Complaint Review: UHaul - Phoenix Arizona

 I decided it would be easier to just submit a copy of my initial letter to UHaul in Phoenix, AZ. From my understanding, this is where complaints about the company are sent:

July 11, 2013

U-Haul International

ATTN: MANAGEMENT 2727 N. Central Ave.

Phoenix, AZ 85004

RE: Reservation number XXXX989



To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing regarding our recent experience with UHaul. We have our house up for sale, close to closing. We were told by our realtor to be out of the house by June 27^th, so we made arrangements for this to happen.

On June 17, 2013, we originally made a reservation online for three pods from UHaul. We received a phone call to verify the order, the lady was very nice. She suggested we go to a nearby UHaul and look at the pods to make sure they would work. We get to the nearest UHaul only to find that they will not work, as UHaul gives the exterior measurements of the pod on the website, not the interior measurements, in which case the interior measurements cut half a foot off of every side, making it so that our couch won’t even fit into the pod. We had to nix that plan.

We then looked at 20’ trucks and decided that would be enough to fit our house into. We went online on June 18, 2013 to reserve a 20’ truck. Our reservation number for that is 20486989. At this time, we were also offered a month free at a storage facility – a list of storage facilities was below this offer, so we were under the assumption that we should pick from those facilities. NOWHERE in the offer does it state it has to be a UHaul facility or any other specifics making us not think that we shouldn’t pick from those storage facilities listed on UHAUL’s website at the time of the offer – more on that later in this letter.

 Back to the truck rental. On June 19, 2013, we received an email stating someone would be contacting us on the day of the reservation. This made us nervous as we wanted to get this paid ahead of time so that we would be all ready to go on the day we were to get our truck (June 23, 2013). It also told us to call to set up arrangements. We had tried calling several times over the next couple of days and every time we did, we were told that the reservation was there, but they couldn’t take payment. We didn’t understand why at the time.

 June 21, 2013: we receive an email stating that our 20’ truck reservation is ready to be scheduled. We were told via the email to simply log into our account at myuhaul.com and select our pickup location and time (something we had already specified when we made the initial reservation). We confirmed this information but still were unable to pay for our truck – we were told that we pay when we pick the truck up.  According to your email on this day, UHaul states to go online so that we can save time; and guarantee our equipment will be ready – when and where we need it. This is far from the truth of our experience. We were offered express pay through the website, but told that we had to pay when we picked up the truck. This didn’t make any sense.

June 23, 2013: 9:19am – we received a voicemail from Shelby at UHAUL stating “…the closest truck we have available for today will be at 2110 East Locust St at Dollar Rental Car in Omaha, NE. I will go ahead and set that as your pickup location. If you have any other questions, give us a call back”. This wasn’t even our pickup location specified in our reservation, so this had us very confused. It didn’t make sense to us, but we could work with it – until we find out they are not even open on Sundays.

 June 23, 2013: 9:41am – we receive a text at our phone number (402) 320.9191 as follows: “Hi we have a UHAUL ready for you today. What time do you want to pick up?” – we were not even aware if we were to reply to this or not. A copy of the screenshot is below (screenshot #1).

 Screenshot #1:             Screenshot #2:

 June 23, 2013: 10:45am - we received another text at the same phone number: “You UHAUL res 20486989 is scheduled at 2110 E Locust St in Omaha at 12:00pm on 6/23/10. Call 402 558 1012 to confirm.” A copy of the screenshot is above (screenshot #2). We call that number and are forwarded to another number, only to be advised after 15 minutes that the place where we are to pick up a truck is CLOSED!

 June 23, 2013: 10:46am – we received and email at our email address: “Dear GINAE SMITH, We have a 20' Moving Van and Furniture Pads reserved for you and guaranteed today 6/23/2013 at 12:00 PM.  We are located at 2110 E LOCUST ST, OMAHA, NE  68110, and our phone number is (402) 558-1012. If this does not work for you, please call us or reply at . Sincerely, DOLLAR RENT A CAR 2110 E LOCUST ST OMAHA, NE  68110 (402) 558-1012 “. A copy of this email is below (screenshot #3).

Screenshot #3:

That is the same information we received in our text (above). The exact same number and place we attempted to call just a minute earlier and were forwarded to the UHAUL 800 number because the place is closed. Let the headache begin.

 We attempt to call the 800 UHAUL number for help, only to be helped by some snotty woman with a horrible attitude. We inquired into the truck rental, explaining we received the messages – all of them guaranteeing a truck at noon, but the place was closed. She said she didn’t know – she just knows that she doesn’t have any trucks available. She then said that there would possibly be a truck in Lincoln at 4:30pm – Lincoln is an hour away from Omaha – we were NOT going to drive that far to pick up a truck and waste all of that gas. Let alone the fact that the truck ‘may or may not be there’ – we cannot go on a whim. By the time we would get there anyhow, the place would have been closed. This was simply not an option. We asked to speak to her supervisor and she would not let us. She told us that no one was available and we could call back at 9am Monday morning. This does no good – we had a truck reserved for the 23^rd – emails, texts, and voicemails guaranteeing a pickup at noon. She hung up on us. What kind of customer service is that?

 We called the number back again and we spoke to someone who was actually nice and helpful, we believe her name was Shelby, and now that we think about it, she was the one who called and left a voicemail on my phone earlier in the day. We explained the situation to her again. She tried to give us the number to the place where the truck supposedly was, we told her we had called that already and the place was closed. She was confused. We again asked to speak to a supervisor, this time actually having our request honored, or so we thought. We spoke to someone named Josh, he told me he was the supervisor on duty – we once again explained the situation. He said he didn’t know how that happened and said he was putting us on hold to try to figure something out. He came back on after a minute or two stating he had to look further into this and asked to put us on hold again. We sat on hold for nearly 20 minutes waiting for him to come back on the line –then the line disconnects. Dead. Nothing.

 Again, we called the UHAUL number back. No one could find Josh. Apparently he does not exist, although we were just talking to him 20 minutes earlier. We again explained the situation to the gal that answered – she told us that no manager at that office could help in regards to what we needed help with. She gave us a regional number to call, stating to call and ask for a certain lady (we can’t remember her name, but we have it written down somewhere). We hang up and call that number – just to be connected with someone in Massachusetts. He asked how we got the number after we asked for the gal we were told to ask for, only to be told she will be in around 9am on Monday morning. We again explained the situation. He asked what state we were in, and we told him Nebraska. He then stated we needed to talk to someone at another number – once again giving us another phone number to call.

 We call the next number we were told to call, and finally, after waiting on hold for 25 minutes before even talking to anyone, we finally get a hold of someone, just to explain ourselves yet again. We are then told that there are no 20’ trucks available in our area, that there might be one available tomorrow. Does UHAUL not understand the concept of a reservation?!? Guarantee us a truck in more than one way, then tell us that there is no truck? How is this right in any manner at all? We reiterated again that we have planned our whole move around this UHAUL truck – this puts us back a day (actually two days due to the weather); we lost our moving help as everyone had to work on Monday the 24th, which in the long run makes things harder on us. Ryan missed an opportunity at a job, another huge negative. She then tells us that there is a 26’ truck available – we told her we planned on gas based on 20’ truck, but she told us that was all there is – that we could use that for the price of the 20’ and she would take $50 off and that we could take offer that or cancel the reservation all together. So what choice do we have when we plan our move around the truck?!? It left us no option.

 We finally got the truck around 3:00pm on June 23, 2013 after having to drive across town to pick it up. We don’t understand the point of asking of a preferred pickup place if this is going to happen. We then receive a text at 4:16pm stating that our truck is ready for pickup at 8920 Maple Street (after we already have the truck at home) – seems a bit strange and delayed to me (see Screenshot #2 above).

 Now onto the other issue – the storage facility.

 When we made the truck reservation on June 18, 2013, the UHAUL website offered us a month of free storage. It did NOT specify that it had to be at a UHAUL owned or a UHAUL dropoff location. Nothing on the UHUAL site told us that we could not get a month free if we chose from any of the storage facilities listed on the UHAUL website below the offer of the free month. We chose a place from a list of storage places given to us on the UHAUL website which were listed on the screen when the offer was made to us – and, from the look of it, they were the ones we had to choose from.

 Fast forward to June 27, 2013. We arrive at the storage location that we chose (AAA Storage Inner Loop, LP) and gave the lady in the office the reservation information. She asked for payment. We explained the situation about the free month offer – she stated her company uses the UHAUL software, but they do not participate in any free month offer.

 We immediately called the UHAUL phone number and, yet again, explained the situation. The gal on the phone proceeds to tell us that we have to rent at a UHAUL owned facility to get the month free – we told her that that was not advised when we made the reservation – she just said she didn’t know and that’s what she can tell us. We asked what they had available around where we were at and she tells me a 5x5x8 unit. We laughed and hung up. That’s a closet. We have a 26’ truck – 20’ filled up to move our household belongings. Our belongings wouldn’t even come close to fitting into a unit of that size. We called around to check on other storage units, but the place we were at was the only one with space available and close by (we did not have the gas or mileage or time to be driving around to hunt down a storage facility at the last minute). We were stuck. We rented, much to our discontent. We were very much misled by UHAUL about getting the month free, and it put another crunch in our budget.

 We do not feel as though UHAUL understands the extent of this horrible experience. The hardships it has caused. The headaches. The frustration. No one should ever have to go through what we went through with our UHAUL reservation. It was a nightmare.  A pure nightmare.

 Let us reiterate that we had everything in order on our end, based on the guaranteed reservation from UHAUL. We had help with moving furniture on June 23^rd; however, we ended up getting the truck so late that we lost that help. We wanted to get loaded up on the 23^rd as we knew it was to rain on the 24^th; which it did, which delayed us even more. Ryan was to start a job on the 26^th, that did not happen because we couldn’t get the truck packed in time to get out of town in time – thanks to UHAUL.

 UHAUL royally screwed up our move. It’s been a pain since the start and we honestly cannot believe a business is still in business after our experience. We happened to run into a gentleman at UHAUL when we dropped the truck off in Round Rock – and from what we hear from him, UHAUL does this all of the time. This seems to be a very common experience – even sending decoys in to check on managers to see what they tell customers when they show up and a truck is not ready as it was guaranteed? Sneaky UHUAL, very sneaky. And wrong.

 When offering a review of UHAUL, UHAUL should also offer a review of the customer service people at their 800 number – the service we received, for the most part, was downright awful. The person at the counter at the pickup location off of 89^th & Maple in Omaha was very nice, understanding, and definitely sympathetic when we told him what happened prior to us finally getting a truck. However, he can do nothing to help us out. He just rented the truck. Our problem lies with UHAUL’s overall handling of the overall reservation (both truck and storage) – from start to finish.

 We are writing to request a discount off of our rental for our hassle with everything – from start to finish. It was an absolute nightmare. We were offered $50 off when we were told we take the 26’ truck or cancel the reservation – that is a smack in the face after what we have experienced – and that was before we found out about the non-existent free month of storage once we arrived to where we were going. That $50 discount didn’t even get applied to our bill – another smack in the face, another lie.

 We are writing to request a full refund of the price of our truck rental ($946.96). We will not ask for reimbursement of the cost of gas, but we do want reimbursement of the cost of the supposed ‘guaranteed’ truck rental that was truly not guaranteed. That was misleading. It was an absolute nightmare. We cannot emphasize this enough. We are not simply just two people moving our belongings to another state. We have four children that are also impacted by what is going on. The problems, lies, etc that we have had wrecked havoc on us. It put a big damper into moving plans. Our thought is that a guarantee is a promise. One shouldn’t guarantee something if they will not have it when and where they say they will. UHAUL broke its promise. We suffered losses on not only time and money but Ryan lost out on an opportunity in another state for work. We have suffered from headaches, anxiety, - we could go on. IT WAS A PURE AND TOTAL NIGHTMARE WORKING WITH UHAUL AND THIS ‘RESERVATION’. We want reimbursement for the disruption, problems, lies, etc.

 We are also writing to request a refund of one month of storage fees at our storage location ($124.00). As described above, UHAUL made it look like those were the acceptable locations at which we would receive a month’s rent free. It was misleading and nothing can be done at the last minute when we get to the unit and things are not as they were to be.

 We look forward to hearing from someone immediately.

 Thank you for listening to extremely frustrated customers.

 With all due respect,

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I received an automated email from them offering $75 towards use of their services. They don't seem to understand that we will NEVER use UHaul again. I want our money back. This is a complete joke of a company!!