Damn You!
Your little “shakes fist angrily” comment seems to be following me around everywhere I go.
Please make it stop…
I had this happen to me too. I called to confirm a reservation and was told that someone had called and canceled it. I had thought it was a once in a blue moon type mistake on their part. Thankfully, I have a pick up, so was able to use that to move. Took longer, but at least things worked out for me. Hope things worked out for you somehow also, Tramp. What a bummer, eh?
Just because it hasn’t happened to you doesn’t mean they don’t do it. They do it regularly. You probably have used them when they weren’t busy and didn’t need to be complete assholes to their customers. Note how many people in the thread have the exact same experience (myself included) as the OP. This is their standard practice.
My favorite was being told that I could drop the truck off while they were closed by parking it by the store and dropping the keys in the mail slot, only to be charged an extra day because they don’t really allow that, and the truck sat in front of the store the whole next day without them checking it in.
I’ve never had a good U-Haul experience. SDMB has countless threads about how awful they are. I doubt it’s some sort of conspiracy to badmouth a wonderful company.
Well all right then! Will somebody please cue the fargin’ crickets???
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I wondered how long it would be before someone objected to that.
You’re right, of course–just because it hasn’t happened to me doesn’t mean it isn’t their standard practice. All I had to go on, of course, was my personal experience of them, which has been uniformly good. On the other hand, given the stories I’ve seen here and the ones that were linked to within this thread, I’ve gotta back off on my original opinion. I’ve backed off far enough that I don’t plan to use them ever again, even though I will miss those nice low decks.
I just noticed that this thread has almost 2500 views. I suspect that many of those people are like me, checking in from time to time to find out whether or not tramp ever found a truck.
How 'bout it, tramp?
She may be off-line due to her move.
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I wondered how long it would be before someone objected to that.
You’re right, of course–just because it hasn’t happened to me doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. All I had to go on was my personal experience of them, which has been uniformly good. This thread (and the sites it linked to) is literally the first time I’ve ever heard of anyone having a problem with U-Haul–and I’ve used them frequently, as have many of my friends.
Now, it could be that we were all just incredibly lucky; it could also be that the only people saying anything are the ones who have had bad experiences. I can’t say.
If I need to rent a van or a truck again, I probably will call U-Haul (cheap. low decks.). But I will also, given what’s been said here and elsewhere, be very cautious in my dealings with them and be on the look out for any shenanigans. When you get down to it, that’s really all you can do when dealing with any company, isn’t it?
Oh, PISS.
And I previewed to make sure it hadn’t posted the first time! I previewed TWICE, because I was rethinking it and rewriting it.
sulk
Sorry folks. And the second post (where I said I would probably use U-Haul again) is the current “position”. If you care. Which you don’t have to, but I thought I’d make sure no one thought I was contradicting myself.
Eh, I can understand that, Morgyn. I heard horror stories about DSL, but mine’s worked perfectly. I hear horror stories about Comcast, but everything’s been alright with me.
I think the point was thak Skopo was hit with bank overdraft fees, this being a debit card linked to a personal account and not a line of credit. So, while the Visa logo protects from fraudulent use of the card, I think overdrafts are between you and the bank. Sometimes you can talk your way out of them, but there is no obligation on the bank’s part.
Hello, I’ve resurfaced!
Quasimodem, you are sweet to call Uhaul on my behalf. Next time you’re in the DC area, let me buy you a drink.
So I went up to Uhaul personally to beg for or steal a truck. Huge rave to Peggy at the Merriefield Uhaul. She took pity on me and found a smaller truck for me to rent. She also only charged me for half the mileage because it would take me two trips to move in a small truck.
So alls well that ends well I guess. Peggy told me to write a letter to the CEO of Uhaul to tell her about how horrible they were. I am going to write him a VERY strongly worded letter and then send Peggy some flowers.
I think all of your difficulties may have been part of a big plot by Peggy to score herself some flowers.
Quasimodem, you are sweet to call Uhaul on my behalf. Next time you’re in the DC area, let me buy you a drink.
I’m glad things worked out for you, sweetie. Although I have never experienced your troubles with U-Haul, I have had some “deadline” moves in my past, and they are strenuous enough without the added burden of suddenly having no truck.
So alls well that ends well I guess. Peggy told me to write a letter to the CEO of Uhaul to tell her about how horrible they were.
I hope that letter gets you more than just an apology and a certificate for 10 dollars off your next move, tramp!
I say again: None of you went through this shit deserved to be treated that way, and I hope it stops!
Thanks
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Yep–that’s exactly what happened, divemaster. The transaction is still processed like a check–anytime you use a debit card to make a reservation, the vendor deducts the actual amount of money from your checking account, and any additional fees that they charge (like the $500 fee that UHaul charged me, conditional on the return of the “missing” truck sitting outside their front door). This is why it’s never a good idea to make a reservation on a debit card.
And yes, the overdraft charges are between the debit cardholder and the bank where the account is held–the bank will insist that each overdraft costs them money to process ($30 each, +/-), so they won’t refund any overdraft fees unless it can be proven that the debit that caused the overdraft should not have been charged to your account in the first place. This depends on the vendor admitting that the charge was in error, and in my case, UHaul was of no help, and my bank said they couldn’t do anything to reverse the charge or the overdrafts that came after it.
Maybe I should pit my bank.
Hey! I just had an idea! Can we do this?
Can we (me) send an e-mail to U-Haul Customer Service and link to this thread?
Guess Y’all can tell I ain’t ready to roll over and die just yet, huh? Must be the “South’uhn German Boah” in me!
I’ll e-mail a mod and see what they say…
Stay tuned! 
Quas’
“Fightin’ mad, this Rebel lad!” - from Johnny Horton’s The Rebel-Johnny Yuma
Cash not Horton!
Y’all see how upset I am???
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I had a scary situation. I reserved a UHaul online when I was a student, and a few days later the manager of the local UHaul called me up. He said (if I remember correctly) that corporate just assigns rentals to him, whether he has the truck or not. He did not in fact have the truck I wanted, and I settled on something smaller. It worked out fine, I had overestimated how much stuff I had (how often does that happen?)
So, it worked out fine. The manager was placed in the very unenviable of fixing a corporate fuck up, and he did it well. In my experience bad, stressfull jobs force good employees out, which in UHaul’s case leads to the sort of customer-service seen in the stories above. I even wonder if some of the cancelled reservations were done because the local employees found it to be a fairly painless way to get rid of rentals they could never fulfill.
Blame the UHaul corporation. They seem to institute a system where the web site or 800 number charges you $5 for basically doing nothing, while saddling local franchises with the responsibility of living up to corporations unfulfillable promise. Sooo evil. Makes my consulting job seem philanthropic.
I am NOT excusing U-Haul, but I do have related experience renting cars.
The corporate office and the 800-number for reservations both rely on information from the local offices regarding fleet inventory. That means, that if their screen tells them your office has, say, four Ford Escorts, they will take reservations for all four if they can. The fact that you don’t actually have four is not something they would know if the computer doesn’t tell them so.
Frequently, when I worked as a counter representative for car rental agencies in a Fairly Major Tourist Area, we would end up overbooked because the updated fleet reports wouldn’t get to corporate fast enough to prevent them from taking rez’s for cars that weren’t available. Or someone would screw up along the line and the fleet report wouldn’t get updated. Example: Say you have one 14-foot van. Someone comes in to your local office and you rent it to them. But you forget to tell corporate. 10 minutes later, someone else walks in with a confirmed reservation for a vehicle you don’t have any more.
More frequently, however, car shortages were the result of intentional overbooking. The fact is that a certain percentage of people who rent a car will not show up. They miss their flight, or they decide not to get a car, or they get a lower rate somewhere else and rent there. If you truly hold cars for such people (what we called a “hard reservation”, as opposed to a “soft reservation”), you run the risk that at the end of the night you’ll have cars parked in your lot instead of on the road. The type of rental plays into it too: Say you have a walk-up who wants a car for two weeks, but all your cars are reserved. But you’ve got three confirmed reservations for a later flight, all for one-day rentals. Chances are good someone isn’t going to show, and even if they do, you’ve lost a one-day rental and gained a two-week rental. Sure, the guy’s going to be royally pissed – and justifiably so – but revenue is revenue.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I hated being overbooked because it meant that if everyone showed I wouldn’t have enough cars and chances were then about 100% that I was going to get screamed at by an irate customer who had every right to be screaming at me. But then I always, always tried to get them another vehicle with a competitor if we couldn’t help them – what we called “walking” the customer. To just be rude to them and show them the door as happened here – that I would never have done.
Because of my experience, though, I always follow up a telephone reservation for a rental car or truck with a faxed letter confirming the details of the reservation and underscoring the fact that I will be showing up. I tell them that on the phone too: Do not give my vehicle away; I will be showing up. And I always make reservations with the local office, not the 800 number, because it’s the local office that’s going to know what they have sitting out on the lot.
Glad things worked out for you, TRAMP. Though I too have been thinking shakes fist angrily when things go awry – don’t know why that’s so amusing, but it is.
E-mailed 2 mods (Arnold and Coldfire) and have heard from neither as of this posting.
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