday to the friday of the civil war game one of the biggest home games of the season. Who goes to an auction on a game day. No one. Everyone would be at the game. After the auction I learn that they changed the way they auctioned the unit for that day only for the first time ever from normal per item auction to a sealed bid one amount for the whole unit and for $150. I also learned that the buyers were none other than castle storage themselves. Three women that work there split the $150 three ways. I feel that it was dirty and devious to change the day to a day when no one would come and I lost the entire contents of my house to the very company who i trusted to keep it. literally. I had a lot of nice expensive things in there.. Obviously they knew this. I just don't think it's legal. There must be a law against what they did. If the auction was not rescheduled and it got sold to some random person fine. I could live with that but what they did is wrong.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
for me to know
eugene,Oregon,
United States of America
REALLY
#3Author of original report
Mon, February 01, 2010
Really. Now they are claiming that they did not in fact buy my boyfriends and my unit. If that is true then how did my friend who is friends with a relative that works at castle storage get a document with my boyfriends name dob address and other identifying information. And why would she tell me her friends relative who works there had it cause they bought the unit themselves. The document that she had was an arrest record or ticket. I thought all personal documents and pictures were returned to the rightful owner. Obviously thats not true either. So I don't know which one of their employees has a relative that is friends with my friend but I heard all about it and it made my heart sink. It still makes me angry to this day. The fact that they lie about it makes me even more angry.
Castle
Eugene,Oregon,
United States of America
The Truth About This Unit at Castle Storage
#3UPDATE Employee
Fri, January 29, 2010
First of all, I would like to start by saying that the person who filed this report did NOT have a storage unit with us, but her boyfriend did. This auction took place over a year ago.
This customer had the unit for one year and was habitually late in paying rent and late fees for the first 7 months that he actually paid.
He was told about our late fee policy and accepted the terms when he signed our monthly contract by initialling the area that explains our late/lien fees which are as follows: $10.00 when 11 days past due...another $10 after 21 days past due... another $30 when 31 days past due and $90 is charged for lein fee after 45 days past due. (Oregon state law requires only 31 days, but we allow 45 days)
During that time they wrote us a bad check, so we would only accept cash from this customer. They also could not keep us furnished with a valid address. Six late letters were returned due to insufficient address.
When payments completely stopped we found his name on a public website that he was in Lane County Jail. We looked there because Eugene Police had contacted us regarding this unit while investigating him on property theft allegations.
This unit went 5 months without payment at $87 per month, one month of late fees at $50, and a one time lien fee of $90 for a total of $575.
She is right that we changed the way we did auctions. Instead of having the cost of an outside auctioneer and offering piece by piece items of the units, we took sealed bids on the whole units which is one method under state law. Each unit was valued by an outside auctioneer. The value of this unit was $150, which is where the bidding started. The unit was sold for more than that to the highest bidder and not split by the staff of Castle Storage.
Our auctions are always on a Saturday, game or no game and we have averaged at least 20 or more attendees at every auction. Not EVERYBODY goes to the games!
If she had an issue, she should take it up with her boyfriend and not slander our business.