Do not store here!
THE AMERICAN SELF STORAGE SAGA
Hi fellow members of the "I need a place to store my belongings" community. Let me paint you a picture. I am a College Student in the area, but I am from out of state. In fact I am from clear across the country. Currently I am a senior in college so the "move out, store my belongings, then move back in" drill is a pretty familiar process to me and my parents. For the past three years I have utilized American Self Storage because of their price and their convenience. In fact the location is regularly utilized by members of my college at the end of every school year and despite dedicating my business to them for the past three years and having little to no problems, this last summer was one of the worst experiences I have had with their management. For those that don't know their rates are strictly by the month. Yes, this means that if you need the unit for a month and two days you are charged for two months! They don't pro-rate, they don't offer discounted services, they charge you for two months and require a signed contract agreeing to this amount at the beginning of your time in the unit. This exact situation is what happened to me. This past summer I had to stay in the area an extra two months after school was let out for a job thus the timing to rent for me was a little different this year. I needed the unit from July 23 to August 25. And thus I was charged until September 23. A whole month extra, now don't get me wrong I understand the policy, I understand that I signed a contract agreeing to this, but what I have not yet mentioned is that a member of their team verbally advertised to me that when it came time to move out I should ask to be pro-rated. The overall message he was trying to tell me was that when I came back, if I asked to be pro-rated, perhaps they would accommodate me and my situation and not charge me the entire month of September. I will not go into details about why I agreed to the two months at the start of my rental time, but trust that it was my only option due to the fact that I am out of state. Low and behold time rolls around when my parents and I come back to move out of the unit and surprise surprise, no prorate. We were charged the entire month of September despite the fact that I moved my entire unit out and no longer needed it on August 25th. Is this annoying? Yes. Is it an inflexible policy? Yes. Was my mother verbal about her frustration and distaste with the situation? Absolutely. Who wouldn't be? No one likes to pay more than they have to, but I signed a contract agreeing to pay so that is what we did. We paid DOUBLE what I needed, because of their inflexible rates. So what did we do? We left the lock on the unit. We PAID for the time thus we own that unit for that time, so even though the unit was completely empty my lock was still on it and I made plans to come back in a month and officially remove my lock and sign out. Why did I go through the trouble you ask? BECAUSE had I removed my lock and signed out, I would still have paid for that unit for the month of September and AMERICAN SELF STORAGE would have had the ability to rent that unit out to someone else for the month of September, essentially double charging on the unit. NOT only is that bad business it is unethical and disrespectful to their dedicated customers. So I did what I did and I went back today to remove the lock, what I was not expecting was the level of disrespect and attitude from their Manager RICHARD. He had the nerve to speak down to me disrespectfully saying things such as "Oh I remember you, you're mother was very upset with you, you're mother was very upset with you. Then she got really upset with me". Now I am a college student and I am proud of my relationship with my mom, I know when she is upset with me and I will take it from her, BUT FROM HER ONLY. I will not tolerate that kind of disrespect and behavior from a complete stranger. How my mom feels about my choices is none of his goddamn business and frankly he has no right to provide comment regarding it. Then he tries to justify his behavior after I respond saying that his employee should not have advertised prorating whether or not that is their policy, his own employees are false advertising services they do not offer. And his response is "Policy is policy" and I say yes "policy is policy that does not mean it isn't unfortunate" and this is where it gets great people, he has the nerve to say "well most people follow policy". I'm sorry? excuse me? "most people FOLLOW policy"? where did I not follow policy. I paid for the two months and I came back today September 21st a full two days before I needed to to sign out of the unit, but let me repeat I PAID FOR TWO MONTHS. so where did I not follow policy? This short trip to the unit which I was expecting to take 15 min caused me more stress than necessary because their disrespectful management. Thank god I never have go back!!!!!! read more