Pretty mad about my whole experience with U-Haul at the moment. So I’ll simply show the letter I am sending to their contact forms and mailing off as soon as I can locate their corporate office address:

In short, your customer service is horrible.

On Sunday, March 25th, I placed an order/reservation on your website for 1 17′ Truck, 1 dolly, 1 hand truck, 10 small boxes, 10 medium boxes, and 10 large boxes. Later that afternoon I received a call from a local U-Haul. The lady on the phone confirmed my truck reservation date and pick up time. I asked her if she knew how I would go about getting my boxes. She said, “the internet orders, I don’t know. We don’t know how that works.” I sort of chuckled to myself, remembering my customer service training where I was taught that “I don’t know” is never an acceptable response to a customer, but simply said, “ok,” figuring I could call the toll-free number on my internet receipt and get things straightened out. So today, March 27th, I call the 888 number located on the bottom of my receipt. They tell me that they didn’t have any record of my order for boxes, but if I took in my internet print-out, I could pick them up at any local U-Haul location. So I went to do just that. I figured I would go to the location that had confirmed my truck reservation.

I arrive at the storefront and track down someone to help me (the store was completely empty). She tells me that she’s not sure, but seems to be willing to help out. So she calls, as best as I can tell, the regional office, I later heard her refer to it as “Traffic.” She does this on the speakerphone. The lady on the phone tells her to allow me to pick up my boxes, and they hang up. Then she calls the number right back and says she didn’t understand how that would work. Since I wasn’t giving her money, it would look like 30 boxes had disappeared from her inventory. That made sense to me, at least to ask the question. The lady on the phone says that she had asked someone else in the office and they said the same thing. The lady in the store asked if she could speak to a supervisor, but they had all gone home. The lady in the store calls another number and speaks to someone else who tells her my card hadn’t been charged, but they didn’t exchange any reference numbers or anything, the guy she was speaking to knew nothing about my specific order, and I was standing there with a sheet of paper that showed the dollar amounts and showed an amount that it said would be billed to my card. She tells me to get anything further done I’ll need to call 1-800-GO-UHAUL. So I left to do that from my car.

While sitting in my car, on hold waiting for a representative, a gentleman comes out of the storefront and tells me that in the store they would like to speak to me on a conference call. So I go back in and am put on the phone with what I later find out is the 888 number at the bottom of my receipt. She looks up my reference number and says she has no record of the boxes. I asked her, “Well I’m standing here with a piece of paper that shows the whole order, so what do I need to do?” Her response was, “I’ve done my job.” I almost lost it. If I had not been in your storefront I can assure you, that she would have had a new orifice by the time I was done with her. I asked to speak to a supervisor, she said she was the supervisor. I told her that I wanted to speak with a manager or someone above her and she said that would not be possible. I told her that just won’t work and that I was getting led in circles and that something needed to be done to straighten this situation out, and that I couldn’t believe this was all going on. She responded, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

So I leave the store again to call the number on my print-out. It’s the same lady from the paragraph above. I told her to transfer me to someone that could do something to help me. I’m assuming at this point that she transferred me to 1-800-GO-UHAUL. I get a representative on the phone and tell him that “I am having trouble with an order/reservation and that I’m having a very bad experience with Customer Service.” I explain the story up to the present with him and he tells me I need to speak with the regional office first. I ask for his supervisor and he says I need to go through the chain of command. I told him with all the circles I had been put through that that was ridiculous. We finally argue down to the point that I asked him for the number because he said he couldn’t transfer me to the number (funny since he later transferred me to a different number). Once he’s given me the number I realize it is the same 888 number that was on my printout. He sort of stops and places me on hold for a minute or two. Then comes back but doesn’t say anything, as I can hear the other customer service rep’s trying to get what I assume are other customers to also call the regional office. Then I hear the phone go back to being on hold for another minute or so. Then he comes back on the line and says he’ll transfer me to someone who can assist me.

I get on the phone with that person and they tell me that my card hasn’t been charged and that I would need to go into the U-Haul store and purchase the boxes. At that point I was just livid. I couldn’t even take it anymore. I had been standing in the parking lot of one of your storefronts for 45-60 minutes and I’d had enough. So I went back in the store and purchased the boxes, figuring that if I later see a charge from you on my credit card I’ll demand a refund or dispute the charge and file a charge-back.

I have most definitely had bad customer service experiences in the past, and I’m certain that I’ll have more in the future, but I cannot recall another time where within a confined time period I had the same business tell me:
- I don’t know
- I’ve done my job
- There’s nothing more I can do
- You’ll have to talk to so-and-so at this number, and no I can’t transfer you

This is completely insane. I can’t wait for my move to be over, I only wish I could say it was out of excitement for the move. Unfortunately at this point, it is largely so I can put behind me having to deal with such poor customer service. As I’ve said, in my training through the years I’ve learned that “I don’t know” is not an acceptable response, and that displeased customers are more likely to tell a larger number of people about their poor experience then a customer which had a good experience. I can assure you, that I will gladly explain my experience to anyone I have the opportunity to, and give them detailed reasons as to why they should NOT use U-Haul. At this point I am hoping that I can locate another truck company and cancel my U-Haul reservation. There is NO excuse for me to have had this experience.

Update: Well, I received a call from the local U-Haul manager today (for the store I had visited).  She apologized in all kinds of ways for my experience, but didn’t seem to know the answer to my original question either (whether I should have been able to just pick up my boxes, or they were being shipped to me).  She did give me her name and told me when she would be in over the next week or so, and told me that if I was double charged or needed something further, that I should give her a call.

When I got home this evening, I had 2 boxes full of boxes waiting for me.  It turns out my card had been charged and they had shipped them to me.  This is a great service for moving, but frustrating that at all levels of Customer Service I spoke to, no one knew this was how the operation worked, and not only did they not know, bust some INSISTED that my card had not been charged and I needed to still purchase the boxes.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to speak with the manager again and if I can have it “my way,” I’ll go for taking the shipped boxes and my receipt from yesterday in and have them just refund yesterdays purchase.  If that or something really close to it doesn’t happen … well, you can expect another rant here I imagine.