Thursday, October 16, 2008

customer service

I rented a trailer from U-Haul.I have rented trailers from them before. The Kitchener location had good service... if you went in... phone service was not great.
I needed a 5 x 8 enclosed trailer to transport stuff from Leaskdale to Orillia.
  • I phoned one location in Orillia... they didn't have any, nor did they offer to find me one.
  • I went into another location... they didn't have any, nor did they offer to find one for me.
  • So I went on-line to book one... a U-Haul rep got back to me in a day to say I could have one in Fenlon Falls (about 75km away)
  • I tried again the next week... they had one in Midland (about 50km away) but when I phoned to confirm, they said, no... it's in Fenlon Falls.
  • So I said, tell me the next day that one is availble in Orillia... they gave me a date & I took it, the night before they tell me it's in Bracebridge (60km away)
I head up to Bracebridge, confirm that the trailer will link with either a 2" or a 1 7/8" ball. 
This is after taking 45min to rent the trailer... they didn't know how to use the U-Haul software.
Guess what?
The trailer needed a 2" ball, which I had with me, but not on the hitch.

The U-Haul agent did not have a big enough wrench... nor did the electric shop next door... and the guy at the prop shop was going out for lunch... so I head 1km down the road to an auto parts store who swapped the hitch balls for me.

Finally, about 1.5 hours after getting to U-Haul I can drive away.

Wonderful customer service... I hope I don't need a trailer for a long time.

3 comments:

Tim Good said...

U-haul is the worst and I will never deal with them again. I once booked a cube van 30 days ahead of time. confirmed a few day ahead. When I show up to pick up the CUBEVAN, the show me to a full side regular van. I said - what is this? A Cube van they replied...we argued for a while that a CUBE van should have a large box or CUBE on the back. The answer was that is what we call a cubevan. They didn't have any "Trucks" availble any more that day, so I had to make three trips with the van. NEVER AGAIN.

Walking Church said...

All the more reason to down size!!

Wanna come and get some of my junk?

Seriously - truly a waste of time fueled with disappointment. . . It is fairly easy to get the first sale from me. . .but try to get the second sale if I am not happy with the first transaction.

michael lewis said...

I've only rented from U-Haul once, and that was in Calgary, for one of those "cube van" vehicles at $19.99 / day for 10 km.

However, yes, it's true, U-Haul is terrible!

Apparently, you've never seen the W-Five episode on U-Haul; check out the CTV text archive here.