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moving rant: U-Haul

DrPizza

DrPizza

Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Been living at the new place for a few weeks.
We're finally ready to bring up the rest of our furniture, appliances (especially the fridge! Need a fridge!!)

Reserved a u-haul on Wed for Sunday.

Guy can't be there until 11am on Sunday. I'm thinking "great. half the morning is shot, but oh well, it's better than nothing."

In the conversation with the guy: "14 foot will probably be long enough; I'll have to make 2 or 3 trips with it though. I have a couple of things, though, that won't fit in a 14 footer.
His response: "don't forget, you'll get a few extra feet up at the top; maybe it'll fit there."

10:58 yesterday, I arrive at the u-haul place.
The guy doesn't have the paperwork ready for us.
He attempts to do it at his computer, but his computer is incredibly slow and "has a virus" according to him. I suggest that he probably has a massive spyware problem since it was taking so long for pages to load.

12:15, yes, over 1 hour in the office, he finally does it by hand on the old forms. Takes just a couple of minutes to do it that way.

We walk out to the u-haul outside. He starts it up. "There you go."

My comment, "I thought it was 14 feet??"
His only reply, "I don't know the exact dimensions" as he walks away.

Talk it over with my wife; decide to say screw it. Go in and tell him to cancel it.
He starts ranting about how he wasted 2 hours of his time and I should have known what size I wanted when I reserved one.

The actual size of a 14 foot u-haul is 11 feet 4 inches. I can't even pick up my carpeting! The rolls are longer than that. (or would you suggest driving around town with thousands of dollars of furniture in a wide open u-haul, subject to all the road dust around here (end of winter season, roads are quite dusty)

Plus, it would have taken me extra trips because of the shorter size.

WTF?! Why use deceptive advertising for the size of the cargo area? The little 1 foot high cargo area above the cab adds on the extra 3 feet. But, he had already told me it would be longer than 14 feet with that overhead area.

So, next weekend, I'll be renting a 24 foot truck from Budget (whose trucks seem to be in better condition anyway)

U-Haul/that guy better not dare attempt to charge me for the cancelled truck.
 
Uhaul sucks. My parents rented a truck from them recently, it was a POS. Couldn't accelerate on the freeway, barely made it to 65 and you'd have to let off the gas so it could shift.
 
U-Haul is by far the cheapest to rent from, though. You just need to prepare for a day or two of 'slack' in the move.

Last time I moved, it was moving a 2 bdrm apt and a car about 500 miles. U-haul was less than 1/2 of what other places wanted.

The night before our move, there was a huge snowstorm in a nearby city. It shut down the highway, and any u-haul trucks coming into town from there were delayed.

It took me an extra day to get my truck. I had planned on picking it up the night before the move, and I ended up getting it at 2pm that day.

On the plus side, they had to substitute a larger (24' instead of 21') truck and a better car hauler (full trailer instead of a car dolly). Plus, they gave an extra 150 miles, since the car hauler was across town from where the truck was. The truck was in decent shape, but I could only do about 55 mph, and I had to wear earplugs because it was so loud.

The overall cost of the move (including fuel and meals) was about $1000. Any other place wanted more than that for just the truck and trailer. My move still ended up on time, and I saved myself some cash.

CLIFF NOTES: U-Haul sucks, but they're cheap. Just plan an extra day or 2 into your move.
 
OK IT'S LIKE THIS: I've used Uhaul on several occassions, and you get what you pay for. If you want a quality vehicle by quality people, go with Penske. At least I know their trucks are good. I have not dealt with them, but their vehicles ARE in good working order.

For me, when I've done uhaul, there have ALWAYS been problems, at least in the US (in Canada I had no issues). I have ALWAYS received a free upgrade, which isn't as nice as it sounds; if you want something 14-16 feet long and they give you a 24 foot behemoth, you have to pay for gas, plus navigate that vessel on public roads.

Worse, the vehicles are all on the virge of just giving up. The last one I had had no working gauges, besides gas and oil. I mean none. Forget about a speedometer. Radio was through one VERY badly cracked speaker. Transmission? Totally shot. AC? Yes, for about five minutes, after which I was rewarded with a very distinct burning smell. I stopped using it after that. This was July in Alabama. A guy I met that same week said he had to drive his with the heat ON, to save the POS from overheating.

Reservations? Forget it. They mean nothing. If you have a truck reserved for the morning, you won't get it. You'll have to call them over and over (them calling you? Forget it. They don't give a sh*t; you call them over, and over), at which point they'll tell you there will be a wait, and then when you say "I Need a damn vehicle now, dumb ass" they'll tell you about one you can pick up at another uhaul place 15 miles away.

Their customer service and organisation is in fact worse than anything else. I've said the social security administration and charter cable both have poor service. THey do, but Uhaul's is worse. It's the pitts. This is a VERY BADLY organized company. They stay in business because they undercut prices. They can do that because they offer barely-driveable vehicles to people who end up waiting hours to get them.

My advice is only go with uhaul if you are not in a rush. If you're in a hurry and things are stressful, and you need a truck when you're told you'll have it, go elsewhere.
 
Great. Post an internet link. I gave up on internet from home when I switched to dial-up. It took me 7 minutes and 20 seconds from log-on until the first page of these forums was loaded. Firefox won't work at all at home on the dial-up; I have to use the "specially configured" IE provided by Verizon. Their service sucks. I've NEVER been able to log on at more than 32200. So, rather than check online, I went by what the guy said on the phone. He described it as being 14 feet long PLUS the overhead space.

If I had broadband, I would have checked online. Oh well; live and learn.

Incidentally, I just compared budgettruck to u-haul.
budget truck was cheaper per mile for a 24 foot truck than u-haul for the 11 foot truck. The 24 is the actual 24.
Plus, I get the first 20 miles (or something like that) free.
And, the truck itself starts at around $45 a day (although u-haul was $20 a day) However, the free mileage makes them almost identical.

So, U-Haul isn't the cheapest.
 
I've actually priced out Budget, U-Haul, and Penske when I moved from Michigan to Indiana. Turned out, U-Haul was the most expensive, followed by Budget, and Penske ended up being cheapest. Mine was state-to-state though, not in-town - so I'm not sure how the in-town policies compare, as I never looked at those.

Penske offers a discount if you make reservations online. If you have AAA, you get a discount for that too. Penske gives you unlimited mileage, where the other two gave you a set amount - if you exceeded it, you had to pay per mile. My truck I rented from Penske was also brand new, and had only 4500 miles on it.

If you do decide to go with Budget, though, there's a coupon (10% off, IIRC) available at the Post Office. Just pick up a "change-of-address" kit, there should be one in there. The coupon was in the change of address kit in Michigan and Indiana, anyway.
 
Originally posted by: Skoorb
OK IT'S LIKE THIS: I've used Uhaul on several occassions, and you get what you pay for. If you want a quality vehicle by quality people, go with Penske. At least I know their trucks are good. I have not dealt with them, but their vehicles ARE in good working order.

For me, when I've done uhaul, there have ALWAYS been problems, at least in the US (in Canada I had no issues). I have ALWAYS received a free upgrade, which isn't as nice as it sounds; if you want something 14-16 feet long and they give you a 24 foot behemoth, you have to pay for gas, plus navigate that vessel on public roads.

Worse, the vehicles are all on the virge of just giving up. The last one I had had no working gauges, besides gas and oil. I mean none. Forget about a speedometer. Radio was through one VERY badly cracked speaker. Transmission? Totally shot. AC? Yes, for about five minutes, after which I was rewarded with a very distinct burning smell. I stopped using it after that. This was July in Alabama. A guy I met that same week said he had to drive his with the heat ON, to save the POS from overheating.

Reservations? Forget it. They mean nothing. If you have a truck reserved for the morning, you won't get it. You'll have to call them over and over (them calling you? Forget it. They don't give a sh*t; you call them over, and over), at which point they'll tell you there will be a wait, and then when you say "I Need a damn vehicle now, dumb ass" they'll tell you about one you can pick up at another uhaul place 15 miles away.

Their customer service and organisation is in fact worse than anything else. I've said the social security administration and charter cable both have poor service. THey do, but Uhaul's is worse. It's the pitts. This is a VERY BADLY organized company. They stay in business because they undercut prices. They can do that because they offer barely-driveable vehicles to people who end up waiting hours to get them.

My advice is only go with uhaul if you are not in a rush. If you're in a hurry and things are stressful, and you need a truck when you're told you'll have it, go elsewhere.
Click to expand...
Listen to Skoorb. :thumbsup:

Only use U-Haul to save money and when time is not that important. Otherwise, you cannot depend on them.
 
What everyone else said. Most U-haul trucks are deathtraps. I've had similar bad experiences with them on multiple occasions.

One thing I will say - some of the 1-2 truck "franchises" aren't so awful - ever drive by a gas station and see 3 u-haul trucks parked on the side? They're for rent - and in my experience often a LOT better than the junk the larger u-haul places will rent you.

PS: It's the opposite of what you'd expect - the "in town" trucks are the worst of the worst, since U-haul won't be out much money if they break down on you. They save the "better" (hah) trucks for state-to-state moves, at least the ones they think might make it more than 500 miles.

U-haul is a lot like Radio Shack. It is absolutely amazing that they are still in business - they survive on name recognition alone.
 
Yeah those trucks are just crap. I used them once and I went through 3 different trucks within 2 days because they just kept breaking. One was leaking brake fluid all over so the breaks were horrible, another lost power stearing and the dash shorted out, and the third one finally worked. On a good note I didn't have to pay for anything after the 2nd truck broke, but I will never use that company again thats for sure.
 
I helped a couple of friends move a bunch of furniture from Columbus to Bremen yesterday... we used one U-Haul (can't remember the size), and one pickup truck. The U-Haul was a '94 Ford Diesel... it was able to get up to 65 on the freeway... after being on a flat or downward slope for a few minutes. I'm told that the turn signals didn't flash - my friend manually flashed them by moving the turn signal stalk back and forth.

Thankfully, it did make it there, and back. I drove the pickup truck... and just to be safe, I had another pickup truck on standby, in case the U-Haul broke down... and a trailer for that truck to tow, that was larger than the U-Haul itself. 😀 Thankfully, I didn't need to go get it.
 
avoid uhaul like the plague

I reserved one truck a couple of weeks in advance, only to find they rented out all of the friggin trucks when I came to pick em up

 
after hearing a ton of horror stories about U-Haul on this forum, i told a friend of mine to not go with them when he helped someone move... he didn't listen, and the truck broke down on the side of the road

i will never use u-haul just by word of mouth advertising (anti-advertising?)
 
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