I made an online reservation with U-Haul on 2/9/04 for a 26' truck to be picked up on the morning (9A.M.) of 2/29/04, preferably at the closest dealer on El Cahon Blvd.
My partner and I went to that local U-Haul on El Cahon Blvd & 40th in San Diego and were told they did not have a reservation for me and they did not have anything available. Looking at their computer, they told us it might be at another U-Haul dealer in Mira Mesa. They, as well as I, tried to phone that dealer but could not get through.
We drove to Mira Mesa to find that this dealer knew nothing and did not even handle 26' trucks. (After checking his computer, that dealer said we had been led on a wild goose chase.) After waiting over an hour on hold, I was able to talk to U-Haul customer service, and I was told we should wait to hear from them as they would call if anything came in.
I then called the moving service that I had contracted with, to inform them of the delay. As the loaders were already on the road and coming from 2 hours away, I instructed them to return home and hopefully we would be ready to load by tomorrow morning (having been given no assurances by U-Haul that we would get anything, this was just hoping on our part). (I also had to call to change our hotel reservation for that evening to Monday evening, incurring an extra expense.)
Later that afternoon I received a call from U-Haul informing us that they had a truck available. We drove to the Point Loma U-Haul dealer and eventually got a 26' truck and trailer (not the tow bar originally asked for.) We proceeded to drive the truck to our home and park it nearby. I locked the truck up as it was too late in the day to start loading.
Monday morning (the day we originally planned to drive to Northern California), I went out to the truck to go get the gas tank filled up and the truck would not start. We called the 800 number for service and they said they would call back within 30 mins.
After 1 hour we called back and they said they would have a mechanic call back. The mechanic eventually called and said he could not get there for at least 45 minutes. I called U-Haul and requested a different truck as we did not feel secure driving this truck up the 5 freeway from San Diego to Oakland.
I was rudely told that they could not provide me with another vehicle as that was not how we work. At this point I informed U-Haul that as I had to be in the Bay Area Tuesday morning, I considered the contract was void as they had not provided us with a working vehicle.
I then removed our lock from the truck and took the keys to the U-Haul dealer on El Cahon & 40th. I gave them a paper that had the address of where the truck was parked and informed them that they needed to deal with their truck as we had to get ready to leave for Oakland.
I contacted Budget and rented a truck from them for the following weekend. I drove to Oakland in my car that Monday. (Once again, having to change the hotel reservation and the moving helpers both loading and unloading.) We drove back down to San Diego 2 days later to get the truck from Budget. Unfortunately, Budget only has 24' trucks and we were not able to fit everything into that truck We had to make 3 more trips to San Diego in a borrowed pickup to finish the move, incurring more expense.
Because of U-Haul's failure to provide a working truck and their incredibly bad customer service, we incurred hundreds of dollars more in costs: more gas for additional trips, (as well as wear on our vehicles), more expense in mover help, more expense in accommodations. We also wasted incredible amounts of our time dealing with their incompetence and dismal customer service.
On top of it all, U-Haul charged my American Express card for $686.02 on 2/29/04 and for $323.04 on 3/1/04.
American Express said that since I had given them my card number it wasn't fraud and there was nothing they could do about it.
Rob
San Francisco, California
U.S.A.
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