Amazing they’re still in business U Haul

it’s amazing they’re still in business U Haul Let's face it, if most of us had a viable option to Uhaul, we'd all use it. Whenever I use Uhaul, they never really hold a reservation. This...

Dissapointed U Haul We rented a 14 ft U-Haul truck to move from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania and I was really disappointed by how it went. The truck overheated ...

Adventures in moving, indeed!

As numerous other reviewers have stated, U-Haul does not have a meaningful reservations system, and “guaranteed reservations” aren’t. I recently needed to rent a 5×8 trailer (”our most popular size!”) to move furniture and bedding about 300 miles to a seasonal home, and return with old furniture to be discarded. I wanted to pick up the trailer on a Thursday and return it on Sunday–four days in total. First of all, if you’re doing a “local” rental (return where you picked it up), you can only rent for a maximum of 24 hours, according to both their web site and their 800 number. To get around that, I specified a pick up location near (within one mile) my home, and a return location at the next nearest location (about 5 miles away). This is a “one way” rental, and costs a bit more.

As others have written, the day previous to my reservation, I got a call telling me where I could “really” go to get my trailer, which was at a location about 25 miles away. I went to pick up the trailer and suggested that I might return it at the nearest location to my home (where I had hoped to pick it up), but the agent rolled her eyes and said “well then, I’d have to start your paperwork all over again” and since I was in a hurry, I agreed to return it to the originally specified location, WHICH WAS PRINTED ON MY PAPERWORK. I noted that the reservation was only for one day (which is “included” in the one way rental between the two towns in the reservation, although I had been specific when making my reservation that I needed the trailer for four days). The agent said not to worry, because “once you leave here, it’s out of our computer system and you can return it whenever you want, you just have to pay for the extra days.”

So when my move was complete, I went to return it to the LOCATION SPECIFIED IN THE CONTRACT and when I arrived there, was told “oh, we don’t accept , only trucks”. I pointed to the address on my contract and the guy just shrugged. He pointed me about four blocks up the road to a place that “does take “. I went there. Two U-haul trucks outside, no , and “no, we don’t take here…let me call the guy who can tell you where to take them”. Talk to this guy who directs me about 8 miles to another location (a well-known gas station) and says they will take the trailer, but “don’t bother calling the guy because he’s not a very pleasant individual to deal with–just show up.” I told him I was told to “just show up” where I was and that they would take a trailer, which they wouldn’t. He said not to worry so off I went. Guess what? Even though there were two parked at the back of this gas station and there was plenty of space for more, the woman at the counter said they only take trucks, no and directed me now back to where I had originally picked up the trailer! I was hoping to return the trailer “on the way” to work, and that it would only take about 20 minutes and be about 3 miles out of my way. Instead this ended up being a four-stop ordeal which took me more than two hours and about 40 miles out of the way. The irony of the situation is I probably could have just returned it to the place a mile from my house and been done with the whole thing, but I was trying to play by the rules and do what the contract specified. What a waste!

I did complain to the manager of the place I returned the trailer to. She did apologize (once she found my reservation, which apparently really had vanished from “the system”). I told her that I wouldn’t have minded doing a “local” rental at her location, but was prevented from doing so. Her comment (”don’t tell anyone I said this to you…”) was the thing to do is to reserve the trailer for a day, then just take off with it, and call back each day saying “I’m not done with it, so I’m going to keep it another day”…until you’re done.

So obviously if they’re encouraging people to do this, and they don’t even take their equipment back where they direct you, they have no way of assuring renters that there will be the equipment that has been ordered where/when they say. For those of us who don’t have all day to drive around looking for inventory–or trying to find a place that will take the trailer when you’re done, this is a very unsatisfactory situation.

I will do whatever I can to avoid ever being a U-Haul customer again (including paying more money to a more reputable firm who might actually honor a reservation).

Imagine if Hertz, Avis, and the others ran the car rental business like this!

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UHAUL and its franchises. U Haul

Tags: trailers, truck rent

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