UHaul: Never Again

So, currently in the process of moving a houseful of stuff from Point A to Point B. Went online at http://www.uhaul.com to reserve a truck. Easy! Found a location 15min away, booked everything out with their website, and printed out my confirmation.

Here ends the chipper part of our story.

So, first, the confirmation page says "if you have not received a call from your local office by 5pm tomorrow, please call our regional office to schedule pickup of your vehicle."

The next day arrives and departs, no call from "my local office." So I call the regional office.

20 minutes of hold spiel. Wieux-hieux. Finally get through to a person.

"You need to call the local office directly, they're now in charge of your reservation." Grrr.

I call the local office. "No, sir, sorry...we don't have a 24' truck available. Here's the number for [the next town over] that might have one."

I call the U-haul in the next town over. I get someone on the phone who "transfers the reservation" to their office. They think they'll have a 24' truck available on the date it's needed. Cool. "So, we're all confirmed?" I ask, innocently.

"Um, no sir. We'll call you back by 5pm tomorrow to confirm pickup." Can't you confirm it now? "No."

Okay. At this point, my confidence is flagging, and I call two other companies in the area to put a backup in place, as U-Haul is not filling me with the warm fuzzies. A backup reservation is made, just in case UHaul doesn't come through.

The next day, U-haul calls, they leave a message and...surprise!...they have no trucks available for the date I have a reservation for. Backup is confirmed at this point.

To ensure that I'm not charged for the non-existent reservation for the non-existent truck with UHaul, I call up again, this time to cancel. 30 minutes on hold, and NEVER get a person to pick up the phone. I hang up, and will be checking next month's credit card statements even more diligently than normal to ensure that they didn't charge anything for the non-existent truck on the non-existent reservation.

On the other hand, if you're in the Bay Area and need a truck, I highly recommend either:

Condon and Sons (Penske rentals) in San Mateo

or

Hengehold Trucks in Palo Alto

Addendum:

BTW, talk about identifying a market, getting inside of it, and showing that you understand a customer...while most truck rental outfits in the Bay Area seem to have a strict "we will not rent to you" policy for that thing in the desert, check out what Hengehold does instead. How much incremental revenue do you think Hengehold gets each year because they trust their customers?

Comments

[Brady Joslin]

I got burned by Uhaul 2 times and now only use Penske.

[mike seltsman]

I know how you feel I got burned by Uhaul a few times myself, and then I found this site which give 10% the rental price http://www.apartmentsmovers.com/truck_rental.html
and got my truck thru budget truck rental .
my truck was new with AC (Florida you know :-) and ready when I got there I was 4 hours late on the return time and the did not charge me for it .
Highly recommended

[Elisheva]

Hi folks:
I am getting raked over by UHaul now.
They are trying to make criminal charges against me on an already returned cart. They refused to even tell me how much they thin I owe.
Anyone want to call them up and scold them for me?
Cleveland Regional Marketing Office
1-800-531-3091

[anonymous please]

As an employee, who actually is Customer oriented, it is VERY frustrating to do this kind of stuff.
How DO they get away with it? Believe me folks, if I didn't NEED the job, I wouldn't have it.
I do agree that it sucks, they "Guarantee the availability, but not the location of pick up.." and no they don't transport them for you from location to location. ???????????? The hard part of being on the other side is, at the same time, people are put to the wire on this already, and working on a budget (that quickly dwindles at these times) of $$$ and time.
Yet all I can do is try to help locate the next nearest location and direct them there.
As a consumer, I am on your side. No matter which side of the couonter I happen to be on.

[David from Bakersfield]

I was renting a Uhaul a few weeks ago, and found that their prices were kind of sneaky. It said $29 but I ended paying more than $65 with all kinds of fees. Be careful!

[Eric from Los Angeles]

My experience with Uhaul was positive so far. Rented one medium size truck, but when I arrived they didn't have it on the lot, so I've got a free upgrade.