SentientOwl
United States of America#2General Comment
Sat, February 13, 2010
I work in the storage industry as well, not at this company, but I can at least tell you a few things that may be helpful.
First of all, in orderto auction your unit in the first place, there is a very long process involved which has different requirements in each state. It is my understanding that in my state, we are not able to sell units for which we have accepted a partial payment. It would be prudent to check your state's laws reguarding this, but depending on the circumstances, this may or may not be helpful.
Secondly, to sell the unit, the company is required to contact you, though the extent to which they must make an effort to contact you varies by state. Most often this will include many phone calls, and at least one certified letter. If you changed this contact information without alerting PS, you may have accidentally shot yourself in the foot. They have no way of knowing if you moved unless you tell them, and if they cannot call you for whatever reason, then they may not be at fault.
As for the 'auctioneer', the person you spoke to was the buyer, not the auctioneer. If I'm not mistaken most states have laws which require that the auction buyer return some types of items to the tenant. Again, this varies by state, but most often includes documents, pictures, or any items which hold no significant value to anyone but their owner, such as children's drawings. At our property, all buyers who attend the auction must sign an agreement that they must do this in case they find any personal items in the unit, although the company has no way of actually knowing what they find in the unit. Most of the time our auction buyers will actually bring back boxes full of documents and pictures to our office for this reason, and we will inform the tenant that we have recovered these things for them. Unfortunately not all people are so honest.
The auctions are public, and anyone may attend them, so the company has no control over who buys your items, or what kind of perso they are. However, once they have won the auction, all contents of the unit do legally become their property, reguardless of how much they paid for it. Yes, many auction buyers sell the items at flea markes or online, and this is not illegal in any way. While it may have been rude, and some may consider it unethical to ask you to pay for your items back, he was correct in saying that he now owns them. This is of course with the exception of any items he is legally required to return to you, and again, check your state law on this. The point being, if he was asking you to buy back items which were legally his, this is not extortion, and PS should not be shamed because their auction buyers aren't nice people, because they have no choice but to allow them to attend their auctions.
I understand that this is a very upsetting situation, and in fact you may have been wronged legally if they refused to return the above stated items to you. However, as far as the rest of the items are concerned, there is nothing nefarious hapening here, and certianly no racket. You had the story jumbled up somewhere when you assumed that this was an auctioneer hired by PS, because the auctioneers that are hired by the company cannot bid on the units. I don't mean to accuse you or anyone else of any wrong doing, but I'm sure if you asked every single tenant who has ever had a unit sold at auction, they would all tell you that they were somehow wronged, or that something nefarious is going on. However, this is not because something really is wrong, it's because they are upset and looking for someone to blame. Public Storage does not 'allow' this to happen, they don't profit from the sale of your unit, in fact, most storage companies end up eating the cost of the auction because most units will not sell for anywhere near as much as what is owed on them. And in fact, the company can never profit off of the auction because if the unit is sold for more than the ammount you owed to the company, they are legally required to refund any proceeds in excess of your debt, back to you.
Also, you mentioned that you had lost military IDs in this auction. If you are an active service member, there are special laws reguarding the sale of your unit, and in some cases, the company may not be able to sell the unit at all. So check your state and possibly the federal laws reguarding this, they may be of some help to you.
I hope this helped, and I'm very sorry to hear of what you have lost. But please don't blame innocent people and corporations who followed the law, because it is not their fault. A company can't be expected to give a pass to anyone who is in an unfortunate situation, that would drive them completely out of business. But, if they did not follow the law, then I agree you are completely entitled to your posessions.