Posted by David L.
I'm disappointed that my experience with U-Haul went downhill towards the end of our move and continued through closing out an onsite storage room. In the beginning when booking reservations and revising them everything went smoothly, but once we got to our new location and the Santa Rosa, CA, U-Haul facility we ran into some issues with the one-month free storage facility that was offered to me while making the initial truck reservations. I agreed to reserve it BUT I told U-Haul on the phone, several times, that I would need it to store a few big items for a couple months, including a big refrigerator, a washer and dryer. When dropping off the trucks I then asked about the storage room. I was disappointed and frustrated to find out that the storage room that U-Haul customer service had reserved for me would not work out. I was told by the facilities manager, Jeff Higashi, that they only had a storage room available that was on the second floor and that there was no elevator in the building to get these big items into the storage room and that we'd have to carry the large refrigerator up the small metal outdoor stairway ourselves.
At this time, I contacted U-Haul Customer service and asked for assistance, I was transferred to 3 different people who all said they couldn't help me and the last service women said the same thing, that she couldn't help me, but then continued to talk to me in a very rude manor until I hung up on her. The manager finally agreed to get a few workers to carry it up, by this time our refrigerator had been setting in the middle of the tarmac for over 3 hours. This now brings us full circle, 6 weeks later, in which we decided to sell the refrigerator, so we weren't paying for any additional rental months. I showed up at the Santa Rosa, CA, U-Haul facility to meet a buyer who agreed to purchase it. This is when it got ugly. I asked the manager, Jeff Higashi, if he could have some guys bring it down from the second floor so the buyer could load it onto his truck. At that point, for over 3 hours he couldn't get any workers to bring it down and started to tell me that it wasn't his responsibility to assist us and that we would need to do it ourselves. I told him, of course it's your responsibility, you were the ones that took it up the stairs and stored it on the second floor. At this point, I knew that the staff and manager would not assist us in bringing the refrigerator down. They kept repeating the same thing to us that "it wasn't their responsibility to bring it down" I then told Jeff Higashi, manager, that U-Haul would most likely be liable if any of us gets hurt doing it ourselves, on U-Haul property, bottom line the 2 guys that were buying the refrigerator and I had to struggle to bring it down ourselves. The nightmare would continue, we couldn't get it to the guy's truck because every exit was blocked by their trucks and trailers stored directly in front of the storage facility building. We finally got them to at least move a couple trucks so we could get it onto the buyer's truck. The buyer was flabbergasted at how unhelpful this Santa Rosa, CA, facility and its manager, Jeff Higashi, handled this situation and that the workers were so unwilling to help even at the managers request, for what took us over a period of 3 and a 1/2 hours to complete. What a frustrating experience this has been when it could have all been handled in a matter of minutes if the staff had helped us at the beginning. To top it off, when I got home, I received a bill from U-Haul for $139 which included a $20 late charge for the storage rental. In hindsight I shouldn't have helped, I'm in my 60's and had been in a bad car accident 3 years prior in which I had to have surgeries for over a 2 and a 1/2-year period which did not seem to make a difference in getting any assistance. In the end, I ended up getting a pinched nerve in my neck so I'm experiencing neck pain that goes down my back and up my neck, face and back of my head.