They wouldn’t give me the truck I reserved, then charged $50 for a “no show” U Haul
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6 weeks before moving, I went to U-Haul’s web site and reserved a truck for the day of my move. I wanted to make the reservation well in advance, because I was moving on the last day of the month when it is always very hard to get a truck.
One week before my scheduled move, I called the local office to confirm that everything was in order. The clerk on the phone said that my reservation was on his list and that everything was fine.
The day of my move, I went to the U-Haul location with two friends who had taken the day off of work to help me move. I went into the office, and gave the clerk my information. He said very unemotionally that I was not allowed to rent a truck from them, and began to dismiss me by looking to help the next person in line.
Shocked, I asked him why, and he simply replied that his computer screen said so, and he had been told to do whatever the screen said to do. After a few exchanges with this individual, I realized that (and I do not mean to be rude) he honestly was not very bright and had no authority to do anything more than what he had been trained to do. It was also so early in the morning (8am) that the assistant manager had not yet arrived. This clerk was the only person there.
Without moving away from the check-in desk, I immediately called U-Haul customer service from my cell phone. The woman in customer service insisted that I could not rent a truck because I “owed U-Haul money”.
I would like to state very plainly that not only am I a responsible, debt-free individual, but I also have NEVER used U-Haul’s services before in my entire life. There was no way I could possibly owe them money.
I insisted that there was some kind of mistake… is there someone with a similar name that owes them money? Did they make a type-o with my credit card number? The woman at customer service refused to look into why I owed them money and simply insisted that I could not take the truck. She offered no alternatives and very clearly did not care that I was being left stranded. It was like talking to a wall.
Enraged, I asked her why they didn’t get in touch with me before to resolve this issue … after all, I made the reservation 6 weeks prior. She said that it was because I had only left an e-mail address and hadn’t left them a phone number; her exact words were “We don’t e-mail.”
“In that case”, I asked her, “why was I told 1 week prior that my reservation was in order?”
She said that the reservation system “doesn’t work that way.”
Flabbergasted, I offered to pay whatever “amount I owed” simply so that I could get a truck and move. I figured that I was being conned, but at this point I didn’t care because I desperately needed to be out of my apartment that day… and there was no chance I’d find a truck to rent anywhere on the last day of the month.
She said that even if I paid the amount, there was no truck available because all of the trucks were being held for other people. By this point, the manager of the U-Haul location had arrived, and got on a three-way-call with me and the customer service department. The manager was not much more helpful than the clerk, and he too was told to simply do whatever the computer told him to do. No one was willing to do anything to help.
By the end of 45 minutes on the phone, the customer service women literally HUNG UP ON ME while I was mid sentence. I realized at this point there was nothing I could do.
To add insult to injury, after all of this, U-Haul had the gall to charge a $50 “no show” fee to my credit card because I “never picked up the truck”. This was in addition to the non-refundable $5 reservation fee, which apparently does nothing of the sort.
I could not get my credit card to reverse the charges because they wanted to see a letter from U-Haul, which I knew U-Haul would never provide. So U-Haul has my $55, and probably the $55 of lots of others who have been caught in a similar scam.
One has to wonder why U-Haul never charged me this infamous “amount I owed” to my credit card in the first place? Of course, it’s because it never existed to begin with. As I said, how can I owe U-Haul money if I’ve never done business with them before? I can only guess that this was because some minimum wage employee somewhere didn’t do their job and didn’t want their boss to yell at them.
I can’t even imagine how a company like U-Haul manages to stay in business. It was no surprise to me when I discovered that they have a 2-star rating on Epinions.com.
This exchange has made me realize that U-Haul is the epitome of a corporation that absolutely could not care 1 iota about its customers. I have since vowed to never, ever do business with U-Haul, and insist to all of my friends and relatives that they do the same.
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The epilogue to this story is that we coincidentally passed a Ryder rental office as we left U-Haul. (Ryder has now sold their residential truck rental services to Budget). On a fluke, I went in, still red in the face from my anger and dually exasperated from the experience with U-Haul. I asked the woman there if there was any chance she had a truck - any truck - to rent, knowing full well that it was the last day of the month and there was no chance. She was very friendly, and even though didn’t have any, she immediately called a few places in the area and found someone who had a small 10-foot truck that I could use. She gave me directions and set me on my way.
Compare these two stories of customer service! You know who I will be doing business with from now on.
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