Uhaul Story

MOVING? I SUGGEST U HAUL YOUR FANNIE ELSEWHERE U Haul

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I really don’t like to write an unfavorable review – and, alas, if this were a perfect world there would be no need to do so. However, after using U-haul recently I feel it would be remiss if I didn’t warn people away from this outfit.

My daughter and I had been living in North Carolina in the Greenville area.

We had a chance to move to Knoxville, Tennessee to a solid house that was near my son and his family. It is an eight hour drive, and once the decision was made, it was time to plan our move.

Since Jude and I had combined two households, and since we are both collectors (aka pack rats) we had a lot of stuff. We also had a rented store room jam-packed with stuff. We hadn’t had much luck the last time we moved with a professional mover. This time we thought we could save money by doing it ourselves, along with help from Terry and his family.

So Terry (my son) and Leigh Ann (my daughter in law) and Jude and I agreed on a final date. Jude’s daughter, Arinn, came by bus from Vancouver to help us move.

Jude (about three weeks in advance) called U-haul to order the largest truck they had available. She paid them $20 in advance just to secure the date. She asked if they had one with automatic shift. “Oh yes,” she was told. “All of our trucks are automatics.” Next she asked if they had one with air conditioning. “Certainly. All of our trucks are air conditioned” .Jude was pretty happy when she came home that afternoon. The truck problem was settled.

Terry, Leigh Ann, and their daughter Emily were to take off Friday, drive to Winterville, rest up, and be ready to load on Saturday. Sunday we would move our belongings to Knoxville. Monday we would unload the truck. Both my son and daughter in law had to take time off from work for this, and Emily missed school. They also had to board their two dogs, as did we.

Leigh Ann had a great idea. She called a nearby church and asked to speak to the Youth Minister. She wanted to know if they had any kind of fund raiser going on. They did. They were trying to raise money for a missionary group.

Leigh Ann offered to make a donation to the fund if he could bring a group of young people to help us load. He said they would be there on Saturday.

So Arinn arrived and Jude’s two Labs were taken to the vets to be boarded. Terry and family arrived about noon, and Jude thought she and Terry could pick up the truck and be back early. Guess what? When they went to pick it up– no truck. If they wanted it, they would have to go and get it at New Bern which is about 50 miles away from Greenville.

Ok, off they went. The truck was there at New Bern, but it did not have an automatic shift. Jude has never driven a stick shift vehicle, but Terry does. He also knew how to handle a big truck, so he became the driver. That meant he had to use his credit card to rent the truck. When the paper work was settled, the man at New Bern said the truck was OK. They noticed right away that the air conditioner didn’t work. The New Bern man said if they were not satisfied with this truck they could have another one, but they would have to wait a week. After all the arrangements were made, there was no way we could wait a week, so they took the truck. The man at New Bern also said that if there was a problem they could call the U Haul hot line Jude said he was pretty nice about it, but implied it really wouldn’t do any good. He proved to be right – it didn’t do any good. The cost of renting the truck was $600.00.

OK, on Saturday everyone pitched in and the truck was loaded by supper time. There wasn’t enough room for everything, so Jude and Arinn said that they would return to Greenville, clean the house we had been renting, rent a smaller truck and bring the rest of the items, along with the dogs.

Sunday morning after breakfast the exodus began. First in line was the big truck. Terry was the driver, and his 14 year old daughter was to ride with him. However, the noise and shaking of this vehicle alarmed her so much that when they stopped at the first gas station to fill the tank, she wanted to drive with Leigh Ann (her mother). So in the lead truck was Terry and Arinn, the second car was Judith and myself in her Toyota, and the final vehicle was Leigh Ann and Emily in the Odyssey van. Immediately it became apparent that there was no braking light, and no turn signal light on the truck. Jude chose to follow as close behind Terry as she could because she was familiar with the turn offs and knew when he would be making a turn. Both Terry and Leigh Ann had cell phones so they could communicate. We devised hand signals in advance for any stop that we might need to make so we could all stay together.

For me, personally, the trip wasn’t too bad. I was proud of the way Terry handled that big vehicle, and of the way he stayed within the dividing lines on the highway, even when we went through the mountains and the mountain curves. I had one moment of fear when a car got between Terry and Jude. Terry solved that by gradually slowing up until the driver became disgusted and swerved around him. Terry stayed pretty much at the limit of 75 miles per hour, although bigger trucks and tanks and RVs sped past our little line.

Terry, however, was not having as good a time. It was dreadfully hot that day, and he was forced to keep a window open. That let in the loud noises of the highway and the noise of the roaring diesel engine. plus gusts of warm wind. When the windshield became dirty, he thought he would spray the window, and wipe it clean with the window wipers. Surprise. That didn’t work either, and the windows became a mess. I don’t know what the problem was, but the window was so unclear that Terry had to pull over at the next exit to clean the windows. By this time, it was also necessary to fill the tank again. So while the tank was being filled and the windows were being washed Jude decided to call the hot line. Was there an answer at the hot line number? Nada. Why were we not surprised? It was also time to find a motel and get some rest. We were hungry. It was almost dark and the mountains were coming up.

All of the drivers – Terry, Jude and Leigh Ann were exhausted. The strain of missing turn signals and brake lights in a vehicle with a driver who they knew was inexperienced in driving a big truck was inexcusable. In a less calm person then my son is, it could have been a disaster. U-HAUL should have been ashamed to release a truck without making sure it worked properly.

Anyway, the rest of the trip through the mountains the next day was uneventful. When we pulled into the driveway of our house, I was so overwhelmed by the work that Terry and Leigh Ann had supervised and done in the house and yard that I was almost incoherent, and I know that my eyes kept filling. I was also relieved that we had all made it home safely despite the shortcomings of the U-HAUL company.

Does my story end there? No.

After a night of rest, Arinn and Jude decided to return to Winterville, rent a smaller truck, pack up what we couldn’t take before , thoroughly clean the rental house we had been living in for two years, and get the dogs out of “jail” and bring them home. For this review, I will only talk on the subject of the U-haul trucks.

This small truck was automatic, and easily driven by either Arinn or Jude. Jude had left a $20 deposit on the truck, and was told the truck could be returned in Knoxville. When she and Arinn completed their journey and returned the truck they were surprised to learn that the cost was much higher then they had been told it would be.

When the first truck was returned, the $20 deposit was returned. This time Judith was told that the $20 was not returnable. And this time there were no tie downs in the truck either, so the furniture rattled around in the back a bit, breaking at least one mirror. Also the price was increased by adding 69 cents a mile. Since the odometer on the truck was about 40 miles more than the same distance covered in the car, it seemed suspicious. But the agent was hostile when she tried to discuss it with him. I think my daughter and granddaughter were so relieved to be back in one piece that no more mention was made. But both of them commented on the surly agent. Whatever happened to the concept of customer care?

****

Now let me explain a little bit about Leigh Ann. Leigh Ann is a consumer advocate, and refuses to let her or her family be cheated or “done out” of something she feels they deserve. More then once she has gone to Wal-Mart with proof of an item being advertised at a lower price then they show, and Wal-Mart has lived up to their advertising and given her the item at the lowest price. When a lawn mower attachment almost flipped the lawn mowing tractor, she went to Sears and asked for their money back. She got it. These are only two of many examples. She is so full of that regional Southern charm that I know of no instance when they haven’t honored her request or complaint, which of course was legitimate. So she felt no hesitation in calling U-HAUL to request a refund due to the poor performance of the truck. In fact, when the truck was returned at Knoxville, one of the U-Haul people told her that they should ask for a 50% discount. This proved to be the exception to Leigh Ann’s pursuit of customer’s rights.

U-haul people hemmed and hawed and switched her from one person to another. After listing the things wrong with the truck a number of times they would come up with excuses. “Why didn’t you call the hot line?” Jude did.

(When Jude told them she did, they asked her if she had proof. Of course she didn’t. She was calling from a pay phone, and there was no answer.

It might have logged on their end, but it could not have on her end.)

The agent told Leigh Ann that if the turn lights and brake lights were out, all they probably needed was a new bulb. “If you were that worried,” the man told her, “Why didn’t you go to an auto supply store and buy a bulb and put it in?”

Leigh Ann told them that first, “We had no way of knowing it was just burned out. It could have been the electrical system, and second – “we were on the road in a strange city – and just how were we supposed to find an auto supply store open on Sunday?”

Well, finally – obviously to shut her up – the agent told her that he had transferred $60 to their account. By this time she had had enough of their disinterest and felt that they simply didn’t give a darn whether their operation put lives at risk or not. It felt like she could almost see them rolling their eyes at each other and laughing at her.

In a couple of days she called them again. She had checked, and they had refunded nothing to their credit card. When she told them that, they said that it must have been transferred to somebody else with the same name. Just how many people with the same uncommon to the South name like ours would be renting their biggest truck on the same day?

Finally the agent told Leigh Ann that they didn’t want to talk to her anymore, since my daughter had applied to rent the truck and they would talk only to her. So Jude called them and told them that Leigh Ann had every right to talk, for the truck was rented with their credit card since the vehicle did not have an automatic transmission as had been promised.

That having been said, Leigh Ann started calling them two or three times a week. She managed to get a copy of their service record, and learned that they sent the truck out again without doing anything to fix the problems she had spelled out for them. All they had done was change the oil So someone else was getting this same truck that they knew was unsafe.

The customer service people were getting frustrated and not too polite to her. Finally they sent her a check for sixty dollars made out to my daughter. It was not as much compensation as L.A. thought we deserved, but we are grateful to Leigh Ann for her persistence in following through with what she thought was right. I think everyone who has a bad experience should demand satisfaction of some sort, and should let the world know that UHAUL cares nothing about their customer’s safety.

Since Leigh Ann was upboard and honest with them, is it to much to expect that they treat her the same way? Is it right to knowingly lease a truck that they know isn’t working right just for the money in advance? For your own welfare, think twice before renting from them – and get everything in writing making sure that the I’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed. And if you are charged by the mile, make sure the odometer is correct.

Thank you,

Virginia

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Tags: mover, transmission