Complaint Review: U-Haul Mission Avenue - Escondido California

We rented two units at U-Haul, having the rent automatically charged to our credit card, At the end of January realized we only needed one unit. We consolidated our stored property into one unit, replaced our lock on that unit, and went to the office to have our contract amended to show we only had one unit. During the process, the rep. messed up, cancelled our contract and the assistant mgr.(AM) stepped in to take over.

The AM said he was unable to fix the problem (it was a Saturday) and that he would call "corporate" on Monday to fix it. AM didn't call us to notify us of the fix, so we called him to find out the status. He said he was taking care of it and we didn't need to call back. After that, work and business trips intervened preventing us from checking up. When I received my credit card statement and noticed no charge from U-Haul, I became worried.

My husband and I went to the U-Haul storage facility this past Saturday and found that my husband could not access the facility with his card key and passcode. The owner/manager took my husband back to the unit and found that our lock was gone, that a U-Haul lock was in place, and that our property was gone. The computer in the office indicated that the unit was vacant and ready to be rented. Apparently, the AM had never gotten the contract taken care of and indicated in the computer that we VACATED the unit at the end of January, hence no charge to our credit card.

At the beginning of March the storage coordinator responsible for selling abandoned items inspected the facility, found our unit empty with no lock and so none of our items were auctioned by U-Haul. So this means that sometime between the end of January and the beginning of March, someone cut the lock off our unit and took our property. Conveniently there are no cameras that record the hallway in which our unit is located. The lock we used was the one the U-Haul facility required us to use.

It is branded by U-Haul and claims that because of the short shank, bolt cutters can not remove the lock. This would lead me to believe that someone from outside the facility could not remove our lock. Obviously, U-Haul must have a means to remove these locks from units of delinquent renters which leads me to believe that someone from inside, i.e. a U-HAUL EMPLOYEE must have stolen our property. We called our insurance, the property is covered, but unfortunately falls below our deductible (bummer)and we called the police to file a report. Unfortunately we believe that will go no where because the officer stated that technically it is not considered a theft because we can't prove the unit was broken into - contract expired, computerized notes written by employee which supposedly prove that we vacated the unit, U-Haul lock on the unit.

I mentioned how convenient that the people I suspect of doing the deed are the ones who made the comments on the computer. I told the officer, the stuff didn't just disappear. The big issue here is there are some very personal items in the unit that mean a lot to my husband and the only real reason we were storing these things was because we just moved here and needed a place to temporarily store things while we got settled in. He is very disappointed. We're hoping someone else has some suggestions for us. Thanks!

Valerie

Carlsbad, California
U.S.A.