Do not rent a storage unit from this business, the owner is unable to communicate with customers and any communication is disrespectful and lacking even a shred of customer service. We own businesses and there will always be occasional negative reviews, but there is very good reason for the large amount of extremely poor reviews of this business on google, yelp and social media. My husband and I started the moving process in August 2018. We sold our place in Victoria, TX, but would be there for a few months until we made our final move to the Abilene area. We owned a decent size acreage and had a lot to store until we closed on our new place and finished the remodel. I rented a unit from Gary via phone and we discussed the details of our move from Victoria, TX, timelines, plans, etc. I did not notice anything wrong during the initial conversation. He instructed me to set up payment with Sonjia and asked me to call her and she would provide me with addition information, access codes, keys, etc. Sonjia was helpful each time we had to call for assistance and each time Gary refuses to communicate or provide services. She was apologetic for Gary's behavior and expressed anger and concern as his terrible treatment of customers. On the day of our first move we were instructed to call Sonja when our movers arrived, she would meet them and let them in, our movers would keep our keys and we had a plan to meet with them upon our arrival to the area. When our movers arrived we could not reach Sonjia, but Gary was in the office. He locked the moving company out and refused to let them in. At this time in August I had paid for August, pre-paid for September and set up auto-pay for any additional time we would use the unit. The movers waited for two hours until Sonjia was able to come open the gate for them. This cost us almost $200 additional in charges from our moving company since so much of their time was wasted.
At the initial move-in. We heard from the movers that day that only one side of our unit had a lock. They collected this key for us and alerted Sonjia that the other end was open. She let us know that she got a lock on the unit and had the key for us to pickup the next time we were in town. In Nov we moved to the area. Some of the first items we needed are on the side that we didn't have a key to. I contacted Sonjia on the morning of Nov 9th and asked if we could meet her to pickup our key. She said we could come and Gary would be in the office to give us our key. Gary acted as if he had no idea why we were there even though Sonjia said she called and told him we were coming to pick up our key. He told my husband it isn't his job to keep our keys and we can pay him to go cut the lock off and pay him for a new lock set if we need a key. Mind you, we have never been given the key and again, setup this visit, notified them ahead of time why we were coming and what we needed. So, again we sat & Gary locked himself in the office, just like he did with the moving company. Sonjia again came from away to complete a simple transaction that we setup ahead of time. It was explained to me by Sonjia that Gary is autistic and if you say one wrong word, it will set him off. Unfortunately as a customer needing a key, and setting up to get it ahead of time, we weren't aware this was a trigger.
On January 10th our movers arrived to start emptying our unit. My gate code would not work. I immediately verified that Gary had drafted rent from my account and contacted Sonjia. The maintenance man noticed us waiting and came to help. He verified with his list that I had paid rent and explained that they have constant problems with the gates. He let me in so we could start emptying. He instructed me to be sure and clean the unit after it was empty and that they had a waiting list and needed it as soon as possible. The unit was emptied within 4 hours and clean. I contacted Sonjia again since I had never heard back from her, and asked about meeting to give her keys and sign any paperwork. I have the saved reply where she says, "The keys are yours to keep. They belong with your lock that came with your unit. there is no paperwork to fill out as soon as you are completely moved out send me a picture of your unit emptied and I will take care of it". This was sent to me on January 19th. I followed instructions exactly as Sonjia explained, but guess what? I got an alert from my bank on February 1st that she and Gary had taken another draft from my account. I contacted her immediately to find out what was wrong and how to get my money back, but instead of replying she blocked my number. I spoke with Gary today and he can't get the refund to process and says its out of their control. Another $109 to AAA for nothing and no way to refund my money? Except contact Sonjia and she blocked my number the second I asked for a refund. read more