A Nice Little Restrained Email
2005-01-05, 9:22 a.m.

This is what I emailed U-Haul "Customer Service". I think I was very nice. I think I have burst an artery from trying to remain composed.

Off to bleed quietly while waiting for the movers.

Yesterday afternoon we rented a 24-foot truck to move our bigger, bulkier furniture to our new home across town. We had friends who could help us move yesterday evening. The truck was a bit difficult to start, but made it to our house. We loaded our stuff, got 25 feet down our street, and the truck died. It took an hour to keep it cranked long enough to move it out of the street. It is not a dead battery; it is a dire mechanical problem or series of problems, and the truck may have to be towed.

We called the toll-free "service" number only to find there IS NO service after 5pm. We were placed on hold for so long that it drained TWO cell phone batteries, and never was put through to a human being. This morning when I was finally able to reach a service agent, I found that if someone cannot be attached to the truck when a repair person arrives, we will be charged an "abandonment fee". U-Haul has no service, no consideration whether we were stranded at home or in the middle of a desert, and to top it off would charge us if we for some reason couldn't return to babysit your precious non-running truck. Now THAT'S customer satisfaction.

This morning I had to hire a moving company to unload our furniture and move it to our new home, because our help that was available last night is no longer available today. I am tempted to send U-Haul the $260 moving bill. If the truck had run, or if we had been able to reach a service center last night to get it to run, we would not have had to hire any help.

We could have been stranded in the middle of nowhere. We could have been in an unsafe situation. We would have used up our cell phone battery attempting to contact a U-Haul number for help, a number where nobody answers. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

We will NEVER, EVER use U-Haul again, and neither will our friends who were helping us move and witnessed the whole debacle. We will never patronize the local agent who rented us a broken truck, who after I was able to reach after trying for 4 hours, responded "Ain't nothin' I can do about it." U-Haul? More like U-Hell.

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