U-haul is going down...

Some of you have heard about my horrendous U-haul experience from earlier this month. For those of you who haven't, the story is recapped below in my responses to the four-question customer satisfaction survey I received once my reservation was finally closed last week.

Prepare yourself for a rant, and read on:

I rated my overall experience as "poor" and the truck as "good". Following are my responses to the two open-ended questions they asked. Bad idea, U-haul!

I know these responses aren't going to help; they probably won't even be read. But, I must say, writing this helped lower my blood pressure after a few very intense phone calls.


1. Tell others about your experience.

I've had pretty bad U-haul experiences in the past, but this one takes the cake. I reserved a 14' truck one and a half months in advance to ensure I would have a truck when my boyfriend FLEW to Fort McMurray from Calgary to move our belongings back down to Calgary.
Two days before my rental was scheduled, I received a nice call from U-haul confirming the reservation. I was told that there was no 14' truck available, so they were providing us with a 17' truck for the same price. Well, not ideal, but fine.

We arrived at the pick-up location when it opened at 9 a.m. only to have the guy tell us "there was no truck for us" and he had "no idea why they would tell you we had a truck". Apparently, the trucks out in the yard were only to be used for in-town moves and there was no truck available for a long distance move. NOT ACCEPTABLE! Both my boyfriend and I had taken the day off of work and he had FLOWN from Calgary specifically for this. Both of us had to be back at work the next day and he had no other way of getting back to Calgary. The guy working at the location called the regional office and discovered there was a TWENTY SIX foot truck coming in, but he "had no idea when it would arrive". The plan was to load all of our items into the truck by noon and then have my boyfriend drive back to Calgary that night. Because of U-haul's terrible service and unreliable reservation system, my boyfriend had to take an ADDITIONAL day off work because we weren't able to pick up the truck until 4 p.m. Again, not acceptable.
We were also told they did not have a dolly for us, even though we'd reserved it along with 10 moving blankets.

When we finally finished loading our items, it was 7 p.m and far too late to be driving back to Calgary.

The next day, my boyfriend drove the truck back to Calgary, we unloaded the items at our house and returned the truck to the Barlow Trail location (the main U-haul location on Meridian Road NE) at 8 p.m. on December 4 (one day EARLIER than required). The next day at 6 p.m. I received a call from another u-haul location wondering where our truck was because apparently it was supposed to be dropped off at his location. I have no idea how this happened since we ALWAYS drop trucks off at the Meridian Road/Barlow Trail location.

Then, THIRTEEN DAYS after we had dropped off the truck, I receive a call from U-haul. They ask me where the truck is because "they don't have it and it's 10 days over due". I have no f*cking clue where your god damn truck is! I dropped it off thirteen days ago and followed your process (drop off the truck, lock the doors, drop the keys in the 'key drop' slot in the side of your building).

The girl from the regional office explains that the location doesn't have the truck, so I explain exactly where we left it (right down to the parking lot stall). She says someone will call me back today or tomorrow.

I decided to do my own investigation and called the Barlow Trail location myself. After being placed on hold for 13.5 minutes, I hung up and called back. Luckily, this time I was rewarded! A lovely girl named Stephanie called and managed to stay on the phone long enough to work through the issue. It turns out the truck wasn't properly returned to their system and it had been rented out and was now in GRANDE PRAIRIE. Thank you Stephanie for solving my problem.

Thank you, U-haul, for providing me with enough content to fill a blog post about your terrible service and thank you for providing me reason to never rent from you again.

2. What can we do to improve for the next customer?

Overhaul your processes and systems and start focusing on customer service - from the top of your organization, down to the bottom. There are surely good, smart people who work for you. Put their brains in one room and start coming up with ideas about how you can perform a massive overhaul of your service delivery model.