U-Haul Still Sucks
A few months ago, I blogged about a bad experience I had with U-Haul that indicated the company has serious systemic problems. A few weeks later, a U-Haul employee posted two pseudonymous responses to my critique, apparently not realizing that their U-Haul IP address would reveal the true author. For some reason, my “consumer complaint” blog entries tend to get high rankings in Google and attract poorly crafted rebuttals.
Just now, the entry received two more comments. Both are from the same IP address, apparently again a U-Haul employee who didn’t realize their posts were easily traceable. I won’t respond specifically to these comments, but I thought it would be worth highlighting them here. I hope consumers (and perhaps U-Haul management) see these:
The first one is entitled “loved uhaul”:
all of you suck. i hate people like you. you see it’s people like you who actually hold there trucks up and mess up the schedule process. i moved 4 times with u-haul in the past year and only had a problem once but it was because people like you. you people who wanted to be given more time and not return it on time. while making a reservation over the phone i was told my move was being held up because a person tried to pull a trail that they were not supposted to causing it to overheat. these are trucks they do break-down, just like cars to. muck-mucks.
The second, “hey there” (remember, from the same author):
I’m a current U-Haul employee and I must say you’ve all had some really bad experiences with our company. It is very unfortunate, but really is venting out your problems really the answer? I’m responding to this very dim-witted website because I think your cause is in vain. We are the largest self-moving company in North America. While you may want to think that you’re hurting our business, your not. If anything you give us employees something to laugh about on our breaks. Hundreds of thousands of reservations our made throughout our thousands of locations everyday and we fill about 95%. For you unfortunate saps I petty you because when you get alate pick-up you can blame the person who had the truck ahead of you. Ask them why they felt like it was at their own leisure to bring the truck/trail back when ever they felt like it, to which every location they wanted to. Ask them whey they thought our trucks were built for speeding down highways or to move dirt or trash. We do and say things for a reason. And please don’t forget about all the good stuff we do like give free storage to families of hurricane victims or support various charities. So in the end, please keep up the log coming because we like reading them. Ha Ha Ha Ha.
Mark Jan 28
I had a similarly unfortunate experience with uHaul. My girlfriend reserved a truck and perhaps she wasn’t strict enough about one-way (I know one way is cheaper for short moves), but when we got there the truck was reserved for in town. She does tell me she explicitly said one way and told them a pickup and dropoff location. I told the woman that wouldn’t do and I want one way for the $100 or close that was offered. Granted I’ve moved with uhaul twice before myself and everything went as smoothly as you could expect, though the trucks were rather old. After haggling with her to redo the contract and everything, she informs me that she has no truck. WHAT? But there’s another uhaul 2 blocks away that will have a truck, go there. So we go there on foot. No trucks, they call her, she says come back.. I have one truck. So we go back. It won’t start. She sits there and futzs with it and eventually gets it to start. She says, it needs gas (it’s almost empty), go get gas, save the receipt, the destination location will refund you. Ok. So we move, and go to return the truck. Wow.. Here goes. The destination location says “no, we don’t do that, the other location would since they get the money from the customer who left it empty”. Ok so we return the truck. A week later we get a charge for $150 from a Uhaul 2 states away. To make a long story short, the next customer returned the truck without a contract, they couldn’t find that contract for the truck in the computer so they applied the charges to the last known contract, and of course a shitload of miles and time! Ok so what do we do. we call around and nobody seems to know. We manage to get ahold of the regional reseration center. They promise time and time again to have the boss call me back and time and time again they don’t. So I go into the regional center and ask to speak to this person but they were conveniently in a meeting. So I go find uhaul corporate’s number and find an exec to talk to. I believe several people were terminated as a result of this, I got my money back and even the refund for the gas. Because of vouchers they also gave me, they compensated me $20 in my favor overall, which I wouldn’t ordinarily let happen, but they really made me upset and wasted a ton of our time. The trick is to find someone useful really. 90% of the company is degenerate idiots with absolutely horrendous customer service skills.
Mark Jan 28
Oh and to top it all off, they had no dolly which I reserved and paid for so I had to haggle over that to get that charge taken off, and it made my move miserable. I hate Uhaul as a result. I had a somewhat smooth experience with budget but I got the feeling they weren’t much better, and they too didn’t have the dolly I reserved.
Jamuraa Jan 28
Well, I did use U-Haul a while back and had a very crappy experience – even though I had the truck reserved a week in advance they didn’t have the truck when I got there and tried to tell me that my reservation time was changed twice (9am to 12noon to 3pm – do you think you could move what you wanted to move in 2 hours when you were planning on 8?).
Anyway their crappy service drove me to get professional movers this time – the cost wasn’t as bad as I expected and the move was excellent. When I told the movers that we did it last time with U-Haul they just laughed and said that they get a ton of business from how bad U-Haul is. So, while they may be 95% of the self-move business, they are driving their customers to other options.
Kevin Jan 28
If you go to http://www.dontuseuhaul.com and read the forums, the arrogance of U-Haul employees who have replied is just amazing. That site was a major factor in my use of Budget for my last, local, move (had no problems with them at all), and my plan to use Penske when my wife and I move cross-country next year. So forums and blogs like these ARE making some difference.
Jamie Jan 28
No wonder why their customer service sucks. Their employees are illiterate.
Anonymous Jan 28
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Philip Jan 28
I am an attorney. I am writing to inform customers of Uhaul that I am in the process of researching a class action law suit against UHaul for various deceptive practices. If you had a bad experience with UHaul please email me at phil@taxcounsel.com with your story. Thank you.
DE SHERRICK Jan 28
UHAUL WILL NOT RENT A TRAILER TO ME,BECAUSE I WANTED TO PULL IT WITH MY 91 FORD EXPLORER. THEY TOLD ME MY SUV DID NOT QUALIFY. THEN THEY TOLD ME IT WAS POLICY SINCE 2001.
DARREL Jan 28
UHAUL WILL NOT RENT A TRAILER TO ME,BECAUSE I WANTED TO PULL IT WITH MY 91 FORD EXPLORER. THEY TOLD ME MY SUV DID NOT QUALIFY. THEN THEY TOLD ME IT WAS POLICY SINCE 2001.
Douglas Jan 28
The u-haul employee comments to the thread are lame. U-Haul does have serious systemic problems, and for front-line employees to “laugh them off”, while a sizeable percentage of their customers are expiencing real-life pain, misery, and frustration (primarily emotional, or in a some instances even physical (from the uhaulsucks.com site)) is absolutelyl pathetic. She stated a 95% fill rate (which is questionable), but even so… a 5% error rate is terrible. And I would be willing to bet their customer satisfaction scores are MUCH MUCH lower. I’ve had a recent eye-opening experience (which led me to multiple sites highlighting u-hauls problems)… but most importantly, what could or should have been a fairly easy issue to resolve resulted in WAY too many phone calls by me, non-responsiveness from the national customer service team, and literally hours of holding on the phone for customer service. Absolutely terrible… and I had folks in the field (local sites) telling me they felt my pain & knew how bad cust. svc. was. 60 Minutes, 20-20 or some other investigative television team should do a segment on U-Haul… that would get the word out.
jonathan Jun 30
Nothing appears to have changed in the two years since your original post. Made a reservation for a rental truck two weeks ago through u-haul.com (my first mistake). When I didn’t receive the promised call, I called the regional office number that had been provided to me in an email. They told me that the only location that where a truck was available for the 8 hours that I had “reserved” was a half hour drive from my home. (I live in Chicago where U-Haul locations are ubiquitous.) I wasn’t happy, but agreed.
Showed up at the location a little early, and there was literally a line to the door. The manager announced several times that they anyone without a reservation was SOL, as they had twice as many reservations as available trucks.
Waited one hour and fifteen minutes to get to the counter, whereupon I was told that the truck I had reserved would only be available for five hours, not eight. I was told that had I read my confirmation carefully, I would see that there was no guarantee of any particular number of hours.
After pleading, and then arguing with the manager unsuccessfully, I told them that since I couldn’t get my move done in five hours I didn’t want the truck. At this point, I was told that I would be charged a $50 cancellation fee.
I assume that I will be able to get the charge reversed, but the whole experience was the most angering and frustrating that I’ve had with a company in years.
Sharese Jul 24
This is not a rental issue, but still shows their tactic and their disregard for not only customer service but legal issues My experience with U-Haul of Manassas Park, Va and U-Haul of Northern Virginia was and is horrible. Beginning of 2007 I made a ONE TIME payment with my credit /debit card on my mother’s storage unit. It was not authorized for any addditional charges, resurring charges or anything else in fact I made sure to say this is a one time payment and they assured me the card number would not be held on file, from personal experience never believe them when they tell you that. In March I went to withdraw money and U-Haul had taken $514.85 out of my account! Not only without my knowledge, my permission or anything else, my name in not on my mother’s unit ANYWHERE, so my mother called and the reply (on speaker phone) was ” I did it to get you attention since you did not return my phone calls”, ok aside from the fact that using my card without permission was ILLEGAL, debt collectors are not allowed by law to use intimidation tactics…..what would you all call that? I finally get the money refunded….then apparently a couple of weeks late in April…they refunded the money again, this seems to be due to the poor accounting skills of the individual handling this. I did not notice as my mother puts money in my account at different times to help me with bills etc., Now we come to July 13th, 2007, I go to get money out of my account tlo pay my car payment and have no money! U-Haul finally I guess realized their mistake and took the money back…..WITHOUT NOTIFYING ME, trust me from the incident in March they had MY name and MY phone number. so I called got a very rude and sarcastic person. My mother called and she was told that “it was not your card it is between your daughter and me” and slammed the phone down. Well if it was between her and I why did she n ot call me to tell me what had happened? She claims to have called my mother..she did not….she called my mother’s alternate contact (by the way my mother no longer even has the storage uniit) told a third party it was in reference to a credit card,via a voice mail they were on vacation. She had no reason to call her she had my name and number…she acted like all this mess since March was no big deal. I have had 4 bills that are late and incurrred bank charges because she overdrew my account by her actions. I have received no return phone calls from her, Corporate U-Haul is a joke, they did not even bother to follow up on the complaint I made. So I have reported them to the BBB, the Federal Trade Commission, Visa, and the Attorney General of Arizona where the corporate offices are located and now amd writing on every site like this I can find. It is amazing the number of other people not only in this area but from all over this has happened to….it is time to put a swift stop to this illegal actions.
ROBERT Aug 29
AS A FORMER EMPLOYEE WHO HATED THE JOB AS I WANTED TO LEAVE THE 1ST DAY I CAN TELL U THEY ARE NOT ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE. I HAD A CHANCE TO MEET THE OWNER WHO I CAN’T EVEN REMEMBER HIS NAME (THATS HOW MUCH I HATE UHAUL) HE COMPARED MOVING TRUCKS AND THE SIZE U NEED TO SOUP AT THE OLIVE GARDEN AND U JUST TAKE WHAT U CAN GET. THE OWNER MADE ME SEE THAT UHAUL IS STUPID STARTING FROM THE TOP ALL THE WAY DOWN. I HAVE TOLD MYSELF I WILL NEVER USE UHAUL AS THE TRUCKS ARE POORLY MAINTENANCED AND SOMETIMES HAVE TO DRIVE TO A LOCATION OVER AN HOUR AWAY FROM WHERE U WERE SUPPOSED TO GET THE TRUCK. I TELL EVERYONE WHO I KNOW IS MOVING DONT RENT UHAUL. I HAD 4 OR 5 MANAGERS OVER 2 YEARS CAUSE THEY WERE MISERABLE AND QUIT CAUSE UHAUL SUCKS. NOW WHEN I SEE A UHAUL ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD(BROKEN DOWN)I SAY THATS EXACTLY WHY I DONT USE UHAUL. ASK A TOW TRUCK DRIVER HOW MANY UHAULS THEY ARE CALLED OUT TO PICK UP?
Doug Taylor Sep 24
Today was the experience with U-Haul from Hell. Early in the morning I got a voice message from U-Haul informing me that we were late returning the trailer.
I knew this- the RV had broken down. So I called U-Haul to inform them and smooth everything over.
U-Haul was incredibly generous. When I told them that two mechanics who had looked at the RV had suggested that faulty wiring on the U-Haul trailer might have caused a drain on the battery, causing a breakdown, U-Haul told me they would send someone out to check the trailer connections, at no cost to us. This was despite my informing them that the RV was broken down, and not the trailer. Of course, U-Haul doesn’t rent RVs.
U-Haul also told me that, because we were broken down, the rental of the trailer would be extended out, automatically, at no cost to us. I had expected neither of these supports, and so was impressed at U-Haul’s generosity. I received a couple more calls from U-Haul, informing that they would momentarily be sending out an agent to check the wiring. Then I received one more call.
Sadly, I missed the call by nine minutes. The voice mail from Laura stated that, because the contract was overdue, U-Haul could not come out to check the wiring until I went to a U-Haul company in person to extend the contract. There was no explanation as to why they had changed their tune. There was no mention of what town this company was in, or how to get there. There was no explanation of
what it meant to extend the contract. There was no explanation of how much money I would have to shell out, or even indeed if I had to shell out money.
I called the number the voicemail was called from, only to get the main U-Haul number, and listened to their standard greeting stating, “In order to insure that we keep our promises to you, all conversations will be recorded.” I was transferred a few times, and eventually made it back to Laura’s office, but she was busy. They were able to inform me that, yes, I had to renew the contract; no, they couldn’t explain why; no, they had no idea if there would be money involved, or how much; no, they didn’t know what town their location was in that I needed to go to; and yes, they had the phone number of the place.
I called up the location, and was told that their location was in the next town over. The guy on the phone informed me that they also didn’t know if I would have to pay money or how much. But he assured me that I would have to give him no money. It took a couple minutes for us to establish that they were living in 1960, and the guy on the phone thought there was a difference between money and a credit card. He told me the guy who handles U-Haul wouldn’t be back until 3 that afternoon, and I could come by then. That meant no one could check the trailer connections until late that afternoon. It was now 1045, and I’d been on the phone with different calls for 15 minutes.
I called U-Haul again, to find out if I would have to pay, and to find out what happened to their generous promise of automatically extending the contract at no charge to me. I was told that the Regional Office couldn’t answer questions of fees- I needed to speak to Roadside Assistance. I called Roadside Assistance, and was told I needed to speak to Customer Service. Customer Service has very long hold times. After ten minutes, someone came on and told me that I was at the Customer Service Switchboard, and they’d now transfer me to Customer Service. After twenty minutes, I got Customer Service. Customer Service said I needed to speak to the Regional Office. The Regional Office told me that I needed to speak to Roadside. Roadside sent me to Customer Service. After another twenty minutes on hold, I got Francisco.
Fransisco is not your ordinary customer service rep. He firmly believes in creating as hard of a situation as possible for his customers, costing them as much money as possible, and doing everything to insure that they never use the services of his company again. I told him that I had a question on fees, and that Roadside had told me I needed to speak to Customer Service. He told me I was wrong, and that Customer Service doesn’t handle questions of fees- I needed to speak to the Regional Office. I assured him most heartedly that this was not the case, and that I’d been through this a few times before, and that I’d been told it was definitely Customer Service that handled que
stions of fees. He disagreed. At one point he even told me that I needed to present my credit card in person at the U-Haul location, and after I gave them the credit card I would be told how much I would be paying- in complete countenance to all laws and regulations in the United States. And as I was telling him, “Definitely, do not transfer me- it won’t help, they know nothing,” he stated, “I’m transferring you now,” and did so.
Never in my life have I experienced such ineptitude, where a rep transfers you against your will, forcing you to talk to a department which you have told them will not help you, and that you have spoken to previously multiple times.
I was back at the Regional Office. They sent me to Roadside. Roadside heard my story, and told me to ask for a supervisor in the Customer Service Department. I called Customer Service, and after twenty minutes, got a rep, and told them I needed to speak to a supervisor. After stating my story, I waited for another ten minutes, and got a supervisor. Guess who it was? Wait for it…
Yes, Fransisco is what evidently passes for a supervisor there. I began to tell him my story, and he told me that I had just spoken with him, and demanded to know if I’d spoken with Regional. I told him I had, and reminded him that I had told him multiple times that it wouldn’t help, and not to transfer me. He told me he was putting me on hold, and before I could protest, he put me on hold. Then he hung
up on me.
I called Regional again, who transferred me to Roadside. At this point, near tears, I told the story again. They sympathised, but there was nothing they could do to help me, because they had no knowledge of fees.
At this point, it was 2:30 in the afternoon. I had been on hold or talking with U-Haul reps for four hours. This was approximately with twenty different people, being transferred some 15 times between different departments. All of this was on my cell phone, in the middle of the day, so I was paying for the right to be screwed by U-Haul. (There’s some sort of word for that.) That was four hours of my hard-earned money, going to my cellphone bill. Not a single person could tell me if I would pay fees for this renewal of the contract, how much the fees were, what a contract renewal was, and why U-Haul was going back on it’s promise. Only in the final conversation did I get someone asking me the basic question of who it was I had spoken to who had made that promise, but of course, after twenty people, I couldn’t remember the name of the second person in the chain. (Back then, I had been trusting U-Haul.)
The good news is there was no longer a need to wait to visit the U-Haul location, as it was now close to 3 in the afternoon. I drove down to the place that rents U-Hauls and makes chili, and they were very kind and helpful. They looked up some information on their computer, and were able to tell me that there wou
ld be a fee, and how much. Extending the contract, it turned out, meant closing the existing contract, and starting a new one for $250 to Wisconsin. This was of course too much, and had I known this beforehand, I wouldn’t have made the trip out of town to the U-Haul station. I told the man that we would just use the expertise of our friend Bill to check the trailer wiring, and would simply pay the late fees when we got up there to Waunakee.
By the time I returned home it was now 4:30 in the afternoon. Six hours of my life, wasted by U-Haul, because no one in their company knew basic information, like if there would be charges and how much they might be. There were many kind people at U-Haul, unlike Francisco, but there is a massive systemic problem in the structure of U-Haul, such that no department knows what information they are supposed to dispense, and every department passes the buck on basic information.
Rest assured, U-Haul, I am not a happy customer!
9.14.2008
Patrick Feb 9
lmfaooo yall have no life, you’re complaining about uhaul ahahaha!!! omggg get a life and quit complaining about a stupid truck/trailer renting service, espessialy one i work at… gosh so mean, ahahaha yall are so goofyyyyy :)