shocked
Jebuz Crimmany, I don't think I've ever actually seen this kind of crud in person before! I rented a U Haul to move from one provence of my county to another, and since I've never driven a big truck before I purchased all the insurance except liability - as I was covered by my own provider. I ended up smooshing the gutter above my parking garage a little bit and filed a claim for roughly $340 in damage.
The U Haul was completely unharmed, but I did need a new copy of my rental agreement to turn into my insurance agent, as mine was caught up in the chaos of moving / misplaced.
This is the complaint letter I ended up posting at the U Haul "How Did We Do?" Website:
The staff was rude to the point of antagonism, particularly an employee I will refer to as “Mick”. This location is setting an appalling example for the U Haul Company and if this is the first complaint they have received I can only assume it is because people are too baffled to take the appropriate steps to report it.
I called to request a duplicate receipt a few weeks after my rental. The first employee had no idea how to print one and passed the phone to Mick. Mick was very unprofessional and complained that he is not paid to deal with customer’s irresponsibility; that I was given a receipt on pick up and he’s not going to pay “his secretary” to “deal with this”. He then put me on “hold” by setting the receiver down, and spent less than five minutes retrieving the document I’d requested only to later complain that it took him “half an hour” to find it.
He told me if I wanted it, I would have to come get it, because he wasn’t going to fax it to me. At the time that was not possible as I was over 25 miles away. I explained this to him and told him I would try to see if just the rental agreement number would be enough.
It turned out not to be. When I called back minutes later he snapped at me that he had already re-filed my paperwork and was NOT going to get it for me again. He then started repeating that it had taken him half an hour to find it in the first place and it is not cost efficient for him to deal with this sort of thing.
Because I was upset, I reminded him that I had been on hold the whole time, and the call in its entirety had not taken more than five minutes.
He responded in a very argumentative and challenging tone that he kept a phone log of all his calls, recording their duration, and was absolutely proof positive that it had been 30 minutes. When I repeated that it had been five minutes he threatened to go look it up, but when I invited him to do so he snapped that he “doesn’t have to deal with people like this” and hung up on me.
I called the 1800# and was told that their policy was that I had to get any duplicate reciepts from the original rental location, or pay a $10 non-refundable, non-guaranteed fee to have them get it for me.
Instead, my insurance agent offered to do so and was finally able to convince him to furnish the receipt the next day. She called me and told me it was okay to go pick it up.
When the employee who greeted me realized who I was, he did not even attempt to hide a sour expression, and muttered “I’m glad to be rid of it so you’ll leave me alone,” like he just had to have a last word in.
Furthermore, one of the employees did not bother to put out his cigarette while I was in the office, and continued to smoke it as he itemized my receipt standing less than two feet from me. I have asthma, but on top of that, smoking is not allowed in a business office / in the presense of customers to begin with!
(LJ: There was a auto shop connected to the office where he had orginianlly been smoking, and he brought his lit cigarette in with him!)
(Source: http://www.cigargroup.com/calif.htm)
Even still he was considerably more helpful and polite than anyone else there; as he volunteered to make sure I understood which paper was my original receipt and which one was the final copy. I was so suprised by it that the cigarette thing seems trivial.
It’s mind boggling that my interaction with that man, and the young man who checked me out originally, were the most professional and helpful in the entire encounter!
I’ve been in customer service for six years, and the only time I’ve ever seen this kind of aggression or “lack of grace” swiftly ended in termination of the employee. For the apparent manager to be treating customers like this is completely unacceptable.
The animosity received was completely uncalled for and unprovoked. All I wanted was a replacement copy of my reciept!
I will not be doing any more business with that particular location and posted a review on google to try and warn the locals. I have never had a bad experiance with U Haul before and am sorry that they are being so badly represented by this franchiser.
Geeze though, these people were seriously over the top!
Note: Mick was not actually the guys name, and yes his real name was included in the actual complaint.