I haven't moved in 8 years, after the past few days I now remember why.

First off, I kicked off the whole thing with the greatest conversation EVER with the nice lady at the U-Haul center...
Me-I have a reservation for a 17' truck.
Her-We dont have anymore 17', I can give you a 14'.
Me-I reserved a 17'.
Her-Yes sir, but we dont have any available.
Me-You're not listening. I RESERVED a 17' truck.
Her-I understand sir, but we rented them all.
Me-You guys do understand what "reserve" means... Right?
Her-Yes sir, but it is not our policy to hold trucks for reservations.

At this point I had to drop it before I killed her. Knowing that I'd likely not locate another truck at this late hour (you know, without a "reservation") I took the 14' truck.
Then I requested the appliance dolly I had "reserved."
"Sorry sir, we dont have any dollys left."

While she did the paperwork, I explained to her in detail how much her company sucked and thanked her for playing such a big role in ruining my day.

Driving off the lot with the only truck left available, I quickly noticed why it was the only truck left. It pulled severely to the right. Badly. Really badly.
I got home, and instead of loading the truck as planned I found myself on the phone calling around to find another one. No dice. Nothing even close.
So after I make a trip to Northern to BUY a dolly, I load up the piece of **** with my stuff...

Dont go away. This gets better.

As I'm getting ready to take a break from loading the truck to go to the closing on my house, the phone rings... You guessed it. Its my real estate agent telling me that some paperwork has fallen through the cracks on the people buying the house of the people buying my house, and closing will be delayed until Tuesday morning.
Ummm... OK.
Tuesday morning... still not ready.
Tuesday afternoon... nope.
At this point we go ahead and move to Albany. I have a POS U-Haul that has to be returned Wed. before noon and its loaded with all my crap. I figure I just have to drive back to Atlanta Wed afternoon for closing.

Well... its now Thursday and I still own a house I no longer live in. Seems the paperwork got lost somewhere between the lender and the closing attorney's office. At least tomorrow is a holiday so this crap can't happen until Monday at best. Craptastic.

Gee... Theres alot of boxes piled up in this house.

PS - Oh yeah. If you can help it, don't drive a U-Haul south into a tropical storm that is travelling north. Especially if that U-Haul won't track straight in the first place.

 

As of 3-4 years ago, 20/20 or 60min had done 2 different exposes of how bad U-haul sucked. Many people have died from poorly maintained U-haul trucks losing a tire or brakes or something else. I always rent Ryder. Much better maintenence of vehicles, and never had them rent something out from under me. Sorry for your bad experience. You live and you learn. Hope all goes well on your sale and with your new home.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Catch 22 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">First off, I kicked off the whole thing with the greatest conversation EVER with the nice lady at the U-Haul center...
Me-I have a reservation for a 17' truck.
Her-We dont have anymore 17', I can give you a 14'.
Me-I reserved a 17'.
Her-Yes sir, but we dont have any available.
Me-You're not listening. I RESERVED a 17' truck.
Her-I understand sir, but we rented them all.
Me-You guys do understand what "reserve" means... Right?
Her-Yes sir, but it is not our policy to hold trucks for reservations.
</TD></TR></TABLE>
nice. Thats exactly like an episode of Seinfeld. (with a rental car)

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Catch 22 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">At this point we go ahead and move to Albany. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Is there an Albany in Georgia, or is Scotty joining us Northeasterners?


Matt

 

Trust me - I TOTALLY feel for you, Scott. Rest assured that there is no really good way to move. When we went from Seattle to Virginia, we paid a bunch of dough to let someone else take the chances with trucks, and ceremoniously counted dead rental rigs along the way. We got to three before we hit central Washington State, including one that had fallen off of the road and scattered its guts - some poor idiot's belongings - 200 yards down the side of I-90.

This time (for a 3 hour trip) I was on the phone two days before our "5-day window" opened - that's the agreed-upon span of dates during which your stuff will be picked up - trying to find out which day it would actually happen. The dispatcher agreed that I wasn't being unreasonable, wanting to know when we might actually load, but couldn't tell me until the end of that same day. The answer was Day 1 of the window, so we had about 36 hours notice.

The short story is that the squished my file cabinet but I didn't hurt my back or crash a POS truck.

K

PS - Uhaul said something about retrieving that crashed truck and putting it back in service in Georgia.

 

that really does suck Scott..........and it is probably one of the main reason why U-Haul is/has filing or filed for bankruptcy.........they blow and always have.........drive the truck off a cliff when you are done, i'm sure they won't miss it....***** em...enjoy your 4th....

 

...and on the house selling front. My cousin has been trying to sell his mom's house in Columbia S.C. for a while now. Twice he's flown up from Ft. lauderdale to close, only to find out that the buyer's loan was held up. I wonder if the mortgage industry just can't keep up with the volume of home loans and re-finances going on.

Oh, and yeah, U-Haul does suck.

 

It coulda been worse. You could've been living in Montreal and moving on July 1st with about a million of other people. Years ago, there used to be a LAW that stipulated that all leases HAD to end on July 1st. That law was abolished years ago, but most leases are still signed to July 1st. It kinda became a stupid tradition, where like 90 percent of moving is still done on this one day. Imagine trying to find ANY kind of truck on this day... Insane and only in Quebec...

 

Dang. That's bad.

I HATE HATE HATE moving and buying/selling houses and all the related crap that goes along with it. The only thing I got right when I bought this place was renting a brandy-new Penske truck with like 3000 miles on it.

 

U-Haul. 19.95 a day = 169.73 for 5 hours of moving (fine print is a bitch)

 

On a vaguely similar note-has anyone looked at the condition of U-Haul trailers lately? I did and after finding out their daily rate is ~$50 went and spent $5000 for a brand new aluminum one for the race car. What they were offering not only did not look well cared for but was overpriced. The local dealer is a maintenance base to boot.

For those that have not moved recently-like me-I can only imagine what you folks have been thru. I did use a rental to bring some things home from my parents house after the estate sale-it was not a lot of fun, but bearable. Here in Pittsburgh we have a very sharp turn off a bridge crossing the river into the city-more rentals wind up on their sides than is necessary. I guess it is poor instruction of the driver and maintenance combined that is the root cause of these horror stories.

Drive safe and have a great holiday in your new home.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by speedracer33 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Is there an Albany in Georgia, or is Scotty joining us Northeasterners?


Matt</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yes, there is an Albany in Georgia. Judging by his advice "don't drive south in a storm heading north" it is highly likely that he is still in GA.

But, I don't know for sure.

 

I had a run in with so called "reservations" once.

I drove down to San Diego for the National Tour and when I got to the motel my friend and I checked in for our reservation of a non smoking room with 2 king size beds. Of course there were no rooms like that available. As it turns out, reserving rooms through internet sites such as expedia.com it only reserves you "A Room" not the room that you actually picked out. That's why it's cheaper.

Long argument short, I learned that if you reserve a room through AAA it's $10 more but you actually get the room you reserve.

Catch 22: If I were you I would put together a letter and send it to U-Haul and let them know you have also contacted the Better Business Bureau. Try to get your money back from the bastards.

 

You'd be hard pressed to find a company that sucks more A$$ than U-Hole.

I've had nasty experiences with their trucks on several occasions. I'd NEVER rent from them if it was avoidable, but the rub is that they're the only guys in town with a low deck truck. They still suck.... next time I'll rent a Ryder and BUY a forklift to load it with.

My buddy and I bought a friends HotWheels collection as an investment, and rented a U-Hole truck to transport the stuff from Vancouver, WA down to Sacramento where my buddy lives. He pimped the stuff from down there. We needed a decent size truck, and U-Hole is convenient to my place, so we "Reserved" a truck too. Same Exfugginzact story at the counter. These freaks don't have a clue what a reservation is. Our truck was gone as well. So they gave us a bastard 17 footer that was on the lot. A Ford. It musta been wired by Lucas Electrics, "AKA Prince of darkness", because that sucker went black on a back road about 5 miles from my house. We call the U-Hole service line and wait 2 hours for Jo Bob to show up in his equally nasty looking service truck. He "wrenches" on the rig for about an hour and find's a fusible link that blew. Now, for clarification.... no one on the planet is more scary in the auto electric field than I am. I can't even install a radio without burning the car to the ground. BUT..... I do know that a chuck of fat fusible link doesn't just blow on it's own. There's gotta be a reason for it. So, the conversation with Service sloth goes something like this...

Us: Dude, that link had to blow for a reason.
Sloth: Well, sometimes they just go.
Us: Yeah..... when something in the system is already overloaded.
Sloth: Well, it's probably just from the age of the link.
Us: If not, I guess we'll see you later.
Sloth: It'll be fine.
Us: Oh yeah... sure it will be.

So, off goes the sloth in his sweet service rig and we've got the truck started and off to dudes house to load up the loot. We're supposed to be there at 7PM, and it's about 9PM by now. We go, Oh...... I'd say 100 feet, and POOF! Black as the ace of spades again. Call U-Hole service up and wait for another hour. Here comes sloth again. We weren't super happy with him at that point, so it went something like this:

Sloth: What's the problem?
Us: Same problem that was there 2 seconds before you replace the fusible link.
Sloth: Really? (Bewildered)
Us: Yeah.... that's why they call it "FUSIBLE" #@^$ head. It's kinda like a fuse. Ever heard of one of those??

Sloth digs back in on the truck and after about an hour has an epiphany, "There's a short here at the alternator". We're amazed with the Mensa at this point. He fixes it and we cancel the pick up for the night. Back into U-Hole in the morning and remodel the managers cornhole to about the size of the Grand Canyon. My buddy that was going to drive the truck back to Sacto is a Sheriff, and just looking at him scares most people. Once the hair on the back of his neck stood up, I knew it was gonna get ugly quick. It did, and after a short "conversation" regarding our reservation and the quality of their POS trucks, we got a brand new truck with 25 miles on it.

He drives with a bit more confidence than the rest of us since he can with that damn badge in his wallet. So the new U-Hole truck had a nice 90 mph trip to Sacto in record time, over the mountains. He said there was probably a good 3 or 4 thousand miles left on that trucks life when he got done with it.

So, yeah.... I'd basically agree. U-Hole is the most poorly managed company in the US. That about sums it up.

 

Go Ryder. I don't want to wonder if my rental truck actually has working brakes and tires with tread left. I once rented from Budget to get a chance to try out an Isuzu med. duty diesel, but not again. Thing would barely hit over 65 MPH and the limit was 70 on my trip. Additionally, the maintenance was ****-poor.

 

I used to tow my motorcycle to the track (back when I was young and stupid, and didn't have any broken bones) with Uhaul trailers. Even though Uhaul did the wiring in my car, it never worked with the wiring on the trailer. Each rental pickup that should have taken 3 minutes took 1 hour, as some poor sap messed with the wiring, while answering phones, and taking care of irrate customers.

What about Penske? Seems like he'd run a quality operation.

 

Penske may run a quality operation, but he wasn't cheap. Ryder is usually among the cheapest.

 

Well, it didn't break down. But driving a bent truck thats shaped like a brick into a 50mph headwind and driving rain isn't much fun.

I explained this to the fine folks here at U-Haul Albany in the hopes that they'd be more responsive than the fine folks at U-Haul Atlanta. The response I got was "gee, we're sorry for your inconvenience sir" and they turned right around and rented the truck to someone else.

Yep, they truly are working on the "Shittiest Company in the Country" award.

 

We had rented a diesel Hino truck from Penske I think. Drove it from Huntsville Alabama to West Yellowstone Montana (for work). Anyway, the motor in the Hino truck popped a valve, and wouldn't go no more, so I called up the place I rented from, and they were absolutely no help. No Hino dealer within 200miles, no Penske rental place either. We ended up renting a 17ft Ford V10 U-haul truck, which was nearly new. Some strange combination of being about 2000lbs overweight and running for a few hours at 90mph in Montana (that's reasonable and prudent, right) resulted in a blown tire. We stopped, surveyed the shredded tire, and just as we were reaching for a cell phone and the U-haul #, a car pulled up and stopped. Turns out, this guy was the manager for the local U-haul place, which was about 3 miles from where we were. We followed him to the store, they replaced the tire in about 1/2 hr, and we were on our way. All of this was in the middle of nowhere, and all completely dumb luck.

I've never quite figured out why people rent U-haul car trailers. They charge way more than you'd lose in depreciation by just buying a brand new one, using it for your trip, then re-selling it when you get where you're going.

-Chris

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by elgorey &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
nice. Thats exactly like an episode of Seinfeld. (with a rental car)</TD></TR></TABLE>

"You know how to take the reservation, but you don't know how to hold the reservation. And really, the holding is the most important part."

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Catch 22 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I haven't moved in 8 years, after the past few days I now remember why.

First off, I kicked off the whole thing with the greatest conversation EVER with the nice lady at the U-Haul center...
Me-I have a reservation for a 17' truck.
Her-We dont have anymore 17', I can give you a 14'.
Me-I reserved a 17'.
Her-Yes sir, but we dont have any available.
Me-You're not listening. I RESERVED a 17' truck.
Her-I understand sir, but we rented them all.
Me-You guys do understand what "reserve" means... Right?
Her-Yes sir, but it is not our policy to hold trucks for reservations.

At this point I had to drop it before I killed her. Knowing that I'd likely not locate another truck at this late hour (you know, without a "reservation") I took the 14' truck.
Then I requested the appliance dolly I had "reserved."
"Sorry sir, we dont have any dollys left."

While she did the paperwork, I explained to her in detail how much her company sucked and thanked her for playing such a big role in ruining my day.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Aint adult life grand? If you think moving is a pain ( I rented penske, btw) try remodelling. You will never see more slacking, backtracking, backpeddling in your life; comes a point where you gotta grab people by the ***** and squeeze if you want **** done (being a lawyer helps.) I ended up just doing the work myself, and told all the would be "contractors" to blow me; it's appalling, really, how little pride people take in their vocations "these days", even when I was cleaning toilets and the like, I reminded myself that I was earning a wage, and that other people (impartial to my plight, and not directly responsible for my slave wages) "depended" in some faculty upon how well I did my job. There's no accountability any more. Sorry to hear about your frustration. I ' ve been there. Good luck on the close of the sale. Regards.

 

hmmm. i hope ceas sees this post..

because I'M the one who's gonna be DRIVING the truck!!!!

btw, the ONLY reason why i like uhaul: they'll rent out a trailer to you even without renting out a truck..most places require you to get a truck, too..

 

I helped my brother move last weekend. He rented a U-Haul. It was the bigest POS I have ever seen. It was a stick! They didn't even ask if anyone could drive a stick. You could move the steering wheel 6 inches before anything happened. The company did not even explain anything on how to use the truck. I came late and noticed the extreem angle of the loading ramp. A quick look under the truck I noticed airbags; climed into the cab and hit some random button. Easy enough the truck started lowering. Too bad they loaded the truck before I noticed that. The company sucks. When was the last time you saw a nice, new U-haul? I would much rather have a Hertz/Penske, or ryder.

FYI- Some Enterpise Rent-A-Car areas have trucks. You have to be a company to rent them but if your self employed it works fine. The trucks are new and usually pretty nice.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by elgorey &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
nice. Thats exactly like an episode of Seinfeld. (with a rental car)</TD></TR></TABLE>

No, it's *exactly* how my conversation went when we went to pick up a car from Hertz the day before our trip. Same thing, same dumb corporate stare, same inability to acknowledge anything was out of the ordinary. I agree there seems to be a total lack of responsibility for workmanship. Someone recently said something that struck a nerve. That the word "responsibility" has "response" as part of it. It means that the person actually has to DO something. Very true.

Good luck with the house.



Modified by kb58 at 1:30 AM 7/5/2003

 

Sorry about the bad U-Hole (I like that one) experience.

I've had good luck with Ryder and Penske (thought the Penske had a 60 mph governor).

Scott