U-Haul – Won’t Fold My Padding For Free
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I recently moved into a new house. To get all of our stuff from point A to point B we rented a Uhaul truck.
We were moving a whole six tenths of a mile (3 blocks). So this should be an
inexpensive move. When we get to the place where you rent the truck, we were the only people in the store. When we finished out order, we were still the only people in the store. This was on a Friday about 11 am.
The truck ran very rough. We were told when we took it back, that this truck was only used for in town moves. If the trucks doesn’t run good, it’s time to retire it. I think it got about -10 miles to the gallon. They also put a hold on our credit card for 50 miles. We were four miles from our house. They did refund the difference when we took the truck back.
We rented some padding to put around the furniture. We also rented an appliance dolly for moving the washer and dryer, etc. When we went to put these in the truck we see where the is already a standard dolly and some padding attached to the side of the truck right in the front. It was explained to us that if we detached and used those items we would be charged for them. It was so nice of them to put these right at the entrance of the truck as we would have to work around them as we loaded it.
Here is the fun part. U-haul charges $1 a mile in addition to the truck rental. After moving everything we own, we took the truck back the next day (Saturday) at 10 am. We were vary tired and sore.
Once again, we are the only people in the store. We did’n't use their dolly or padding. We did use the padding that we rented and it was on the floor of the truck.
The person checking in the truck explains that WE should fold up the padding or they would charge $1 per pad (there were 24) and he would overlook the fact that we didn’t sweep out the truck (it didn’t need it, if anything it had a few Dog hairs on the floor). When we objected he said (and I’m paraphrasing),
“The boss feels that if he has to pay us to fold the padding that the money for that has to come from somewhere.”
To this I thought, “What was my truck rental and $1 a mile, and the rental money for the padding going for?” I mean after all the employees are in the store waiting for the next customer who isn’t there. I wouldn’t want to pull you away from doing nothng!
Then the employee went on to criticise the policy. This is always a classic. Even if you don’t agree with the policy, as an employee you should never bash the company that is paying your paycheck.
So sure enough, my wife and I climbed up in the truck and folded all 24 pads while the employees sat in their air conditioned environment waiting for the next customer. It took about 3 minutes I’m guessing. If the workers were making 10 bucks an hour they would’ve had to pay them 50 cents. Maybe $1.00
Now to be fair, I’m not sure if this is a company wide policy or something that is only done at the Lorain RD location. At any rate, they want to nickle and dime you to death and I did not feel appreciated.
Tags: customer service stories, uhaul