How can a company providing such unreliable service succeed? U Haul
Worst experience ever! U Haul What a nightmare! I almost had to cancel my move because U-Haul had problems providing the truck I reserved. I will NEVER use this unreli...
UHaul’s $5 dollar non-refundable charge for reservation practice.? Hello, This is for the all the lawyers out there. I just went to make an online reservation for UHaul and it seems they are making consume...
The answer has to be that (a) most of the customers are first-timers, and (b) the competitors must not be much better.
Despite having moved more than a thousand miles four times and being the same age as U-Haul, I just had my first U-Haul experience. It was not a good one. After describing it in detail, I will make some suggestions to prepare potential renters.
My first mistake was not to have discovered e-pinions sooner! What others have written might have dissuaded me from renting a U-Haul truck, and would certainly have better prepared me for likely problems.
Being where the move ends rather than where it is going to begin is a major disadvantage, though, surely, there are others who go back to move their stuff. . . A further disadvantage is that I was moving stuff from a place that has no rental facilities other than U-Haul.
I made a reservation more than two months in advance on the U-Haul website. I confirmed it several times online and once through the 800 number. I was apprehensive about the warning on the screen about pickup location not being guaranteed, but I knew that I was going to be picking up the second driver the day before in a larger city (Minneapolis), so, if necessary, one of us could drive a truck from there.
The day before my scheduled pickup date, I went to the local (Blue Earth) dealer. He had never heard of me and had no record of any reservation. Hew gave me an 800 number to call. I spent what seems to me the normal 20 minutes on hold. Finally, I found that I was talking to someone from the regional (Minneapolis) office. The equipment that I had reserved (and paid a deposit on) was not available in Blue Earth. I had to pick it up 40 miles away in Albert Lea. I would have to call there to get directions.
Why hadn”t anyone told me this? They had called a number that had been disconnected. The number was most certainly not the one in the online information (which I just rechecked is my correct San Francisco one) and bore little relation to the number my parents have had for the last 50 years which I gave the phone reservation person. I chose not to get into “Why didn”t you call the number in your computer system or send me e-mail, which is also in my member profile”?”
I called the Albert Lea number. The phone was answered by a human being, who reassured me that there would be a truck for me. We agreed on a pickup at 9 the next morning–and I got directions. On my way back from Minneapolis, I swung by and saw that there were trucks, including one the size I had reserved (ten-foot). I hoped to persuade the dealer to let me take the truck that night rather than drive back again in the morning. The office was closed, so I didn”t get to try my persuasive skills.
I now know that I was relatively lucky that there was a truck there for me. However, it was not the size I had reserved. The smallest one available was 14 feet.This was not an “upgrade” I wanted at all! The difference between a 10-foot and a 14-foot truck is considerable. The latter is harder to maneuver and guzzles far more gas, especially on a 2000+-mile trip. . . And if I had wanted a 14-foot truck, I would not have had to make the 80-mile round-trip to pick up equipment.
This is the position that allows the company to survive, and even thrive: a customer with all the arrangements made to move confronted with the choice between what is available and nothing. I”m sure that most customers do what I did: take what”s available. U-Haul was 0 for 3 in what had been specified three months earlier in my reservation–pickup place, truck size, and a dozen packing blankets.
The dealer told us that the engine rattled until it warmed up. In truth, the engine rattled anytime the gas pedal was depressed even slightly. Even going downhill across Utah with an outside temperature over 100 when it had been warming up for 100+ miles.
The stuff I was moving took up less than half the floorspace, seemingly an eighth of the cubic space. The long ramp to the low gate is nice, but unimportant for light items. We tied furniture to the perimeter of the inside of the truck and finally got on the road.
The cab was fairly comfortable. There was leg-room. The floor was too hot for me to take off my shoes when I wasn”t driving. Hot enough to melt cheese in a bag of groceries. The radio and air-conditioner worked. Not that we could get the cab cool or hear much over the engine noise. Still, most importantly, crossing the sparsely populated American West, the engine temperature remained on the C side.
The truck had little power and struggled uphill. The stuff in back did not shift as much as I expected.
After the first day of driving the large, awkward, powerless truck, we decided to change our route (from I-90 to I-80, going diagonally across Wyoming on state highways) and not make any of the side-stops we had planned to break the monotony of driving across the west. We got the truck unloaded and turned in 5 days and 2 hours early, but only 300 miles less than the allowance. If we had not driven so relentlessly, we probably would have exceeded that just getting on and off freeways.
Returning the truck went smoothly. The truck was cleaner than when we rented it (though I am mystified about how someone across the country could know that!) with more gas (it’s hard to estimate exactly to 3/8ths of a tank!) in addition to being early. So the deposit was credited back.
SUGGESTIONS FOR PROSPECTIVE CROSS-COUNTRY MOVERS
(1) Think about whether you really want to spend the time and money to move the stuff. I may eventually be pleased that I got various antiques from Minnesota to California, though on the way (and still) I think about what I could have bought with the money I spent on gas and rental and selling the stuff in Minnesota.
(2) Explore alternatives to U-Haul!
(3) However you make a U-Haul reservation, if at all possible, go to the site where you hope to pick up equipment and make sure that there is some record there of your reservation. Communication from the national to the regional level is undependable, and one should not count on smooth or correct transmittal of information from the regional office to a particular dealer.
(4) Confirm and reconfirm and reconfirm and reconfirm. And get as much information as possible about other locations. Don”t count on U-Haul personnel calling other locations for you ( or any other kind of co-ordination or co-operation)
(5) Arrive early for your pickup. It is better to spend a few minutes waiting for an office to open than to risk someone else getting the equipment you (think you have) reserved.
(6) Before the day you plan/hope to move, think about what you are going to do if your reserved vehicle isn”t there. You will probably make more rational decisions in advance (and know how feasible getting to other outlets is–see #4). If you actually get what you reserved when you reserved it, you can be grateful!
(7) Check about insurance in advance, particularly if you think that your car insurance covers rental TRUCKS. We probably were not insured. (The U-Haul website cautions about this, but does not include rate quotations for the insurance they offer; at least I couldn”t find any.)
(8) Try to start with a full gas tank. As in other matters, you have no leverage and will probably fail and have to gauge how much gas to pump at the last fill-up. The threat of a $20 surcharge (plus $2 a gallon) probably gets most vehicles back with more fuel than when they were picked up.
(9) Don”t expect to be able to drive a U-Haul truck uphill at more than 50 m.p.h. The one we were driving had 85,000 miles of (ab?)use and very little power. A corollary of this is that a long drive is going to take longer than you expect based on car driving experience. (And let”s face it, most U-haul customers don”t have a lot of truck-driving experience!)
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Tags: mover, movers, packing, truck rent
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