Dealing with U-Haul

For the past month or so I had been looking at U-Haul trucks and vans for my move. I had been figuring how much stuff I was taking and looked at gas and was figuring all these things out. In the end I figured taking a cargo van was going to be the smartest thing for me to do, both in space needed and gas mileage.

Along comes today when I go to order a cargo van. The website now says that a cargo van isn’t available for that type of move. WTF? This is not good and I kind of head into panic mode of ‘oh shit this is not good!’. I call up the place I had been getting boxes from and was told that cargo vans never go one way. I told him the web site allowed me to set that up just last week, so he gives me the corporate number to ask them.

So I called corporate and they tell me the same thing, and hinting that maybe I read things wrong on the web site. I know what I saw and I wasn’t going to budge on that and so she sees if there are any one way cargo vans she can find. A one way cargo van was found she said in Altadena, which is inside LA, about an hour and a half away from me. So I call that number and talk to Raul, the general manager and he starts telling me nothing is available for that type of move, so I told him corporate says he does have one. He checked and said that yes he does, but that the system will not recognize the reservation, but that we’ll do a 10’ rental and he’ll change it to the cargo van afterwards. Well that doesn’t work either, he says he’ll call the ‘traffic’ dept to get it changed over and 5 minutes later he calls me back and says that we can’t use a van as its not the right ‘model’ to be transferred over. He told me that normally only vans that are being sold out east are available, and that there are none right now.

So I call corporate again and talk to the same girl and tell her what has happened. She doesn’t seem overly pleased I am calling back and that she’ll see if she can find something for me and call me back. Two hours later still no call, and I kind of doubt I am going to. So its off to use the power of the internet (‘Internet! Internet! Internet! Internet HOOOOooo!’), and track down the CEO’s address to see about sending a quick letter to see if I can get some help from him. In my search I found reference to him on Frontline and that after the show was taped he wanted his cel phone # published so that if people have problems, they can call him direct. So this is what I did.

He was very nice, listened to my struggles so far. He was a bit surprised that the van was an option to rent one way like that, but he didn’t doubt I saw what I saw like the corporate girl seemed to. He said he’d look into it and get back to me. AN hour and a half later he called back, appologising for the delay, I was actually expecting a call tomorrow, not today, so that was nice. He did look into it and found that the guy who deals with sales actually did put it up on the site for one way rentals, and that he (the CEO)  didn’t know that was done. What he could do was offer me the 10’ truck rental for the same price as what I saw for the van rental. He said that if I had made a reservation for a van they would have figured out how to send a van to me, but because I hadn’t the discount was the best they could do.

So that’s ok. The money I save on the rental will be about how much more in gas I will have to spend. Its still about another $130 more from my budget, but that’s not terrible.

So today had some frustration in it, and if nothing was going to be done about the mix up today’s post would have been laced with f-bombs. I know Cliff would have been happier if it was. Sorry to disappoint Cliff, the CEO of U-Haul was pretty decent, blame him for a nice post instead of a f-bomb filled rant.

Tomorrow I should get a call from a reservation centre around here with the discount, and I’ll pick it up on Sunday. Tomorrow I have to get a new muzzle for Ares (there is going to be a LOT of new people around him, and he’s somewhat protective, so we are going to be very careful) and get the back windows of the CRV tinted. We called up a place today and got a very nice quote, and my neighbours have gone to them before, and said they are good. So that’s my day tomorrow really. (exciting isn’t it?)

(Give yourself 2 points if you got the Thundercats reference in my post)

 

Be kind, rewind.  Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.