'"Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.'... 'Dammit, we made him angry'", a tale of customer service

The BBQ Pit
1

My daughter rented a U-Haul storage space in late May and since then the location has double-billed her for one space, ignoring her complaints, blowing her off, and at one time, someone called her a ‘hoe’.

I asked if she wanted me on the case and she always resisted, saying she was handling it with her mother. And while her mother may have many fine qualities, one of those is an unfailing politeness which just is not effective with some people.

So nothing got resolved. Until today.

Sophia calls, complaining that she’s getting blown off again and that another $380 would be deducted in about a week.

“Sophia, do you want me to take the lead?”
“Dad, they’re just not listening to me or mom. I think you have to.”

So I get to work. Sophia and her mother have been working at this from a bottom-up approach, I decided to go top-down.

  1. I found a list of the top 20 executives @ U-Haul corporate (Phoenix).

  2. Using hunter.io, I learned that U-Haul emails have a fn_ln @ uhaul.com construction.

  3. I then wrote the following email, bcc:ing it to 16 of the top 17 executives at U-Haul, subject line "Documented Age Discrimination and Sexual Harassment at NYC U-Haul Location’, no pulling punches, this is the fucking subject.

Let’s talk:

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My first contact was within 5 minutes. Within an hour and a half, I had corresponded with three of the people I emailed, as well as the corporate executive in charge of the division responsible for oversight of these locations.

(All of them were very professional and quite awesome.)

The head U-Haul guy called the owner of the store (who was on vacay, upstate) and demanded to see the records. He wrote me a long email apologizing, giving me the store owners’ phone number.

Well, I’m not calling him. That’s not how I handle things, tyvm. I don’t want to be a direct contact, a voice, to this man. I want to be the guy he never spoke to who he wished he had never heard of, a guy who… somehow… makes U-Haul jump over a transaction dispute.

So I ask Sophia to call him and request her transaction history, telling him ‘my Dad’s mad enough’. He sends it, and she forwarded it to me.

U-Haul had asked us for a summary of events. With the accounting records provided, I was ready. So, around 11pm, I compose the following and sent it to the 5 U-Haul execs, my ex and my daughter, and the owner of the location in question:

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Up until then, the email was addressed to the group. But I then invoke the “… but this is my daughter!” clause and closed by addressing the store owner directly:

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Sophia just texted me: $497.18 was just deposited into her account.

Don’t make me angry, guys. Just don’t.

2

I love stories like this. Very well done, indeed. Usually it happens only when a newspaper or TV station consumer advocacy team gets involved. Kudos on doing it on your own.

P.S.- Remind me never to get you angry! :wink:

3

I wish you’d assisted your daughter in implementing strategies that would be effective, instead of taking over from her.

If they called her a “hoe,” and she is the victim here, SHE should be the one threatening to rip them a new one. Not daddy. You’re just reinforcing stereotypes that young women need big strong men to take care of them.

In your shoes, I’d have talked to my daughter about more effective strategies she could use, and if she wanted to employ them, I’d have helped her do so.

Would I take over from her, in the eyes of the offending company? Nope.

Both U-Haul and your daughter can take the message from this exchange that at the end of the day, women really do need men to protect them. To hell with that. Next time, coach her on how SHE can take the lead.

4

Nicely done @JohnT! And you did end up showing her how to handle things.

5

They were sexist jackasses for sure, but that’s not what age discrimination means. It’s a law to protect 40+ people from being discriminated against in the workplace and applying for jobs.

And CairoCarol is right. Your daughter will have to deal with shitheads for the rest of her life and you won’t always be around to help her. From when they were grade school kids we tried to raise our kids to handle their own conflicts. We’d help them of course and if it was ever something dangerous or abusive we’d have called the cops right away but thankfully that never happened.

6

Oh, when justice wins out, I’m so ecstatic! Great job, dad! :heartbeat:

Well, this is a wonderful way to start my day! :slight_smile:

7

I’m a 44 year old man.

Will you be my dad?

8

This apparently happened in New York, which has a much more expansive age discrimination law (it applies to public accommodations, and all ages). If they were treating her differently based on her age, it was illegal.

9

Puny god.

10

The only way this could have been better would be if the owner’s name was “Mr. McGee.” I’m assuming it isn’t because no one would be able to resist telling us that!

11

Well-done, @JohnT ! Well-done indeed! Are you an attorney? Or are you just particularly skillful at Getting Shit Done?

12

I think he taught his daughter just fine how to handle things better in the future.

Usually when you teach someone, you show them first and then let them try.

13

Yeah, I have to agree with this. I really wish that my father had stepped in and helped me out when I was young and taken advantage of by unscrupulous actors. @CairoCarol claims that this reinforces stereotypes about young women, I disagree, this acknowledges that young people get taken advantage of, and don’t have the life experience to deal with it.

I had a somewhat similar situation happen when I was 19 with an apartment issue. I had moved out and to a new place at the end of my lease, but they continued to charge me for it. I asked my father for help, and he gave extremely vague and useless advice about going into the rental office and demanding that they stop billing me. I had done that, to no avail. The closest thing to concrete advice was that you should never threaten to go to the BBB, instead you threaten to contact the State Attorney General’s Division of Consumer Fraud.

A much better method would have been similar to @JohnT’s efforts, and actually perform. This would have the effect of fixing the problem, as well as given me an example and role model to follow for similar situations in the future.

My eventual solution was to change banks so they could no longer withdraw from it. They kept billing me, and technically I still owe them about a years rent, and occasionally I’d get bill collectors trying to collect it, but now that debt is over 20 years old and completely unenforceable.

So, kudos, @JohnT. You certainly should let her fight her own battles, but at the same time, you’re her father, and shouldn’t abandon her when she is outmatched. It’s a fine balancing act to be sure, but in this example, you came down well on the right side of being a good parent, IMHO.

14

I will go into this later today in more detail, but note that she worked two months on this with zero intervention, other than advice, from either of us, finally asking her mother to step in 2, 3 weeks ago, and me, yesterday.

15

@Grrr: “Helping” is good. But it sounds to me like he totally took over. As he says, he “took the lead.”

JohnT found the list of 20 executives, rather than suggesting to his daughter that she look them up. JohnT used “hunter.io” rather than telling his daughter that this was something she could pursue. JohnT wrote an email claiming age and sex discrimination, rather than suggesting to his daughter that she write, and he’d gladly look over her note and make suggestions before she sent it.

I’m not suggesting JohnT leave his daughter high and dry, I’m suggesting that the best way to help her is to work together with her to find ways she can take the lead, rather than act like she’s a damsel in distress who can’t write her own letters.

That’s all. I’m glad JohnT helped his daughter and got results, I’m just sorry that he didn’t find a way that she could take some ownership of the success.

16

Sometimes this is what it takes, for sure. My daughter worked for a company where the manager was a serial sexual harasser. Lewd jokes and comments, etc. Then my son died and my daughter took a few days off for obvious reasons, with the manager’s approval. When she returned, he basically told her that she wasn’t needed there any longer. When she told me about her history with him, I went to the parent company (located in Germany) and complained about the asshole and asked them if it was normal for them to hire sexual predators. It got immediate attention, of course. The manager wasn’t fired (at least not immediately), but I wouldn’t have wanted to be in his shoes. He tried to threaten me with a libel lawsuit, which I also passed on to his parent company. Never heard from him again. My daughter heard through a friend at the company that the guy stumbled around in a daze for several days and avoided everyone.

17

There’s something about seeing your kid being treated poorly. In school, my son saw two bigger boys picking on a “slow” kid. My son stepped in and they started beating him up. He went on to kick both their asses, getting suspended for three days as a result. I took time off from work and took him out to have fun each of his punishment days. I made sure the school knew.

When my daughter had an interaction with the local police, being unfairly cited with “disturbing the peace”, I talked to my friend who is an attorney. He saw it as a learning experience for her. I took her to the law office and he interviewed her as if he were defending her on a felony case. We went before the judge, who was impressed. The cop ended up offering to withdraw charges, and apologizing to her. He’d had a very bad day at work (he truly did) and he told her she really did nothing wrong (she had refused to talk to the cop, asking for her dad or a lawyer, just as I’d taught her).

18

OOOOOooooh, saucy. How? Did you send videos of you and him enjoying yourselves to the principal?

(I’m not being snarky here, I’m genuinely curious)

19

As a kid*, I never understood “being suspended” as a punishment.
“Don’t like school, so you act up? Well, we’ll give you a week off!”

A friend’s son was a prankster, who got suspended for the last month of school. The kid found an online class that he really liked, and finished his classwork with a lot less stress. And less stress equalled a happier kid, equalled no need for pranks.

*As an adult, I still don’t get it. Hmmm, unless it’s only meant to benefit the school, by not having to deal with that student.

20

My middle son and his best friend got suspended for the last two days of middle school (a stink bait prank that went terribly awry). They missed some last day/‘graduation’ type stuff. In addition, Sam got to spend two days hacking out weeds in the back yard. I suspect his friend may have spent the days just lounging, but I don’t know.

So, how much of a punishment it is depends entirely on the reaction of the guardians.