Complaint Review: Allied Interstate - Columbus Ohio

I am currently an employee of Public Storage and I do see this happen, any small balance left on the account is due to the lock not being removed before new rents occur, luckily Public Storage does pro-rate you for the days you used, I see other small mom and pop companies charge the whole month. As far as the balance, letters are automatically sent from Public Storage informing you of any balance giving you time to take care of it before collections. As noted in the lease you signed at move-in, it also states to provide Public Storage with 1 weeks notice minimum of vacating, that way if possible you are made aware of in advance for any pro-rated rent due. As far as the harrassing calls from Alliance, that is on their part, those calls were not made to you by Public Storage. Please note usually if your balance is paid within a certain amount of days of the 1st notice of collections it will NOT reflect on your credit. As the rebuttal from another posting here, Public Storage does not nickel and dime anyone, if you are receiving a service and do not pay Public Storage is obligated to collect those rents. And FYI, Public Storage does not send any balance less than $25 to collections, if they nickel and dime, they would send ALL.

I see several things wrong with this complaint. If this person closed their account in the office at the time of vacate, they would have received a "vacate receipt" showing a balance of "0" and the account paid in full. If you close any account you are entitled to a receipt that shows you are paid in full, to whine about it later because you were too lazy to follow the instructions given to you at the time of purchase or rental seems to be the norm these days. He claims to have rented the space for several days but the fact is when he rented it, he paid for a month in advance. This tells me he vacated after the 1st of the following month or he didn't remove his lock until after the 1st of the following month. The only way he could have been charged any amount in addition to what he paid is if he moved out after 30 days and did not go into the office to close his account and pay the prorate for days used. Therefore they charged him for extra days in the following month. If there is a balance due my best guess is he left the lock on the unit and did not go in and notify the Property Staff he had vacated. They naturally assumed he was still a tenant. Or upon doing lock checks which they do daily as time allows they discovered his unit vacant and charged him right up until they discovered he had vacated. What we see most often is customers that move in the middle of the month, using the $1 special and claiming they need the space for only a few weeks. On the 1st of the month the rent is always due regardless of what day you moved in and the $1 special covers you for 30 days starting the day you moved in. So say you moved in on the 14th of the month you dollar special covers you for 30 days, say from the 14th to the 14th of the following month, however since rent is due ALWAYS on the 1st they would have charged his account for the last two weeks of the current month that was NOT covered by the $1 special (the prorated amount) DUE ON THE 1ST. The staff would have asked this man to pay the pro-rate for the following month in advance when he moved in, my guess is he told them no as he would be out in a few days. So he vacated after the 1st, and didn't pay the prorate. This is an honest company and I know because I worked for them. As for ALLIED had he called our Collections Department at Corporate with one email they could have stopped Allied from calling him, stopped the account (as in clsoing it with Allied). If PS Collections didn't do this then he owed the money! No one likes collection agencies so my suggestion is, following instructions when renting anything, read your rental agreement and understand it's contents, get a receipt and guess what???? you will NEVER hear from a collection agency.. amazing how simple this is, don't ya think?

You are not the first,and will not be the last person this will happen to. I have seen Public Storage go after people for a quarter,and there is no such thing as fixing an error with Public Storage. I used to work in the District that this store is located in and the DM has no clue what she is doing. She is just like the rest of the people in the Michigan Region. I suggest you pay the money and avoid getting your credit history destroyed over this small amount of money. My advice is stay away from PS.