Uhaul Story

U Are Better Off Without Them! U Haul

First, let me say that our family moves–a lot! Growing up, I went to 14 schools by the time I graduated high school. Since then, in the 3 years that my husband and I have been married, we have moved 3 more times. So I have quite a bit of experiencing in moving, which includes which moving companies to use.

Since we don’t have a lot of belongings, we have always opted to move ourselves with the use of a rented truck. I have to say that U-Haul is probably the most widely used company, or at least the company with the most locations in the areas in which I have lived.

The only positive thing that I can say about U-Haul is that they are probably the cheapest company to rent from. There prices usually range from $9.99 (for a trailer) to $19.99 (for the 2 smaller size van/trucks) and up to about $39.99 (for the larger trucks).

I have had two separate bad experiences with U-Haul…and let’s just say that I won’t be giving them the opportunity to provide me with yet a third bad moving experience!

The first time, my parents were moving from North Carolina to Mississippi. There was a major rainstorm while they were driving, forcing them to stop along the way. When they opened up the back of the truck to retrieve their suitcases, they found that the truck was leaking. At least half of their belongings were soaking wet. When they called the U-Haul customer service number, they were told that there was nothing they could do at the time. My parents ended up rigging some plastic trashbags and duct tape to keep more water from getting in. The next day, as they were en route to their final destination, the U-Haul broke down. They waited for hours for U-Haul to send a tow truck, as well as another U-Haul…and believe it or not, my parents had to unload the old U-Haul and reload the new one–by themselves, although it was no fault of theirs that the truck had broken down. After all this, they received no compensation and no apology from U-Haul.

Don’t ask me why I even bothered to give U-Haul a second chance! But when my husband and I were moving from one apartment to another, I reserved a U-Haul truck more than 3 weeks in advance. The day before our move, I even called to confirm our reservation. On the morning that we were supposed to move, my dad and I drove to the U-Haul dealer to pick up our truck; only to find that they didn’t have one for us! The dealer said that they didn’t get in as many as expected and therefore, didn’t have enough to fill all of their reservations. Here we were, having to be out of our apartment on THAT day (it had already been rented and the new people were supposed to move in later that week) and we had NO truck!

The U-Haul customer service offered no support, no suggestions and no compensation, other than refunding my deposit fee.

From there, I called a Ryder dealer in our area, hoping and praying that they could help us out. They, unfortunately, were booked solid…but upon hearing our story, we found a Ryder dealer who lent us a truck for the day–provided we got it back later that afternoon because it was reserved for the next morning. And to top it all off, she didn’t even charge us the full price–simply because she felt bad about how we had been treated by U-Haul and wanted to show us that Ryder had better customer service. That’s what I call A+ service!

We haven’t moved since then and probably won’t be for at least another year; but, when we do, you’d better believe that I won’t even think about renting from U-Haul again!

Tags: moving companies